Family Camping at Murphy's Point

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Murphy’s Point Provincial Park

11 - 13 July, 2021

After saying goodbye to our friends, we started our short drive to Murphy’s Point PP, to meet up with my sister and brother-in-law for a few days. We left Farran Park without dumping so that we could use our bathroom on the road (even though it was only a 90 min drive from one park to the next). There are still not many toilets open to the public, so it was a good thing, since I needed to use it!! On a multi-park trip, we find it so much easier to dump on the way into the park so that we don’t have to manage all of the toilet treatment until we are ready to camp. So, upon arrival, we dump, fill our water tank, add water to the black tank with the toilet treatment and then top up the fresh water tank. This way, we have just a little bit more fresh water for our stay and sometimes that little bit is really needed!

Our route took us along the backroads to Merrickville, where we parked and went to find a place to eat. There are some cute little shops that I’d love to go back to when there’s a bit more time to poke around! We stopped for coffee and sandwiches at The Village Bean Coffee House on the main strip. They have a cute little outdoor patio where we ate our sandwiches sitting in a shady spot (we split a BLT and a turkey, brie, cranberry sandwich. Both were very good!).

With our bellies full, we continued towards Murphy’s Point PP and arrived around 5 pm, excited to see my sister and brother-in-law, who we hadn’t seen in over a year! But first, we had to take care of a little business at the dump station. With an empty black tank and a full fresh water tank, we headed to site 125 in the Fallows Campground.

We passed by Jennifer and Peter’s site on the way to ours  - they had arrived not long before us and were in the process of setting up their trailer. Our sites weren’t right beside or across from each other, but they were still very close by.

Our site was interesting, with a long driveway that we needed to back up into, but Chris handled it like a pro! We had to orient Holly so that our door side wasn’t facing the fire pit, but that wasn’t a huge problem for us as I knew we’d probably spend all of our campfires on my sister’s site (Peter loves to keep a fire burning!).

We were almost the only hard top trailer in this section of the campground. The sites are not especially large or level and this campground is unserviced, so it’s mostly tents. Many of the sites are quite private, although we were close to our neighbours on one side (it wasn’t a problem at all) and the other side was pretty much trees. Jennifer and Peter had a very private site, but it was situated so that when cars came around the corner at night, the headlights shone directly into their site!

But backing up… first things first! Before even unhitching, we went over to see Jennifer and Peter and HUG them!! It was sooooo amazing to hug our family again!!

With our setup complete, Chris took Daisy for a walk while Peter and I went to buy firewood, ice and a requisite park sticker for my collection. Peter started the fire and we sat down to enjoy some snacks (a very delicious fig and balsamic Boursin with crackers and drinks). We eventually got around to roasting hot dogs for supper over the campfire. We haven’t roasted hot dogs in a very long time and they were delicious!

We actually had a very pretty campsite with a beautiful canopy of trees, but it wasn’t especially conducive to using our solar panel and after being unplugged at our last campsite, we struggled to keep our batteries at the right level. We’re learning that 4 or 5 days of back to back camping without plugging in or without great sunshine (even when travelling between campgrounds and being hitched to the car) is very hard on our batteries! Especially since we aren’t great at conserving energy - we have a few gadgets we like to charge each day.

Back to camping… We sat by the campfire for a while at Peter and Jennifer’s site, until the bugs started to really come out (even with the Thermacell going!) and then called it a night. It was great to visit and hang out in person!

Our morning consisted of walking Daisy, sipping our coffee and having a yummy breakfast. In the early afternoon, Chris went out for a run and Jennifer, Peter, Daisy and I headed out to walk the Silver Queen Mine Trail. Due to Covid, no tours of the mine were being offered, but we decided to walk the trail anyways.

This was a very interesting place! There are some interpretive panels that we were able to learn more from about the mining history and geology. Following the trail transports back a century to the mine pits and the restored bunkhouse (neither of which we could actually go inside, but we peeked through the windows of the bunkhouse!), so I can only imagine how cool this would be when the park is offering tours! (you can follow another family’s experience in this blog post on the Provincial Parks website). The Silver Queen Mine trail was approx. 2.5 km long return.

We returned to the parking lot along the beaver trail, but sadly didn’t see any beavers (or evidence that they were even there!). We did come across a really neat pond area with lots of green buds covering the water and many toads! They were so cute.

The afternoon was very muggy and thankfully, the sun was hidden behind the clouds for much of our hike, otherwise it would have been scorching! Jennifer and I returned to the campsite and immediately headed to the beach for a quick swim. The beach wasn’t super busy. We were only in up to our waist when we got to the buoys, so we swam under them and went a little further where we could float a little bit on our backs. It was so refreshing, and the sun came out while we were there!

Daisy was pretty exhausted from an afternoon of excitement and took a nap. I got to lay in the hammock with my drink!

It turned into a beautiful day with the sun peaking through the trees. We congregated back at Jennifer and Peter’s campsite for pre-dinner snacks and drinks around the campfire. While sitting out we met one of our neighbours - she was solo camping with her cavalier King Charles puppy, that was super adorable, so, of course, we struck up a conversation (and followed each other on instagram:).

We returned to Holly for the evening when the bugs came out!

It was an even warmer night and sleeping was difficult. Our batteries weren’t recharged by the sun at all, so we were very low and didn’t want to run the fan at night (our fantastic fan is our saviour on warm nights!). In the morning, the battery reading was 11.8… too low!

We woke up to another muggy morning and started to pack up for home. Jennifer and Peter had a few more days at Murphy’s Point, but we needed to get back for work. It rained off and on while we were packing up and hitching. I went over to enjoy my coffee with Peter under the canopy and Jennifer came out to join us. We hung out for a while in the rain and finally said goodbye just past 11 am.

Despite the muggy weather and the battery situation, we had an AMAZING time hanging out with Jennifer and Peter. Let’s hope it’s not another year before we see each other in person again!!

As usual, we stopped in Perth at our favourite place - Coutts Coffee Shop, for coffee and lunch before arriving home in the mid-afternoon.

Murphy’s Point Provincial Park - Ottawa

Towing: 105 km

Driving: 0 km

Black Tank: 56% full

Fresh water: 50% full

Batteries: Our solar panels were not super helpful in keeping our batteries charged (due to a lot of tree coverage and not much sun). They were at 11.8 when we hitched up to come home - much lower than we’d like them to be at the end of a trip!