Last day at Killbear Park. We slept in until 10:15 a.m.and woke up to another beautiful day. I paused for a few minutes in the midst of the fragrant Milkweed plants and the other flowers on my way back from the comfort station.  It was so peaceful.

The colours were vibrant in the sunshine.

There were even raspberries ready for the picking. This place had it all. 

I was pleased to find that my " kamikaze toad" from the night before had survived unscathed and was happily hopping along in the leaves. (yeah, OK it could be a totally different toad, but hey, leave me my with my illusions).

After breakfast we began to pack up camp. As we were taking down the dining tent we came across this huge tent caterpillar. This guy was not lacking for food. It was as fat as one of my fingers!

So I carefully moved him over to a little beech tree where he could continue to eat and get even fatter. 

By 1 pm we were all packed up but we didn't have to be off the site until 2 pm so we decided to make one last trip down to our private beach.

We took our foldout chairs with us and sat by the waters edge. It was so peaceful with the water lapping at the shore and the rocks. 

We would have liked to have stayed longer but 2 pm rolled around too quickly and soon it was time to go. We timed it just right though. Our quiet little area would have become a little less peaceful because just as we were pulling away in the car some new campers were pulling into the site next to us. We really enjoyed staying at this provincial park and now that we know how close it is we will be sure to be back. 

Woke up at 9:30 to an overcast day, but it was still nice out. We checked the weather forecast and saw that we had time to squeeze in a hike or two before the the rain was to hit at 3 p.m. We were not looking forward to the thunderstorms that were expected at 8 p.m. 
The comfort station was packed full of people brushing their teeth so I spent my time getting a good look at a dragonfly on the wall outside while I waited. 

After a breakfast of oatmeal and muffins we headed off to the first trail. The Twin Points Trail is a 1.8 km loop that crosses forest, sandy beaches and bedrock ridges as it works its way along Killbear's shoreline.

The entrance starts at the Day Use Beach area and begins as a very wide, very well-groomed path. This trail is quite easy and much of it is wheelchair accessible. They are working on making even more of it wheelchair accessible. There were not too many people on the trail today due to the overcast skies. 

In many parts of the path you could see the waters of Georgian Bay. Despite having the map in our possession, we somehow managed to miss the fork in the trail and ended up walking this trail in the opposite direction that the map laid out. That was ok though because you can't really get lost on this trail.  

Through the trees we could see the Day Use Beach where we started. 

We came to a nice open area (the Point) which had benches for people to sit and enjoy the view. 

There were a few people already on most of the benches so we just went over tot he shoreline to take in the view.

There was a lone seagull hanging out by the shore taking in the sights too. 

We noticed a number of boats as well as sail boards on the Bay. It is a popular place for boaters of all kinds. 

This Pale Corydalis flower was growing all over the place on this trail as well as various other places in the park. 

The park has a dog beach and you can access it from this trail.

You can see the dog beach from the top of the rock face we were on. It looks small and cozy and it has a picnic table there for the humans to sit at while the dogs swim and play. 

One of the things they did to help people on the trail was to install a handrail to get up the rocks. 

​The trail eventually turns away from the shoreline for a bit and into an area with more trees and rocks. This is where Heather and I started our search for rattle snakes. We figured if they would be anywhere it would be here. Apparently one of the park rangers thought so too because she was there with a couple of people and a snake bag. She told us that she hadn't seen any that day. 

We didn't see any snakes either, but we did come across a deer print in the mud. 

The end of the trail brought us back out to the Day Use Beach. It was pretty empty because it was a bit too cold for swimming that day. 

Even a group of Merganser ducks thought so as they huddled together on the sands of the beach. 

We went over to the picnic shelter to have our lunch. It was a really nice and clean picnic shelter. 

The picnic tables were longer than the benches at one end so that they are wheel chair accessible. 

The bathrooms were a bit funny looking with a sink outside the building under a makeshift roof. But at least they provided a sink, so I guess you can't really complain that much. 

We finished our lunch and left the picnic shelter just on time. A number of cars filled with people started to arrive and fill up the picnic area. So we decided to let them have the tables and we went on another quick snake hunt. We still didn't see any snakes but we saw a huge mountain of sand and a rather large hole dug in the side of it. It looked something like a groundhog hole or something. 

We walked up the road a bit to one of the grates that runs across the roads hoping that there would be a snake in it.

