My first camping trip of 2025!
I’d never been to MacGregor Point before but have been working on a scratch off map of all of the Ontario Provincial Parks so when my friends suggested it I was 100% down.
Since we booked late we couldn’t get a weekend site, but honestly, camping from Thursday to Saturday was so perfect! We didn’t have any traffic on the way there (AMAZING!!!) and we really lucked out with the weather, sunny Thursday and Friday, a little rain overnight on Friday but I always air my camping supplies out after a trip so I don’t really mind packing up a wet tent! The weather was calling for a big thunderstorm the Saturday night so my friends and I really think our last minute plan worked out for the best.
We stayed in the Nippising Campground at site 171 ($98.57 for the two nights) and it was pretty private and close to a real comfort station (flush toilets not vault!) and only ~10 minute walk to the beach! The neck of the site could be fully blocked off by parking the car there and you could only really see your neighbors through the trees if you were really looking for them. MacGregor definitely isn’t the quietest campground I’ve ever stayed at but I always bring earplugs as campsite neighbors can be so varied and I looooovvvveeee a good tent sleep.
Thursday
My two friends that I went with picked me up around 11am, they were coming from outside Guelph and luckily Guelph was en route to the park! We played some car tetris getting everything packed then popped to the grocery store nearby to get our meals for our trip.
| Thursday | Friday | Saturday | |
| Breakfast | – | Overnight oats | Overnight oats |
| Lunch | In town | Rip + dip | In town |
| Dinner | Burgers | Naan pizza | – |
| Snack 1 | Muffins | Muffins | – |
| Snack 2 | Chips & dip | Savory s’mores | – |
| Fire snack! | S’mores | S’mores | – |
This meal plan + ice cost ~$130 total for the three of us!
Then we hit the road officially on our way to Port Elgin!
Before heading into the campground we stopped at the main beach in Port Elgin to grab lunch at the Beachside Cafe. I didn’t take a picture of the actual cafe, it was SUPER busy but it is a cute little blue siding building basically on the beach. It’s a pickup counter with a couple of tables out front to eat at.
All three of us ordered chicken fingers and fries #basic and they hit the spot! I also ordered an iced coffee as I needed a pick-me-up before we go set up our site and it was yummy with their butter pecan syrup in it! I think Kasia made the right move getting a slushie though as that was tastier than the coffee!
Then we headed to the campground! Liz was the tent provider for this trip and I’d never used a Coleman brand tent before but it was great, especially with its ~DarkRoom Technology~ it was actually SO dark when all the windows were zipped I was impressed.
We then spent the rest of the day at the main sandy beach. We read our books and swam and just relaxed! This was one of the most chill camping trips I’ve been on, it was perfect for how busy PhD life has been!
The beginning of the beach, right where you get into the water and ~10 meters into the lake does feel YUCKY on your feet though. We learned later at the Visitor Center at the campground that the yucky muck is calcium carbonate from limestone wearing away (and likely some algae) but it was so squishy under our feet we were a ~little dramatic~ getting in and out of the lake haha. After getting past that though the water is very clear and there is a mix of sand and large rocks in the sandbar, I could stand in the whole little bay area we were in.
When we got hungry we headed back to the campsite for dinner; we made burgers and tried savory s’mores as well! We were all shocked at how yummy the roasted baby bells were, we used ritz crackers to sandwich them, yum!
We ended the night reading around the campfire. I was reading The Cursed by Harper L. Woods, it is the second book in her Coven of Bones series (the third book doesn’t come out until October!! UGH!).
Friday
Friday was a big walking trail day for us, MacGregor is a pretty flat park so I wouldn’t necessarily call them a hike, more of a forest walk.
We started from the beach on Old Shore Road Trail, then broke off to the Huron Fringe Trail, had a swim and lunch break then headed to the Tower Trail.
This park map is a screenshot from the Ontario Parks website, I figured it would be clearer than me photographing my physical park map!
Old Shore Road Trail is a boardwalk near the beach but still in the woods enough for a little sun protection which was nice. The breeze from the water also kept the mosquitos away which was fantastic as the bugs were BRUTAL on this trip!
We then broke off onto the Huron Fringe Trail which took us through the Visitor Center, Ash Swamp and Turtle Pond. I know that turtle is literally in the name but I was still SO EXCITED to see so many painted turtles in the pond!! We watched them swim around for quite a while!
We also saw Gregor the spotted turtle in the Visitor Center and he turns 50 years old this August! The park even put supplies out for everyone to make him birthday cards, it was super cute!
Once we finished that little trail we went for a swim at the rockier part of the beach hoping for less of the muck (no luck, still very squishy!), before going back to the site for some lunch and reading before our next hike!
Next up was the Tower Trail! This was such a neat trail with both an observation tower and a bird blind to check out but the bugs were eating us alive… We used an entire can of bug spray between the three of us on this 2 night 3 day camping trip. We were so done with the bugs that we really did not appreciate this trail as much as we all wished we could have. There are some really great mindfulness prompts at the beginning of the walk too that we wished we could have fully experienced but if we stopped walking we became a blood bank for the bugs!!
We saw this super cool moth that my Google search says is a giant leopard moth! I had never seen one before! There was also an osprey nest on this trail but there were signs saying that there may be some eggs/babies in the nest (and the bugs were bad) so we didn’t want to stop and have the mother bird think we were disturbing her. Between all of our walks that day we had gone quite the distance according to my fitbit!
We had some more beach time then went and made our naan pizzas before going back to the beach to try and catch the sunset. It was a little too overcast but we still caught a little bit of the cotton candy sky!
We went to bed pretty early that night, relaxing in the sun and being the bugs blood donors is so exhausting haha! There was a light sprinkling of rain off and on throughout the night which was nice to fall asleep to.
Saturday
A heat wave was starting, super humid and above 30°C, and since two of us had gotten a littttlllleeee too much sun the day before we decided to pack up early-ish and we were out of the park around 10/10:30 am. We had planned overnight oats for breakfast but instead went to a little cafe in town called Rabbit Dash Coffee House. It was 100% the right decision, we all had spinach feta pastries for breakfast and I had a raspberry white chocolate matcha that was sweet but delish!
The drive home had a bit more traffic than the drive there, but that was expected as it was the weekend now!
Overall, MacGregor was a nice park but I think I either need some better bug repellant or to go there at the end of August when there are less bugs out and about haha. It is always so fun to spend some time with friends, relaxing, reading, gossiping, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world!
Cheers!
The Katie Chronicles 
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