Awenda Provincial Park

Scratched another new to me Provincial Park off my map!

This was the third summer my university crew has taken a camping trip together and I’m sure we’ll have many more to come 🙂

Awenda overall was beautiful, I do however think that the campsites, beach, and hiking trails are too far away from each other. It is a park you have to drive to get around (or bike but we didn’t have those). This campground wins for quietest campground I’ve ever been to, it seemed like the other campers around us tucked in for the night by 9:30/10pm at the latest and there really wasn’t any people noise before 9am, just the birds singing!

This camping trip was Friday to Sunday ($105.91 for the two nights) and we stayed in the Deer campground on site 180. The sites were pretty private, we could only really see the site across from us, not the ones on either side. This campground was unlike others I’d been to, all the trees were so tall and skinny and there was almost no bushy plants, all just these tall trees! This campground has the nicest vault toilets I had ever seen as well, they looked like cabins more than toilets!

Thursday

Lienne flew in all the way from the east coast for this camping trip!!! So we hung out (Merida got lots of pets and I made us strawberry matcha lattes) until Viv bussed in and then the three of us grocery shopped and prepped for us to leave the next day!

Viv stayed over at my place and Lienne joined us again Friday morning!

	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Breakfast	–	Pancakes by Viv!	Leftovers!
Lunch	Restaurant en route!	Sammiches	Restaurant en route!
Dinner	Burgers	Chili by Jess!	–
Snacks!	Savory s’mores, sweet s’mores, hot dogs, GORP	Savory s’mores, sweet s’mores, hot dogs, GORP	–

The groceries for our meals cost ~$170 for 4 people at breakfasts and dinners but 5 for Saturday lunch.

Viv and I also made cold brew and iced coffee, we did strawberry milk for the cold brew and brown sugar and milk for the iced coffee. We just packed these in mason jars and kept them in the cooler.

Friday

Lienne, Viv and I hit the road around 10am, shoutout to my parents for letting me borrow their SUV so we had space for all of the equipment!

Our first pit stop was for snacks and bevys at Tin Roof Cafe in Erin. I tried their creamsicle matcha and a caprese scone. The matcha wasn’t my fave, too sweet for me, but the scone was yummmmmmmm.

For lunch we drove through Tiny, a town I had never been to, and we saw the cutest beach houses and we were all surprised at how delish our lunch was at the Balm Beach Bar & Smokehouse. We had a beautiful view of the beach and the kale caesar wrap was nice and saucy! They even had malt vinegar for the fries.

We got to the park right for check in at 2pm. The camp store didn’t have any keychains which are usually my souvenir of choice and I use them as decorations on my Christmas tree so I’ll have to figure something else out for this trip… I brought home a park map so maybe I can do something with that.

We went to the beach after putting up our tent. We didn’t realize how far away the beach was from our site and the walk took almost an hour. Lesson learned to give the whole park a drive around before getting too comfortable so we know what to wear to get places… my old navy flip flops did not feel great to walk in for the hour and a half / two hour round trip. The beach was also rockier than anticipated and I have major regrets (and a bruised foot) about not bringing water shoes.

Elise joined us that night for dinner where we grilled up our burgers over the campfire and made some spider dogs for snacking! We also made savory s’mores which is the only way I like babybell cheese, if I eat them just straight from the wax I feel like they just taste like the wax, but maybe that is just me haha. Viv also made the most picture perfect s’more!

We were zonked from our accidental hike and hit the hay early-ish, everyone else in our campground was silent by 9:30pm so we weren’t the only ones tuckered out it seemed!

Saturday

Viv treated us to pancakes Saturday morning before we went on a hike!

I always forget about pancakes for camping but they are so easy! All you need is a dry mix and you add water until it looks right (you could measure but that’s not very ~camp~). We also had brought some bananas that got beat up in the cooler so we sliced them up and put them in the pancakes.

We also had some of our premade coffee with breaky. The strawberry milk one was my personal favourite.

This map was screenshotted from the Ontario Provincial Parks website

We decided to do the Wendat trail so I drove the four of us over to it. Usually we can hike a trail faster than a park map says it will take but Awenda took us longer first with the part of the Bluff trail that took us to the beach then with Wendat taking about 15 mins more than the estimate and registering as 6km on Strava not 4km as the map says haha.

This hike was so beautiful and there were a bunch of turtle hatching protection areas which is so exciting! I love turtles.

We checked the weather when we got back from the hike and rain was being called for that night so we tarped up our tent before our next activity.

Jess joined us at the campsite where we made our sandwiches for lunch and went back to the beach for the afternoon.

We saw some crayfish explored the rocks but didn’t bring our phones in the water and used a waterproof digital camera all weekend before we realized none of our laptops have SD ports so I can’t show you the crayfish haha.

Jess prepped chili at home so we heated that up for dinner it was SO YUMMY!!

She brought buns and butter to go with it and Lienne supplied some microgreens for garnish.

We also made savory s’mores and spider dogs again, camping is really all about the snacks for us haha.

Elise had to head out after dinner and then the rain hit but the four of us played cards and then headbands. It was a fun, goofy, end to the day 🙂

Sunday

We were glad we had tarped up yesterday as it rained way more than our weather apps had said it would and we stayed totally dry!

I am the lightest sleeper I know so I woke with the birds and was going to head to the beach to have a last look before we left but I accidentally woke up Lienne as I got up so she came with me too! Elise had brought some delish Ontario peaches so Lienne and I snacked on those at the beach.

When we got back to the campsite we had leftovers for breakfast and began the campsite teardown.

On the way home we stopped at the Tin Roof Cafe again and grabbed lunch, I got their BLT and it was super yummy, their rootbeer latte was not my favourite though (and rootbeer is my FAVOURITE pop).