But we were disappointed to see that there were no snakes. There was only some dried leaves and plants. 

No snakes and no turtles. We did see a frog in the ditch on the side of the road though ... but it just wasn't the same.

So we hopped in the car and started on our way to the next hiking trail we wanted to do which was the Lighthouse Point Trail.
To our surprise we saw a deer cross the road in front of us! According to the brochure for the trail we had just walked the deer were not usually seen until September until May so that was why we were not really expecting to see a deer. We watched it for a couple minutes until it took off into the woods and then we carried on our way. 

We drove for a few minutes and then to our surprise we saw another deer! 

As we rounded a bend we saw that a couple of cars on both sides of the road had stopped to look at something in the tall grass at the side of the road. There were two more deer grazing along a fence line. At that moment a rude guy in a red truck pulled up behind us and shouted "Get Moving!" to everyone. Of course we couldn't go anywhere because there were cars in front of us, but even if we could I might have considered staying put for a few minutes more just to spite him. However, some people happened to come walking up the trail just at that moment and inadvertently scared the deer away. So the cars in front of us began to move again and the rude guy behind us got his wish. 

It wasn't long before we arrived at the trail head for Lighthouse Point trail. This trail is only a 0.5 km looped trail that takes you to the tip of Killbear Point with great views of Georgian Bay and interesting rock formations. 

Right from the beginning you can tell that this trail is not as smooth and easy going as the other trails we were on. There was much more rocky areas that had to be climbed and you had to watch your footing. 

There are areas that go along the shoreline. Looking out through the trees we could see a large rock that jutted out of the water. On top of it someone had built a little inukshuk from some of the rocks that were there. 

At the point there is a light house, but it wasn't the tall light house building that I had expected to see. It wasn't manned by people and it was just a big round metal structure. It was still nice enough I guess. 

All around the lighthouse bushes of wild roses were growing. 

The rock formations, both in the water and out, were quite interesting to look at. I think that some of them would even make a nice painting. 

Looking up above your head the striped maple leaves made a textured canopy of green. 

Some of these leaves were bigger than my hand! They were huge! 

For most of this walk we were the only ones on the trail, so it was quite peaceful and quiet. It was so peaceful that the birds seemed to feel comfortable in hanging out with us. 

A robin ignored us while it went about it's business of finding it's dinner. 

At the end (or beginning as the case may be since the trail is a loop) there is a small beach. 

Once again there was no one in the water swimming because the weather was not very warm. I wondered how busy it got on hotter days. 

We finished our hike at about 2 p.m. and headed back to our campsite. Once again we saw deer along the way. This park had so many deer! We must have seen about 6 or 8 in the course of a couple of hours. 

When we arrived back at the campsite we were thrilled to find that someone had left us their left over wood that they hadn't used. It appeared that the people on the campsite next to us had packed up and gone home while we were hiking. It was such a nice thing for them to do for us. 

It still hadn't started raining yet, but we were expecting it at some point during the day. So since we had some time we decided to go and see what was over the blind hill by our campsite that we have now dubbed "mystery hill". 

At the top of the hill we took note of an empty campsite, # 815, that we liked and thought would be a good site to try to get the next time we came camping here. 

The road came to a T at the end and we wondered whether to go left or right. We decided to do neither because we spotted an unmarked path to the left of the road sign that was in front of us. We figured that since we were on "mystery hill" that we may as well follow a "mystery path".

The mystery path went down to the rocky shoreline of Georgian Bay. It was very quiet and peaceful there. There weren't a lot of trees but the pines that were there amongst the rocks had character.

We spotted a couple of loons out in the bay and we sat and watched them for awhile. 

Eventually the path disappeared and we were just rock hopping. In the distance we saw a brown shape that looked like someone's golden retriever dog sitting in the underbrush. 

But we laughed as we got closer and realized that the "dog" we thought we were looking at was actually only a bunch of dried up leaves hanging from a dead tree.

We turned around and headed back along the shoreline. The water was clear and clean and looked inviting. Flowers were loving it. 

When we got back I took a short nap and awoke to hearing the sound of a light rain on the tent. We made a fire and cooked steak over the flames. We decided to cook s'mores for dessert. I had brought some chocolate covered cookies with me to make the s'mores with. We had tried to do this last year but a raccoon had stolen our cookies so I was excited to try it again this year. Turns out that someone doesn't want me to try this, because when we went to get the cookies from the car we found that they had all melted together in the heat of the sun. We weren't going to let that stop us so we tried to pry them apart. The best we could do was to get clumps of two or three cookies apart. So we put marshmallows between the clumps of chocolate covered cookies and wrapped them in tinfoil and put them on the fire. End result... a sticky gooey mess. Ah well, it still tasted good. 

