Arrival at Lake St. Peter

We left the Bonnechere caves around 4 and we arrived at Lake St. Peter just before 6 p.m. 
I didn't even know that this park existed until a couple days previous so I was curious to see what it would be like. The plan was to stay for a night or two and then decide if we wanted to stay longer. 
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The office was a typical park office and we were happy to see that they had ice (and ice-cream). 

One of the unique features of this office was that the walk way and the posts around the building were built with large quartz stones embedded in them. They were kind of pretty, sparkling in the sunshine.

Lake St. Peter is a small campground. We drove around for a bit and liked what we saw. The campsites are fairly large and park is quiet and cute. Although there are only 65 campsites, they clearly do not number them in order because we chose campsite number 66.

Many of the sites had private paths down to the lake and ours was one of them. 

It didn't lead down to a sandy beach or anything, but it did lead down to a nice view. 

We drove back to the office and registered our site.  We had to pay $11 for an extra vehicle, which is becoming fairly standard in Ontario provincial parks these days. However, unlike the other parks where you have additional parking not far from your site, we were dismayed to find out that the only additional parking available was a big lot down by the office and you were required to park there. Only one car was allowed on the campsite. We decided that my brothers car would be the one to stay on the site. This meant that mine was the one to be parked in the lot. So anytime I wanted to go anywhere or get anything from my car I had to walk all the way to the office to do so because there was no room in my brothers car for an extra passenger. Luckily, like I mentioned, the park was not big so the walk was not too big of a deal for me. But I am sure that it could be problematic for elderly people or for people with physical challenges. 

But what they lacked in parking they made up for in environmental friendliness. Just before leaving the office the staff handed us 2 complimentary garbage bags and 2 complimentary blue bags for recycling. We were fairly impressed by this. 

Since there was one less car on the site, this did mean that there was more empty ground space. So I set my new purple tent up right where my car would have been parked. It was gravel underneath me but it wasn't as rocky and rough as I thought it might be. 

I was very pleased to see the sign that said "No excessive noise at any time". Since it was a weekday, there didn't seem to be too many rowdy party goers anyways.

The bugs were not too bad. Just the occasional mosquito and a few midge flies. I took a short walk around the grounds to do a bit of exploring. There are 2 beaches here. The one that was closest to us is small and shallow. 

Just past the beach towards the boat launch there is a tiny piece of land that just out. On top of it is a picnic table and a bench to sit on so that you can look out over the lake.  I thought it would be a nice place to sit and have lunch or to have a cup of coffee in the  evening. 

The girls bathroom and the boys bathroom are fairly far apart from one another. They are not flush toilets, but that is ok, After all, we are camping!  But what we didn't like was the obvious lack of a place to wash your hands when you came out of the bathroom.  We had to hunt down the nearest drinking water tap in order to wash our hands. 

The drinking water taps have been re-done over the years. In one place you could see where an old stone drinking water tap used to be. And a few feet away was the new drinking water tap. At first we didn't even know what the stone structure was. We were making up little funny stories in our heads of things it might be, like an alter for worshiping the water or something.  We had to get up close to it to figure out what it was for. 

We had a quick bite to eat for supper. We didn't start a fire because we knew we were tired and that we wouldn't be up too late anyways. It was probably for the best because there were some raging wild fires going on in Northern Ontario and the rest of the province was on the verge of a fire ban. As a matter of fact, on the way over here, as we left our sister and her husbands cottage the roads were being closed shortly after we had passed through due to the fires.  We were fortunate to not have been diverted through a detour to get here. 

We sat around and talked until bedtime. But before we went into the tents we did a bit of star gazing. The sky was so clear and the stars were so bright. When I did finally go to bed I could see the planet Mars through the screen of my tent. It shone so bright with a reflection in the lake that it almost looked like a tiny moon.  It was very hot that night so I ended up sleeping on top of my sleeping bag instead of in it and I left the door of the tent open with just the screen closed.  I didn't mind. This is summer! Wonderful, wonderful summer!