I got out of the tent around 9:30 a.m. but Carsten and Penny weren't up yet. So I decided to go down to the main beach to have a look around. 

 The beach was empty and quiet at that time of day despite the hot weather. But the beach was a fairly nice one with plenty of sand and picnic tables to sit at. 

It even had a volley ball net for anyone wo might want to play beach volley ball.
​​Unfortunately there were a couple of deer flies flying around and being generally pesky. 

I looked down on the ground and found a dragonfly with crumpled wings.I crouched down to pick it up. As I did another dragonfly swooped in and started chasing after the deer flies that were buzzing around my head. It's too bad I couldn't have my own personal fly catcher flying around me all summer long.

At first I thought the dragonfly with the crumpled wings might be a new one emerging and it's wings hadn't fully unraveled yet. However, after watching it for a while and after closer inspection I realized that the wings were torn. This meant that there was nothing more I could do for him. So I left him on a picnic table out of the direct hot sun and wished him luck.

I saw a red breasted nuthatch in the tree above the table and I hoped that the dragonfly would not be noticed by him. It didn't notice and it flew away. 

After awhile I started to head back to camp. On the way back I ran into my brother who had just left the comfort station. We decided to explore some of the other sites together. Number 14 and 64 were pretty nice sites. 

One site that was near the comfort station had a picnic table with a metal addition on one end. At first we weren't sure what it was for but then we figured out that it was for wheel chair accessibility. 

Back at our own campsite we had breakfast and then just sat and relaxed for awhile. We had a number of ants on the site and we expected them to be foraging for their breakfast, but when we saw a huge ant carrying something even larger we had to look twice. Turns out it was not an ant after all, It was a wasp carrying off it's breakfast of a large caterpillar of some sort. 

After lunch, Penny and I took a quick trip down the road to the Madawaska Art Shop.

There were many nice things there. There were multiple  rooms filled with clothing, art and gifts.

There were paintings on rocks and things made of wood. 

I bought a bar of glow in the dark soap just for the fun of it. It really does glow in the dark! 

Penny and I both bought a little leather pouch. You pull the string shut and then push the snap button closed. We thought it would be great for things like when you are going out dancing and don't want to leave your wallet unguarded at the table. Now you can bring your personal items and money easily onto the dance floor with you. I also thought it would be great for carrying my pocket watch with me on backpacking trips. 

I also bought a small piece of fudge. It was very good! 

When we got back to camp, Carsten showed us a bug that he had discovered. It was quite tiny; about the size of an ant. It was covered in white spikes. It was a Mealybug Destroyer Larvae.

Carsten and I decided to hike the Lookout Trail. Penny stayed behind to relax and have some alone time. 

The trail is two loops. The Lookout Trail hooks up to a second loop which is the Cabin Trail. 

It was probably good that we only did the one loop. The mosquitoes were pretty bad and the first part of this trail was mostly uphill. I guess that only makes sense if you are going up to a lookout. 

But we were happy to find a bench waiting for us once we did get to the top of the lookout. 

It wasn't a traditional lookout in that there was no tower structure to climb in order to see the view. There was only the bench. But the view was still pretty nice from where we sat.

When we were done resting we headed down the other side of the loop and down the hill. It was much easier going down the hill than it was going up. But the bugs were no less nasty to us. 

Near the end of the trail the path opened up to a marshy area. No wonder the mosquitoes were so bad here. Well, that and it was still very much mosquito season. 

Not long past the marsh was a path through the ferns that led back out to the road and the end of the trail. 

Since there are so many forest fires all over Ontario (it's been a pretty bad year for fires this year) and since there hasn't been much rain lately, they had implemented a fire restriction in the park. You could only have a fire from 7p.m. to 11 p.m.  So we waited until 7 p.m. to have our supper and we cooked ourselves up some hot dogs. 

While we ate a little red squirrel came to check us out and see what we were doing. 

We were also visited by a blue jay. 

I was happy to be able to get a fairly clear picture of the blue jay since I had been trying to get a good picture of one for the past few years. 