It was still raining during all this but that didn't stop us. We sat around the fire with our umbrellas. We must've looked crazy but we didn't care. True crazy was when a big ole toad decided that he wanted to get warm and, to my horror , jumped right into the fire! I jumped up and within seconds I had  reached into fire and grabbed the little guys up. By the grace of God neither one of us seemed to have gotten burnt; it happened so fast. I put the "kamikaze toad" safely down in the leaves a good distance away from the fire. At midnight we still weren't tired but the fire had died out. So we went into the tent and played board games for awhile. At one point I had to make a pit stop at the comfort station. On my way back from the bathroom I heard rustling and chattering in the tree near our tent. I shined my flashlight up into the branches and saw 3 very young raccoons hanging out in the tree. I finally got to see the raccoons that everyone else had seen the previous nights. We went to sleep shortly after that. We never did get the thunder storms that the weather man had been calling for. 

We woke up at 10 a.m. and everything was perfect! The weather was perfect, the temperature was perfect, and there was a perfect amount of sun vs. shade. The birds were singing and it was a lovely morning!
We made our way through the trees and down the path leading to the comfort station. Between us and the road were a bunch of wild flowers that smelled heavenly. They smelled almost like lilacs. And the Monarch butterflies were flying all around.

It wasn't any wonder because the flowers we were smelling were Milkweed. It is a pretty pink flower that smelled so nice I wanted to just stand there and breathe in the scent for a long time. 

Another plant that was attracting the butterflies was the Goat's Beard plants that were mixed in with the Milkweed. They had huge puffy seed pods that were like a dandelion on steroids. They glistened with a golden sheen in the sun. 

Goat's Beard plants have a beautiful, yellow, star burst shaped flower on them.  

Other insects were enjoying this wild flower bed too. There were grasshoppers on the purple thistles. 

And bees on the Milkweed leaves.

And Box Elder beetles on the Milkweed too. ​There were even humming birds flying around everywhere, but they wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a photo of them. 

The comfort station was your typical provincial park comfort station. It had 5 showers and flush toilets and was clean. 

It had a bike rack outside. This park is a fantastic place for biking. As a matter of fact they have a trail that is specifically for bikes that runs much of the way through the park. 

Today we decided that we would hike the Look Out Point Trail.. It's a 3.5 km loop trail and the entrance was close to the Blind Bay section of the campground. This trail winds through a variety of forest types to a breathtaking view of Georgian Bay. We made some egg salad sandwiches and packed some snacks and drinks and headed out. 

We got to the Lookout Point Trail head at about noon. There was almost no place to park. Killbear Park is a large park with over 880 campsites. Since the park was almost full it was not too surprising that there were so many people on the trail today. 

We grabbed an interpretive trail guide and began our hike. The very first part began as a little board walk into the woods. 

It was a beautiful warm sunny day and even the dragonflies were enjoying a bit of sun on the boardwalk.

The boardwalk went on for quite a ways through the trees. I imagine it must be pretty wet through here in the spring time. 

We came across this measuring stick along the side of the trail. 

Apparently there are some of these on each of the hiking trails. You can help to do some "Wetland Science" by reading the water levels on the measuring stick and texting  the information to the McMaster Ecohydrology Group who monitors the water levels. We didn't send in a text because we were pretty sure that some kids had been playing around with this one and that the measurements weren't correct. 

This trail was pretty easy going. You were even provided with some benches along the way. 

Soon we came to a stand of Hemlock trees. It was a nice open space and there was trail marker # 3 on a post. We referred to our trail guide to see what it said, and I learned something that I didn't know before. 

Apparently these hemlock stands are important to the deer and wildlife in the winter. They provide shelter from the snow so that the deer are able to move around beneath the branches easily and can get to their food. It went on to say that we were unlikely to find deer here at this time of year. 

We came across this oddly marked tree. For some reason there were two orange markers on it instead of just one. (The trail does not split here or anything like that). I joked with Heather that there were two of them because one was the English version and the other was the French version.  :)  

At one point we were pleasantly surprised to see some stairs along the trail. They were rough, but they were a nice touch. 

