Last weekend we had a pretty great road trip. We drove from Toronto to the Kawarthas and then on to Bon Echo Provincial Park. It was pretty awesome, despite the cold.
Our first stop was the family cottage at Head Lake – lots of fun putting in the dock in the cold, wind and rain! Actually it was okay – a nice opportunity to see my family. The rest of the time was spent enjoying a beer, eating barbecue, and in the early evening, roasting marshmallows by the fire.
On Sunday we drove east from the northern Kawartha Lakes to Bon Echo, one of Ontario’s most famous Provincial Parks. The park is home to a 100 metre+ cliff, and “pictographs,” ancient rock paintings made by aboriginal people. There were few visitors, and we almost had the place to ourselves. Parks staff were cleaning up leaves and tree branches, sweeping and painting, and getting ready for the busy season. Somehow we managed to miss catching the last ride across the “narrows” of Mazinaw Lake to reach the beginning of the cliff hike trail – but we intend to do it on another trip. The Victoria Day weekend was so cool that we weren’t too keen on a canoe rental ( a southerly wind would have been plenty chilly and made it difficult to access the pictographs at the cliff bottom). On the way back to the cottage we enjoyed some twisting, rolling highway driving through the scrubby southeastern tip of the Canadian Shield. About 15 minutes east of Peterborough we had a nice surprise by finding “Kawartha Country Wines,” where we stopped to sample some delicious fruit wines. On Monday morning our drive back to the city was surprisingly quick. We beat out all the cottage-country crowds by leaving mid-morning.
The photos at left, from the top: looking down the beach toward the gift shop and office area, the opposite view of the northern section of cliff (the lookout is a bit higher and further south, above the “narrows” between Upper and Lower Mazinaw Lake), sun splashes the cliff – if you open the larger version you can see a tiny white boat at the bottom, and a canoe floats along the cliff base past the pictographs. Incredible sights! Can’t wait to head back!