We went into the dining tent and played board games for the rest of the evening. Out on the lake we heard a very loud loon. It was flapping its wings and making a scene. I think it was because a boat was getting a little bit too close to it. 
  

​At about 11 pm we went to bed.  It was a cooler night. I would have liked to have slept with just the screen door open tonight but decided against it. Tomorrow we are headed to Arrowhead Park. 

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. 
​

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! 

The last time we were at Bonnechere Caves I was about 8 or 9 years old. I don't remember much. Just that it was cool inside and I remember squeezing through a passage way. So I was excited to be going again with my brother, Carsten, and his girlfriend, Penny. 

We left Driftwood Park at about 12:30 and got to the Bonnechere Caves around 2:30, but we had about a half hour stop along the way because we stopped at a nice little restaurant in the town of Cobden.  It was an extremely hot day and my air conditioning wasn't working in the car and my phone started to over heat just sitting on the seat of the car. So we had decided to stop to cool off a bit. 
   The Bonnechere Caves are located in Eganville, Ontario on Fourth Chute Road. This is to the East of Algonquin Park.  

We got there about 10 minutes early so we had time to look around a bit and take pictures at the "Face-In-A-Hole" display of their logo. 

The tour began under a little shelter and featured a talk on fossils.

They had some larger fossils out on display and they brought out some smaller ones and passed them around during the presentation.

After the presentation we headed off, single file, down the trail towards the caves.

As we walked, we went past the river and saw the way the water had carved its way through the stone over the course of millions of years. 

And we saw where the river enters the cave system at multiple points. But none of these entrances were the ones we were entering. 

You could tell where we were going to enter by the large sign above it saying "Bonnechere Caves" 

Inside the caves it was nice and cool. We were grateful for the reprieve from the hot sun we had been driving in for the past couple hours. It is 13 degrees inside the caves all year round; even in the wintertime. 

Although the cave passageways seemed narrow, there was actually enough room for two or three people to stand shoulder to shoulder in most places inside. There is one section that does get fairly narrow and the head room is low. We had the option to go through that section if we wanted to. Those that didn't want to go through the small area stayed behind and waited for the rest of us to return.  the lady in front of me and Penny was just about to go inside that section but at the last second she got claustrophobic and changed her mind and we had to back up a bit to let her get out. 

Above our heads the roof of the cave was oddly shaped and stalactites were forming. It takes about 100 years for a stalactite to grow only one inch. So these stalactites have been forming for hundreds of years. 

During the spring and summer the water is pumped out of this part of the cave system and people are able to walk inside on the walk ways that are set up. For the winter the walkways are disassembled and the water is allowed to flow back into the caves again so that the frost doesn't get in and cause the cave to collapse and create sink holes. It takes 5 days for the caves to fill back up with water and when it does it doesn't go all the way to the roof in most places. 

Once you get into the biggest room in the cave, the tour guide tells you about how the original explorer had been in the cave while the water was still in it and had lost his flashlight. The guide then turns off all the lights in the cave so that you can experience for yourself just how dark it would have been for him with no lights. (She warns you that she is going to do this). You pretty much can't see your hand in front of your face. 

Near the end of the tour you can see where a part of the cave had collapsed many years before the tours ever began. She assured us that the cave was perfectly safe to be in while on the tour. 

Just as we went inside the cave single file, so we went out of the cave single file. 

It was neat to turn around and watch the others come out of the cave behind you. If you didn't know the cave was there it would be like watching them walk out of a wall. 

The tour guide had suggested that once we left the cave we might like to walk up to see the sink hole from the outside of the cave. She said it was only about a 15 minute walk. So we decided to check it out. 

Turns out the sink hole was only about 2 minutes away, and not the 15 minutes that she said it was. Also, the sink hole was not so easy to see through the trees. 

Our last stop was the gift shop. Inside were T-shirts, ice-cream and drinks. You could also look at displays of fossils, including the largest one they ever found at the caves. There were also photos on the wall of 3 different weddings that have taken place inside the caves over the years. 

With souvenirs in hand, we headed to our cars and started off for our next destination. We were going to go camping at Lake St. Peter Provincial Park.