There were plenty of dragonflies on the trail. I was happy to see them because they were helping to keep the mosquitoes and other bugs away.

Saw this cute little mushroom hiding under a rock. It looked like a scene from a fairy book or something. 

On the path up ahead we saw this fat little chipmunk drinking from a puddle. I don't know if it was well fed or pregnant, but it certainly was a round little thing. 

Saw this red-shouldered pine borer warming itself on a rock. 

At the end of the trail before it loops back around we came to the Lookout Point that the trail was named after. 

It was a beautiful lookout. The view was amazing. You could see for miles around. 

There were two picnic tables but there were people already at the first one so we went to the further one to have our lunch. 

As we were eating a family came up behind us and took off their shoes. Then they walked past us and down the hill towards the water and disappeared from sight. All was quiet for a few minutes. One minute stretched into two and two stretched into three. I wondered why they left their shoes up at the top of the lookout and I wondered what they were doing. "Maybe they fell in" I said to Heather. 

Heather said "Nah, you would have heard them yell and splash" Just as she finished saying that, we heard some yelling and a big splash! We had to laugh at the timing of that. 

After we finished eating we continued on our way. The Sumac trees were a beautiful rich red colour. I had never seen them so red before. The pictures I took do not even begin to show how red they were. 

There were plenty of wildflowers along the trail, like this rough-fruited cinquefoil.

And this purple Hyssop flower.

It was 3:15 pm  when we came off the trail. The brochure said the hike is usually 90 minutes long, but we were walking very slow and had stopped for lunch and to take pictures. 

We enjoyed the hike and we were not quite ready to go back to camp yet. So we decided to go into the Visitor Center to see what they had in there. 

It was quite nice inside. Many of the windows were decorated with scenes of various types of birds. 

There were a couple balconies where you could go out and look around or sit and enjoy a quiet moment. There were picnic tables outside on the lower levels. 

We took the opportunity to ask the Park Staff that were manning the desk, what the strange fences were for that we kept seeing along the road. They explained that they were snake fences. They are put in place to keep the snakes (and turtles) from going across the road and getting hit by cars. 

They pointed out that we might see some grates or some speed bumps running across the road at various points. These are actually under passes for the snakes and turtles to go through to get to the other side of the road. The fences are intended to guide them to these underpasses.  We hadn't really noticed the under passes before, but once he mentioned them we started seeing them through out the park. These aren't in place because there are so many snakes. The rattle snake is actually very rare so the fences are there to protect the population. 

We didn't get to see a wild rattle snake while we were in the park (although we kept hoping that we would) but we did get to see one behind glass in the Visitor Center. It had been run over by a bike a number of years ago which broke it's back. Since it can no longer survive on it's own in the wild they take care of it now indoors. 

They also had this Eastern Foxsnake there too. The Eastern Foxsnake, like the rattlesnake, is a threatened species of snake. The only place this species is found in the world is in the Great Lakes Basin, specifically around the western portion of Lake Erie and on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay. 

The Visitor Center was filled with various displays of taxidermy animals. One display I thought was nice for the kids had a stuffed moose in it as well as some other birds and animals. It was set up as an "I Spy" game. 

On the glass of the display was a little card with a list of the things that you had to try to find. 

In another part of the Visitor Center was a stuffed Black Bear. They had some information and some art work featuring bears in various places through out the building. 

They were very creative with their displays. One display I found to be entertaining was the one that listed the bears food. They had the list set up like a fancy restaurant menu. There was one for each season except for winter.

​ On the Fall menu, at the very bottom, it said " ​Please Note: The restaurant will be closed for the winter" 

One of my favourite parts of the Visitor Center was a table that had a couple pf old fashioned looking phones on it. The phones were not real phones, but if  you chose a number you could sit and listen to a recording of a story. 

Next stop inside the Visitor Center was the store. This Park Store had some of the best deals I have ever seen in a park before. I got a combo pack of a hat and T-shirt together for a little over $16. I was very impressed with this. We also bough some fudge and a package of kerosene fire starters. We had never seen these types of fire starters before and we wanted to check them out. Then to our surprise, they threw in two cans of brown beans for FREE! So we went back to our site as "happy campers".

