The Adventure Begins, Awenda Provincial Park

Now that you have loaded up the car, went to Canadian Tire to acquire the necessities of roughing it and spent 14 hours downloading all of your favorite tunes onto a cd it is time to hit the road. But to where? Darn forgot that part.

I would like to start or journey by talking about the park my son and I have been going to every summer for the last six years or so.  Awenda Provincial Park.  Awenda is a gem of a spot and the best part is no one seems to know about it so you can always get a camp site. The park is situated just outside of Midland/Penetenquishine on Georgian Bay. Just a quick trip from the GTA and totally worth the gas money.

Awenda boasts over 300 hectares of Georgian Bay awesomeness. There are four (YES FOUR) beaches with one specifically being pet friendly. The beaches are all connected by the aptly named beach trail and there is one for everyone’s wish list.

The first beach is very kid friendly, the water is shallow and sandy and there is a huge rock the kids can jump off of.

The second beach is dog friendly, a little less manicured and your little Fido or Fidette can romp around off leash to his or her heart’s content.

The third beach is super sandy, a little deeper and situated in a small cove that is usually dotted with sailboats….ahhh the GTAribean. Just simply awesome.

The third beach is at the end of the trail and by far the largest yet has the fewest people on it. Hey not everyone can walk two kilometres to the beach, but those who do will be richly rewarded.

The park boasts 33 kilometres of trails and several more if you take a rock walk around the shoreline.  It is one of our favorite things to do at the park. Several years ago we found an old piece of a ship washed up on shore from a logging boat that sank back in 1906. Since then we have been hooked on exploration and just last year my son found a 560 million year old sea cucumber fossil. Now that is AWESOME!

“How the heck did we know it was a 560 million year old sea cucumber fossil?” Excellent question, and the answer leads me to my next point.

The park staff host daily info activities, we call these programs camping school and the staff are just fantastic. We get to learn about spiders, soap stone carving, mushrooms and anything else they can dream up. The programs are fun, entertaining and enlightening.

Awenda Provincial Park, Go have some fun!

This article is the third in a series by author Brian Duff entitled “In A Different Camp”