McRae Provincial Park July 17th & 18th 2010

Overall Park Rating: 3/10
Nature Aspects Park Rating 2/10
Recreation Aspects Park Rating 4/10


So I decided at 11:00am on Saturday that i wanted to go camping that night, of course a last minute decision like that seriously limits the options. I did a quick search on the ontario parks site and found that McRae still had about 8 sites open. It was only about 2.5 h drive according to google maps, so by 1:00PM we were on the road!

We got to the park around 4:00PM, and just FYI there is no grocery stores on the way if you follow google maps directions! there is a cool little deli/farmer's market though. There was 2 people in front of us inline and it took close to an hour to get a site! thankfully we got there when we did because by the time we got to the window there was only 2 sites left. # 55 and #96. We chose 96.

Some things we noticed at this point:

• There is no rentals
• There is no real park store (ice/wood/ice cream/park paraphernalia are sold out of the gate house)
• The staff is friendly but not to speedy (might have been the computer problems or the fact that apparently phone call inquiries are more important that in-person customers).

So continuing on, we got to our site, it's in the field that is the pull through trailer area. we knew it would be. it's our own fault for such a last minute trip. all these sites are terrible. they are wide open, your lucky if you get a tree or two. there is NOTHING separating one site from the next.


The non-serviced sites are a little better, there is a lot that are almost as open as the serviced sites, but there is a few gems mixed in.

The park was quite quite at night, which was nice, i think everyone was in their trailors watching tv. the comfort station in our area was clean, but one thing i noticed in the girls side was that if the middle stalls door was closed, the far right one wouldn't close! I thought that was pretty funny, but rather inconvenient.

Closed Trail

The trail... well, the most interesting park of it was closed. We went on it anyway, the board walk was broken in one section. It wasn't un walkable though, so we carried on. There is some nice swamps, and trees and lots of cool ferns. Some more rare ones apparently. There is some nice views of the cottages across the lake along the trail as well. To be fair, there is also some nice views with out cottages. there is only 1 trail. 1/2 is quite lovely, the other half is pretty lame, it's grass, and was recently mowed.

Broken boardwalk

Osprey Outside of the park

There isn't much as far as interesting animals and plants are concerned inside the park, BUT there is an osprey nest on the hydro pole at the last turn before you get to the park!! It's currently inhabited by 3 osprey and we saw them flying around and hanging out every time we drove by. So there's at least that for the bird watching enthusiasts.

view! with no cottages

So that's about it. I personally wouldn't recommend this park, unless you did trailer camping and didn't like the shade. It's OK in a pinch, but I'd much rather be almost anywhere else.

EDIT!
I almost forgot!  The state of the park fire wood was dreadful.   our kindling had paint on it... PAINT!  i cook on that fire, i don't want paint fumes in my food!! seriously if they are going to require us to to buy park wood, then it better be safe for cooking.  also it was soaking wet, not just a little damp,  it practically dripped.   it was molding. and awful.   on the plus side, the actual wood was quite dry, and nice.

one of our neighbours

another view with no cottages