I have heard nothing but amazing things about Bon Echo Provincial Park for camping is extremely dog friendly! It was everything everyone said it would be! Our site was amazing, the dog beach was great, and the off-leash hiking trail was the perfect addition to our day.
Bon Echo Provincial Park History
Wandering through Bon Echo you cannot help but read about the history of the park itself. At the Denison Memorial located at the narrows is a memorial. It honors the family who donated the land for the park. The memorial is dedicated to Recreation Conservation and Education in memory of Flora McDonald Denison and Muriel Goggin Denison on July 21, 1965.
According to the provincial park website (click here), Dr. Weston Price and his wife Florence were on their honeymoon in the Bon Echo area in 1899. The couple fell in love with the area, and decided to build an inn opposite Mazinaw Rock, they called it the Bon Echo Inn. The area had five cottages near the shoreline, tent platforms, a boat house, windmill, 9-metre water tower, and a dock on each side of a narrow channel connecting upper and lower Mazinaw Lake. They had lots of visitors from Canada and the United States. In 1906 it cost $9-15 per week to stay at the inn, and that included all meals!
After Flora’s death in 1921, her son Merrill and his wife Muriel took over the inn in the spring of 1922. Although Merrill’s interests were writing and playwright, he expanded the inn including what is now the visitors center. You can see some of the other cottages that are still standing throughout the park.
Unfortunately, like so many business the 1920s there were difficult times for the inn and the inn closed in 1928. Sadly, in 1936 lightening struck the inn and the whole building was consumed by flames within hours. There are only three buildings left today.
Our Site
We stayed in Sawmill Bay and our site was right beside the bathrooms. This is not always the best choice, but it was the last site available and quite honestly, I loved it. The toilet was a flush toilet, didn’t smell and was behind a bush so didn’t interfere with our site at all.
Bon Echo has lots of choices for sites, from drive through RV sites to yurts (which looked fantastic!). We had a lot of fun hanging out at our site. We had a little boy about 6 yrs that took a shining to our daughter (16 yr old) and constantly wanted to show her his findings. Everyone was so lovely to speak to!
Our stay was for four days, so we settled in. We bought new dog beds for Nyx and Maze which were an amazing addition to our site. Asking them to go to their “spots” was perfect (click here for the blog on spot training) and they happily hung out there.
Off Leash Trail
How wonderful is it to have an off leash hiking trail in the park for visitors! It was a perfect start to our day to get the willies out of the dogs before visiting the dog beach and hiking other on leash trails (click here for the list of trails at Bon Echo Provincial Park). The off leash trail is off on its own and we didn’t meet anyone else on the off leash trail. It was 1.41kms and a beautiful walk.
Dog Beach
We love the water as much as our labs, so visiting the dog beach was on top of our list! We also just bought paddle boards for us to hang out on the water with the dogs.
The dog beach was great! There is a lovely bridge that walks over the creek from the parking lot and at the end of the bridge it leash free area!
On the other side of the bridge you will see the trail that leads to the beach. The dog beach has a couple of picnic tables and a huge grassy area for the dogs to run as well as play in the water.
The dog beach area was so much fun! It was a perfect day with friends and our dogs!
Activities
There is so much to do at Bon Echo and we didn’t get a chance to do everything. The community board in the park posts the Bon Echo events. Weekend events include sketching the sunset and guided hikes. There are also boat rides (not dog friendly) and ferry rides to the cliff (also not dog friendly). You can rent their dog friendly canoes if you wish!
This park is an all round wonderful place to camp. Even the wardens walked over to us at the dog beach and asked us how our vacation was! The employees driving the gators around the park always waved to us as we went by. It just made the atmosphere perfect – can’t wait to go back and visit soon!
Check out Karen’s fall visit to Bon Echo Park with Nala!
