Gordon's Park

It had been really cold during the night. A complete 180 from the extreme heat we had been having the past few days previous.  I woke up at about 8:30 a.m. and the sky was grey. I almost wished that we didn't have to leave today, despite the grey sky. But, we had to meet up with our friends at another park called "Gordon's Park" (also known as Manitoulin Eco Park) today.

My goal was to do a hike at Misery Bay Provincial Park. However, Misery Bay is a day use only park and it is pretty far away from other provincial parks (2 - 3 hours away). It isn't easy to camp at one provincial park, travel over 2 hours, hike, and then travel over 2 hours back again. So, I opted for a better plan. I did some research online to find a closer campground that was interesting. I came up with Gordon's Park where they have the option to sleep in bunkies, tipis, a yurt (bell tent), and it has a dark sky preserve.  Gordon's Park is not a provincial park, but the idea of sleeping in a tipi intrigued me. So I called up some friends and we planned to stay 2 nights in a tipi.  Gordon's Park is still over an hour away from Misery Bay, but it is much closer than the provincial parks are. 

We got packed up and ready to go. As we were tearing down the tent, I noticed an interesting orb weaver spider curled up and blending in with some dead pine needles on a tree. 

We left Fairbank Park at about 10:30 a.m. and stopped for breakfast at a restaurant along the way.  We  arrived at Gordon's Park at about 2 p.m. where we met my sister, Anika, my brother-in-law, Dean, and our friend, Julie.  My brother, Carsten, and sister-in-law, Penny, would be joining us later in the evening. 

When you arrive, the place looks like someone's house at  first glance. But then you walk down behind the house to where the office is located.

Inside the office is a lovely little store where you can buy crafts, souvenirs, and things like that.

The decor in the shop/office had a woodsy feel to it. I thought it was quite nice and unique. The staff was ok, but did not feel overly warm and welcoming.  
We checked in and then went back out to join our friends. 

The rest  of the gang were busy checking out the playground near by.  It was a nice little playground under the full shade of the trees. From where I stood I could see that there was a toddler slide, a bunch of toys, and a teeter totter.

There was also a set of tire swings and a second slide for older kids. This playground was well stocked with everything a kid could want.  Apparently the mini-putt course was down there too.

But I didn't have time to go take a close look at the playground. I was too busy going to find our site.  We actually booked two sites.  We were on site 7 and site 9.  

Both sites had a tipi on it. There is only room for 4 people per tipi, so we split up into two groups. We were pretty excited to have the opportunity to sleep in a tipi. 

But, when we got to our sites and saw the tipis our excitement turned to disappointment.  

The door had a black plastic garbage bag hanging from it in order to keep out the rain and moisture. The tipis looked like they had been there a long time and were starting to fall apart.  You had to literally crawl on your hands and knees to get inside. 

This is the picture of the tipi that was on their website at the time we had booked our trip. 

This is what the tipis were actually like inside. Nothing like the picture at all. 

The picture on the website made the tipis look light and airy and comfortable. Instead, they were dark and dreary. And worst of all was the smell. They smelled musty like a wet basement. They did have vinyl covered foam mattresses, like the website said, but there was not a lot of room for them. 

It was dark enough inside that a lantern was needed. But they did provide the lantern. 

I am pretty sure that the picture they had on their website was that of the inside of the Bell Tent (Yurt) and not a tipi. In fact, when I went and looked at their website now, some weeks after our trip, the old picture has been taken down and a new one (below) is in it's place that specifically says it's the Bell tent.  If we had known in advance, we would have booked the Bell Tent instead.

Rod explained to us that a real tipi is much larger than these and that you would never have to crawl on your hands and knees to get into one. He was not impressed with them and he decided that he would rather sleep in the big red tent than in the tipi. Luckily we had the tent with us from the previous night at Fairbank Park. So, we set that up and he settled in there. I wanted to say that I had experienced at least one night in a tipi so, I  opted to spend the night in the tipi. 

Other than the state of the tipis, the rest of the park was actually pretty nice. I think that if I were to come again, I would either choose to stay in the Dark Sky Preserve or the Bell Tent though.  Our site was furnished with 4 Adirondack chairs, a very nice picnic table, a little wooden table that you could use to put a water jug or lantern or something on, and a solar light hanging in the tree. 

There are also several bunkies to choose from for accommodations. However, these bunkies are very small inside. Too small.

​Each one is painted with beautiful murals on the outside. One had the Northern Lights on the side. 

Another had the Milky Way with the phases of the moon on the outside. 

The one that we peeked into had cute little animal tracks painted on the floor.

On the left was one double bed. 

On the right were two bunks. And that was it. There was no room for anything else. No kitchen, no place to sit. Barely any room for luggage. We actually met the family that was staying in this bunkie. They had put up a tarp outside between some trees so that they had a sheltered place to sit. A dining tent would have been ideal on this site. 

While we were waiting for Carsten and Penny to arrive, we decided to explore the park. The best way to do this was to walk one of the hiking trails. 

The trail we were on was marked with wooden signs in the shape of a hand pointing the way. I thought these were kinda neat.

The trail also provided us with a bit of humour.

We crossed over a wooden bridge and enjoyed a relaxing walk through some beautiful wooded areas. 

Eventually the trail led us to an open space with a pond in the middle of it. 

In the pond were frogs and minnows.

Near the pond was the Bell Tent. 

We took a quick peek inside. It looked more like the picture that was on their website.  This is what we had expected the tipis to be like. 

There were pretty Chickory flowers growing around the area.

And purple thistles were also in bloom.

As we headed back to our campsite, we noticed more and more interesting things around the park. Everywhere we went there was something new to see that we hadn't noticed before.  There were educational information spots all over the place. 

We had fun at the Fossil Rock trying to find as many fossils as we could.

We did find some, but I am sure there were many more that we didn't identify.  So many fossils all on one rock!

There was one place where  pulley system was rigged up. We weren't sure what it was for but we think it was another educational spot where kids could see how you could lift rocks with the pulley and cranks. 

There were some interesting looking rocks with a letter from the University of Waterloo saying that the boulders were 2 billion years old and were brought here with the glacier that came through here about
15000 years ago. 

The whole park was filled with interesting signs. I thought the sign for the butterfly garden was pretty.

Each site had a different wooden number sign. Each sign had a little saying on it. Some were funny and some were cute. 

The washrooms near our site were a set of outhouses. They were well built and extremely clean. There weren't even any spiderwebs in them. They had lights attached to the roof that you could turn on when it was dark out. I was quite impressed with how well kept these bathrooms were. 
However, they were still outhouses none the less and they did smell.  (But we discovered the next day that there were also flush toilets near by!)

Another interesting thing about the park was that they had a huge vat of potable water on site. I had never seen a container like this for water before. 

It started to get windy with a little bit of rain. But not enough rain that we couldn't start a fire and cook supper.
The fire pits are made of round metal but there were no grates on top.
​ 
It was around that time that Carsten and Penny came to join us. 

We all sat around the fire and talked until it was time for us to go to bed. It was a good day, but we were looking forward to an even better day tomorrow. For now, it was time to see what it was like to sleep in a tipi.