Gignac Family Adventures: Parks of the St Lawrence - Long Sault Woodlands Campground

Sat morning of the Civic Long weekend we decided to pack up and head to Parks of the St Lawrence - Long Sault Woodlands Campground. We have seen the ad in the Ontario Parks booklet for the past several years, so we decided to finally give it a try.

The website to book sites is not as user friendly as the Ontario Parks site. They do show one picture of the site you book, but they are not realistic shots. The descriptions of the sites aren't overly realistic either. The site we booked said waterfront. It was waterfront,however it was the public beach....so much for being able to keep our kayaks right at our "waterfront" site. That was an extreme letdown. One plus I suppose was the fact that the site had electricity and water. Sadly no sewer connections though. The fire pits were odd - ppl over time had moved all over the sites, as they were just made with small rocks. Very very odd as well. We were also very disappointed in the washroom facilites. In our section there was one port a potty. We arrived Saturday, and by supper time on Saturday, it was locked and closed for maintenance. It was not ready for use again until Tues mid morning. It was quite a walk to the washroom building, for the whole campground, which only had 4 stalls for women and two for men. Again, another negative strike for this park. The dump station is also 1 km down the road from this campground. I believe it is shared with a couple of the parks but I am not positive. It is located right beside a shower building.

There was two beach areas, one at our site which was on the small side and a larger one near a tent section. At the larger beach was a great, huge play structure for children. I never saw many playing on it, but I think it is because most were swimming!!!

There was no place to rent kayaks or canoes.

It seemed to be that most of the campers were from Quebec. Sadly we also noticed a lot of garbage left at sites after people had left. Why don't people get to leave things neat and tidy. Check out is 11am, and check in is 2pm, however we saw people checking in at all hours.

The sites here are far from private. It is not rustic, it is basically open field camping and you can wave to your neighbours from inside each others trailers. I suppose this is fine should you be camping with other friends or family but not the greatest when you aren't.

This park is on an island, in a string of 11 islands all connected by a causeway between Ingleside and Long Sault. You are also very close to Morrisburg to the west, and Cornwall to the east. When you check in you recieve 2 admissions for either Fort Henry in Kingston or Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg. This was a nice feature as admission to Upper Canada Village was $18 per adult.

Again, Pete's mission for this trip was fishing - his goal muskie on the St Lawrence Seaway. Much to his disapointment, we were on the opposite side of the River, in an inlet they called the Lake St Lawrence. He could have launched at another site but choose not too....he did catch some monster bass and pike and had a great time!!! I kayaked 4 times and had a great paddle. Two days were quite windy so it made for some tough paddling!

We spent 5 nights and 6 days here, and ventured into Cornwall one wet morning and ventured to Upper Canada Village another morning. Would we return to this park - likely not. Would we choose another Parks of the St Lawrence Park to camp at - yes....we have picked out a few spots to try for next year - provided we can book a spectacular waterfront site!!!

http://www.stlawrenceparks.com/reservations/http://www.stlawrenceparks.com/reservations/

View from leaving our campsite