Killarney, Ontario

August 11, 2024

Our next destination in Killarney, Ontario was truly a place to "get away from it all". An hour and half's drive from the nearest gas station and grocery store, Killarney is situated on the beautiful Georgian Bay of Lake Huron.

Technically, you can buy a few very expensive groceries at the town's general store, and you can also put $8/gallon gas into your car at the store's boat dock, but generally, residents usually make the drive into the closest town of Sudbury (over 100 km away) for such necessities. Who would live here, you might ask? The answer is mostly retirees and those who cater to the wealthy boaters (cruisers on the Great Loop Route) that make a stop here as well as wealthy corporations who host corporate retreats at the exclusive Killarney Mountain Lodge. There's also a fair amount of tourist traffic from the popular Killarney Provincial Park a few kilometers away.

We stayed at a family-owned campground right in town and right on the shores of Georgian Bay. Our campsite took a little finagling to get into, due to the unique rocky terrain and mischievously placed trees on our site, but the view was amazing! One of our neighbors came over with a can of beer to watch us back in and to offer moral support. Even the owner came by to watch, as she doubted we would be able to get into the site.

Quaint "mom and pop" campground

It was a little challenging negotiating the trees and large rocks embedded in the landscape, but we made it in to the campsite eventually

What a view from our campsite!

You know you are far from normal civilization when you have visitors like this

Later that evening, some clouds prevented a spectacular sunset, but the scene was still photogenic

The next day, we walked into town with a few objectives in mind: get some cash to pay for our campsite (this place is cash only), check out places to do laundry, see where we could get gas, find out if the only church in town still offered Mass times (they had no website or phone number listed), and enjoy a walk around town and the lake shore.

The General Store was the place for many of these objectives, and we got cash at their ATM and checked out the gas price and laundry facilities they had. We decided that we didn't need gas enough to pay $8/gallon, and their "laundromat" was expensive and scary. A marina in town also had laundry, but it wasn't great either, and we figured we could put off laundry for another week. The church had a sign posted that they had one weekend Mass on Sundays at 1:30pm, so that was a plus.

After the very short walk around town and the marina, we found a trail to a lighthouse that was very enjoyable.

Sportsman's Resort and Marina

Pitfield's General Store--your one stop shop (really your only choice) for pretty much everything

The grounds of the Killarney Mountain Lodge and Conference Center

Interesting dining area with fancy fireplace/stove/oven on the rocks

The property has a wide variety of lodging and conference options, many of which are housed in log buildings

The big red rocks were ubiquitous

The Big Dipper, the world's largest canoe paddle, built for Killarney's bicentennial in 2020

At the beginning of the trail to the lighthouse

Our destination was the lighthouse at the point in the upper right portion of this photo. It turned out to be farther away than it first appeared. 😉

We had mostly abandoned the official trail at this point, and opted to walk along the rocks

What, us take the bailout route? Not us!

It's getting closer...

...particularly when viewed through a telephoto lens 😉

At last we are almost there!

We were amused to find the lighthouse "plugged in"

The sign has suffered the wrath of time and weather, but it reads in both English and French, "Killarney Lightstation" (along with a bunch of graffiti)

We were a bit tired after reaching the lighthouse, and the sun was beating down on us, so we opted to take the "bailout" way back to town via a fairly uninteresting gravel road. (But taking this route made our hike into a loop which is always the best kind of hike. 🙂)

That evening, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset from our deck as the people in canoes, kayaks, and paddle boards made their way back to camp.

The next day brought more beautiful weather, and we lost track of time just sitting on the deck enjoying the view until mid-afternoon. We finally motivated ourselves to take a walk around the campground to explore the tent section. It turned out to be a fun and more adventurous outing than we expected. We discovered a boat dock and a scenic water access that wasn't shown on the campground map (located near the "soft do not drive here" section on the map--a place that looks like people drive there anyway to put their boats in 😲). We also found remnants of trails and got the impression that perhaps this property had been more developed at some point in the past.

The quaint map drawn up by the campground owners--more of an allegory than a strict representation of reality (We were in site 9, by the way)

We encountered a biblical number of these northern leopard frogs on the campground "road"

The boat dock was pretty rickety, and it felt like it could give way at any moment

We noticed lots of dead ash trees on the property

Julie enjoyed some relaxation time on the rocks while Rick wandered off in search of a photosphere

Our nice weather continued into Thursday, and we decided to take the trail that leads north from the lighthouse we hiked to the previous day. This time, we decided to drive to the lighthouse rather than walk. We weren't expecting vastly different scenery, but it was more unique than we expected.

No signage for this "unofficial" trail

The trail was quite rocky in parts

The first part of the trail passed by this interesting lake (Lighthouse Lake)

This trail continued to dish up a little bit of everything. When we got to the end of the lake, we had to traverse some quite swampy / buggy sections to get back to the Georgian Bay coast. From this point on, the trail whereabouts became anybody's guess. Every so often, a hopeful suggestion of the trail was offered by a smattering of trail tags and orange flags on trees, if you were lucky enough to notice them. Several sections would have been quite hard (almost impossible) to follow without the use of the GPS map.

This pond would empty into Georgian Bay (in the background), if it weren't for a strategically placed beaver dam

Pond on the left, Georgian Bay on the right

A very effective beaver dam

Finding the trail was sometimes challenging as we had to do a treasure hunt for each orange trail marker

There were several spots where we had to do a bit of rock scrambling

Another lake created by a beaver dam. This one had at least 4 large beaver lodges on it!

On Friday, the relentless wind began. The morning began sunny and with a pleasant breeze, but as the day drew on, the breeze morphed into a full-blown gale such that it was no longer comfortable to sit outside. We eventually even closed our windows to stop the wind tunnel from assaulting the inside of the camper. At nightfall, the wind only intensified. The next day did not offer any relief, and was compounded by periods of rain. We awoke on Sunday morning to much of the same, except that the rain became more consistent and the temperatures were considerably colder (high of about 60 that day). And the wind continued to blow hard. Whenever we opened the door, we had to hold on tight so that it didn't get away and slam against the camper wall. We were amazed at how long this went on. Fortunately, we didn't sustain any damage, but we were getting a little tired of it all.

The beginning of the end of the nice weather

A temporary break in the clouds

Wind notwithstanding, we really enjoyed our stay in Killarney. Julie had originally booked this location because of its close proximity to Killarney Provincial Park, as the campsites at the provincial park were notoriously difficult to book and there were only a small number of sites that would have been appropriate for our size trailer anyway. We had every intention to go to the provincial park, but you now have to obtain a permit online ($18/car) which only gives you access to one particular part of the park. It seemed too complicated to figure out where we wanted to go and when. So, when we found such great scenery here in Killarney for free, we just never made the effort to go to the provincial park.

On Sunday night (our last night), the wind finally subsided, and the skies began to clear.

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