Just behind our campsite the road goes up a blind hill. It could be quite dangerous if people were to go over either side too fast. There are no warning signs or anything like that posted anywhere. So we were pleased to note that most people were honking on their horn before going over it to warn people on the other side that they were coming. It's nice to know that people are still cautious drivers, even in a park. 

back at the camp we played some board games for awhile until supper time. We had chicken tornadoes and instant mashed potatoes for supper. Then we headed down to our private little beach to see if we could see the sunset. 

The colours were not overly bright. They were subdued pastel colours mixed with greys. But it was still pretty. 

There was one cloud that looked kind of like the shape of a dove. I watched it turn from grey to pink as the sun sank over the tree line. 

After the sun went down we went back to camp and made a fire. We used our new fire starters with the kerosene in them and they worked very well.The flames just rocketed out and we had a nice fire in no time flat. We cooked banana boats over the fire and sat around talking until 12:30 a.m.. Just before bed we could hear a raccoon in the bushes but we never saw it. 

The first camping trip of the season started a month earlier for me this year due to work scheduling. But I figured I was, for the most part, safely out of the major bug season. My sister, Heather, and I decided to try a park we had never been to before...Killbear Provincial Park. 

It is only about a 2 hour drive from our home so we left late in the afternoon and arrived at the park at about 5:30 pm. As we drove along, we noticed that in much of the campground there were these strange little fences bordering much of the roadways. The fences were much too low to keep out deer or raccoons. Rabbits could easily jump right over them. They were only about a foot to a foot and a half high, so people could easily step right over them. We were quite curious about these tiny fences. 

We decided that we would ask about these strange fences when we got a chance. When we came across a rattle snake warning sign, we figured that it might have something to do with the rattle snakes. But we didn't know exactly how they worked. Apparently Killbear Park is one of the few remaining places in Ontario that rattle snakes have been found. However, even here they are a very rare sighting and they say you can consider yourself lucky if you come across one. 

In addition to rattle snake warning signs there were also bear warning signs. Made sense, with the name of the park being Killbear, that there would be bears to watch out for. Apparently they are more common down at the opposite end from where our site would be. They frequent the Lighthouse Point section of the campground. 

One of the first things we noticed when we got out of the car was that all around our site was a carpet of tiny baby maple trees. There were so many of them! 

Our site was somewhat sloped but there was plenty of flat space.

​ We set up our tent at the top of the slope. It felt like we were in a castle on the hillside. 

I had noticed last year that my tent leaked pretty badly when it rained so I brought with me a can of spray on waterproofing. Once the tent was up I went about spraying it with this stuff. I was horrible at it. I am sure I used way more than I needed in some spots and not enough in others. But I focused on the trouble areas and crossed my fingers that it would do the trick. They have been calling for a cold and wet summer here in Ontario this year. 

Across the road from our site we noticed an unmarked path leading into the woods. We were curious about it, so after setting up our site, we decided to follow it to see where it went. 

To our pleasant surprise we wound up on the shores of Georgian Bay.

At one side we had our own private, tiny little beach. This was nice because the public beach was way over on the other side of the park. It looked like the water very quickly dropped off into deeper waters. 

It had been raining earlier in the day. It was pretty windy now  but wasn't raining anymore. 

There was a nice view on both sides of us.. We had thought about going in for a swim but decided that it was too cold. Besides, it was almost sunset and we hadn't eaten dinner yet. 

We picked up a couple of sticks for cooking hot dogs with and headed back to the campsite. Our site is pretty quiet and fairly private but this could be partly because there was no one on the site directly across from us. The dining tent would shield us from the view of neighbours somewhat if some did decide to camp across from us. 

It was a little chilly but the sun was shining through the tree tops and as the sun set the skies were clear and the stars started to shine. It was going to be a beautiful evening.

We started a campfire and cooked hotdogs and had some hot chocolate. Down the road we heard a young boy shout "Look! A raccoon!" But we never saw it. 

We discovered that our site might be a bit too close to the comfort station. The comfort station was directly behind us through a little path and across the road.  It's nice if you have kids maybe, but we could hear the humming of the power going to the building and we could see the glow of the pop vending machine outside it's door. Plus the roaring noise of the hand dryer was extremely loud. Luckily it was not as bad as the humming from the one at Mikisew park and the wind drowned out most of the noise. We were able to tune out the humming for the most part and as the evening wore on there were fewer and fewer people using the hand dryer until finally we didn't hear it any more.  We sat and talked around the fire until bed time. It was a good start to the first day, but we were looking forward to exploring this campground more tomorrow.