Bruce Peninsula

Hello again! I did promise a post about Bruce Peninsula, so here you go!

A couple of months ago, Ashley and I were trying to find a place to go for a best friends trip before I left for the summer. We went to the place everyone goes to, Pinterest. Right? While we were there we saw all these beautiful pictures for a place called Bruce Peninsula, especially the Grotto. So of course, we clicked on the links and couldn’t really find much to tell us about this gorgeous place, except that it is in Ontario, Canada. We found out that most of the places that we had seen on Pinterest were close to the National Park so we figured why not camp there? I got onto the NationalPark website and found us a site, which we booked and then we waited. There was really nothing else that we could find to do near the park, lots of hiking but that’s about it.

The day finally came. We drove the 6 hours to Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada. The pictures of course didn’t do it justice. We found our campsite and started setting up our tent and tarp shelter, a definite must, the mosquitoes were biting us like crazy! But we finally made it with some help of deet and homemade bug spray with essential oils, so we headed into town to get some healthy snacks. Tobermory, a very cute, touristy town at the end of the peninsula, had the one grocery store, Foodland, which we went to everyday. Back at the campsite, we made dinner and tried to start a fire, it was a definite fail. Good thing we had the gas grill with us. After cleaning everything up we decided to go on a walk to Cypress Lake. The lake ended up being extremely close to us, which would help explain all the mosquitoes, that and the little pools of water by the road… We made our way back to our campsite and sat under the stars for a little bit before hitting the hay. It had been a long day.

Day 1 The real beginning of our adventure! After cleaning up our mess of breakfast dishes we headed out to hike to the Grotto. We took the Marr Lake trail, which starts at the National Park and goes through Boulder Beach. 

This beach is entirely covered with rocks. I know, who would’ve guessed from the name? 

These rocks are at least the size of your head and the spiders we saw scurrying under the rocks were little Shelobs! And there were a lot of them. We survived Boulder Beach and made it to the Grotto. So the map looks like this trail will take you a while to walk, but really it was only about 45 minutes from our campsite, giving time to walk carefully on the boulders. The Grotto was an extremely popular place, lots of high school kids climbing down into it. Eddie even enjoyed it. 

 There is another trail from our campground to the Grotto, so we took that back to our campsite, this trail was only about 30 minutes and no boulders hiding Shelob. At the Grotto there is even a bathroom. Quite nice actually, no smell due to the wood shavings they tell you to put in the hole. 

It was a very easy trail and nicely groomed it seemed, not really anything to trip over, unless you’re like me and trip over your own feet. There are also benches for those who like to take a break and enjoy the scenery, or like to take a little breather along the way. 

Back at the site we decided to go back into town to explore a little bit and of course go to our favorite store, Foodland! 

We found the BigTub Lighthouse, 

Mermaid Cove, and Singing Sands Beach. Singing Sands is very nice and just a couple of miles down the road from the National Park, also the only beach with actual sand that is close to town.

Day 2 We decided to hike part of the Bruce Trail, this trail goes from Tobermory all the way down to Niagara Falls, and takes a couple of months to hike the entire thing. It was cool to be able to say that we hiked on the Bruce Trail. 

Then we went on to the Burnt Point Loop. This one was pretty rough, lots of roots and rocks, ups and downs. It was all in the forest, so it was pretty shady and some of the rocks were wet and slippery. We did see some snakes, two to be exact and I almost stepped on them both. Thankfully, they weren’t rattlesnakes. We made it back to the visitor centre at the trailhead and climbed the lookout tower, you can see the water and the town, it was pretty cool. I think we were supposed to buy a pass to be able to hike on the trail because the park was different from the one we were staying at, but nobody said anything to us about it, only a $5 pass anyway. 

The next day we were planning on taking a ferry ride to Manitoulin Island, so we thought we should go buy our tickets. At the ticket office we found out that they only make two trips a day in the spring except on Fridays, we wanted to go on a Sunday. So that was not doable, we had wanted to go hiking on the island, and the hiking place was at least an hour and a half from the ferry docks and it was also a 7 mile hike, the Cup and Saucer Trail. So there was no way we were going to be able to drive there, hike, and drive back before the ferry left for the day. Sadly, we had to find something else to do that day. There are quite a few boat tours in Tobermory so we decided to check them out. The one we settled on was a glass bottom boat tour to see a couple of the many shipwrecks and then head out to Flowerpot Island for the day to hike. With the next day all settled we got some ice cream at the sweet shop and chilled in our hammocks for a bit back at the site. 

 We made some coffee after dinner and took it to Singing Sands Beach. Then had a relaxing time sitting on our camp chairs with our feet soaking in the water. 

Back at our site we made some dessert, banana boats, over the fire 

and decided it was too early to go to bed. We hadn’t really explored the other two campgrounds in the National Park so we drove around them. I think we decided that our campground was the best out of the three, even with the mosquitoes, which actually hadn’t been as bad since that first night. The site that we had was a nice size and had a great location to the beach, the bathroom, the water pump, and the trails. We noticed a lot of tents, more than campers or RV’s, which is probably because there was no electricity at any of the sites.

Day 3 Our last full day in the peninsula, we got coffee in town and made it to the ferry just in time to take us to Flowerpot Island, Bruce Anchor Cruises. On the way to the island we were able to see a couple of shipwrecks in one of the harbors, not through the glass bottom, because there were so many people on the boat, but we could see just fine off the side of the boat. It was so cool! The island was great too.   

Both of the flowerpots while we were on the boat. 

These chairs were my favorite. How cute are they? I love seeing them just sitting here waiting for people to sit in them. We hiked to both flowerpots and then saw one of the many caves on the island, and made it to the lighthouse station. The trails before the station were very nice and clear, usually covered in gravel or just smooth. But after the station the trail became a little bit more rugged. Kind of like the Burnt Point Loop that we had hiked the day before. Thankfully, we did survive, even though we saw about five snakes on the trail. 

We made it back to the dock early so we sat on another dock and ate our lunch before we had to leave on the ferry again.  Eddie found the dock pretty relaxing too. 

Once back in Tobermory, we went back to the coffee shop, the maple coffee was so good! The visitor centre and the library in town have wifi, so if you don't have an international cell phone plan, libraries are a great place to get wifi and catch up on news from back home. Then we decided we should probably get some gifts for the people back home. There is the sweetshop, Foodland of course, and the bookshop. All that shopping made us hungry and we wanted to try one of the many restaurants in town. The one that caught our eye was the Crowsnest Pub, there was a balcony that we could sit on and watch the people going about their lives.

Back at the site we packed up most of our things and decided to hike to the Grotto to watch the sunset. Turns out that was not a great time to go to the Grotto. I don’t know what it was but the biting flies were ridiculous. We were bit so many times while we were at the Grotto, we climbed as fast as possible down into it, took a couple of pictures and booked it back out of there. Sadly, we weren’t able to see the sunset from there because we left so quickly, but we made it back to the campsite in time to find another place to go and watch it. 

 So we drove down Dorcas Bay Rd., which is where Singing Sands Beach is, and kept going. We found a little road that ended at the water with houses on either side of us and decided to watch from there. I think we waited about an hour for the sun to actually set, we were both kind of nervous that the man we saw at his house was going to come and tell us to leave, that we were on private property, but nobody did. It was definitely worth the wait though. What a beautiful sunset!! God is good!