Pancake Bay Provincial Park

August 2 - 3, 2020

The rain started just as we were exiting Grundy Lake PP (luckily, we didn’t have to wait in line to dump and we escaped just as those behind us were less fortunate!). It didn’t rain for long, but was cloudy and cool for a while.

To get an early start, breakfast was on the road. We’ve been caught a few times where were weren’t able to find a decent meal or coffee so I don’t usually like taking the chance of not finding somewhere to eat easily, but we ended up in Nairn, where there was a little diner (Jeremys Country Restaurant) at the gas station and we were able fuel both our car and our bodies. Our breakfast sandwiches were good and inexpensive. Given the health restrictions, we decided to take out and sat on the curb beside our trailer to eat. As per usual, someone came over to ask us about our trailer (including how much we paid for it!).

Our next stop was Blind River. It was about time for gas, lunch and a coffee for Chris. There was a food truck a short walk from the Tim Horton’s, so we stretched our legs and Daisy’s to get our lunch. The Butterfly Grill was cash only, so we used what we had and were able to share a BLT and some fries for our $10. They hit the spot. The line up at Tim Horton’s was looong and we should have considered the drive through that moved faster, but it’s always a little trickier to do drive through when pulling a trailer! We were back on the road at about 1 pm, headed to Sault Ste Marie (on the Canadian side), with our bellies full.

Once we arrived in Sault Ste Marie, we headed towards the lakefront and decided to stop at Bellevue Park, right on the water. What a stunning park! The park has a large play structure for kids, so there were more people closer to the parking lot, but as we walked along some of the pathways, we saw almost no one else. We walked along the edge of the water and let Daisy off-leash so that she could go in and out of the water and chase sticks easily. She loved it! The water was crystal clear. We stayed for about an hour and by the time we were back in the car and on our way, Daisy was fast asleep!

The drive from Sault Ste Marie to Pancake Bay Provincial Park is about an hour and it hugs the northern coast of Lake Superior. By the time we left Sault Ste Marie, it was beautiful and sunny out. The campground is long and narrow, with many sites either on the beach side or with a sand dune/water view and mostly one way roads. As soon as we entered the campground, we were greeted with a gorgeous canopy of trees over the road and our first impression was that this was a special park. Our site, number 157, was along the water, but with the road directly in front, which meant that when we backed in, our front window looked out at the sand dunes and Lake Superior. While there were a few trees blocking our view directly in front, we still had a spectacular view on either side. Our set up was quick and easy (we didn’t even need to use any levelling blocks!), partially because we were only staying one night and decided not to unhitch so that we could use every second to explore this beautiful park.

Neither Chris nor I are huge water people, but having a view that includes water is something we both love. Pancake Bay PP had neat sand dunes that led to a long (3.2 km), protected beach. The water is pretty shallow for a long way and the bay is somewhat protected, which is maybe why it’s considered one of the most swimmable places on the northern side of Lake Superior. Apparently, the water was even warmer in the summer of 2020 than it’s been in past years (I heard it was because the water had been more calm than usual, allowing the shallow waters to more easily warm up).

Daisy was the winner (usually the case!) with our quick set up and we headed off on a walk all the way to the other end of the campground, near the empty group camping section, where we then went down to the beach. She had a great time chasing sticks and bobbing for rocks in the water (she never seems to tire of this!). Another bonus of being close to the water was that there were literally no bugs - a huge win for Chris! No bugs also meant that we could have dinner outside on our picnic table.

As we move further west, it’s bright out later into the evening and somehow we missed the sunset, although, I don’t think it was anything special. We ended up watching the Netflix show Indian Matchmaker, which we found so interesting and quite good! Chris is the one responsible for downloading shows for us to watch and he always picks a variety of different types of entertainment that I would likely never have selected, but always seem to enjoy.

We finally turned out our lights at around 11 pm and slept until just past 8 am, which felt needed after two days of travel and weeks of prep to get away on our first multi-week Holly-day.

While Chris and Daisy were out for a walk, I made coffee and organized things a little bit. Just as he returned, another couple stopped to ask us about our Airstream. We meet such interesting people and had fun chatting with them! They also had two kids, a few years older than ours (also not camping with them) and were minimalist campers - they had just a small tent, a yellow corvette and a Boston Terrier named Sunny.

My mom called when Chris was making brunch. Just as I answered, the smoke alarm went off (a super common occurrence when we do just about anything other than boil water on our stove), so I took my chair and went across to the beach to sit and chat. So relaxing!!

After a delicious breakfast, we cleaned up, put everything away (it only took less than 30 minutes!) so that we’d be ready to pull out and then took Daisy for a final walk around the campground. It was such.a nice day and such a beautiful place, that we went a little longer than we had planned. Chris and Daisy played at the dog beach while I headed back (taking note of some of the prime sites for our next trip:). Luckily, there was nobody waiting for our site when I returned, so I took the opportunity to find out just how “warm” the water at Pancake Bay actually was. It was cool, but I had worked up a sweat, so it was very refreshing and I’m so glad I went!

We left our site shortly past 2 pm, filled our water tank and started off towards our next stop: Lake Superior Provincial Park.

Grundy Lake Provincial Park - Sault Ste Marie - Pancake Bay Provincial Park

Towing: 465 km

Driving: 0 km (We never unhitched!)

I forgot to take photos of our tank, water and power usage. We dumped as we arrived at Lake Superior Provincial Park instead of when we left Pancake Bay, so that we could more easily use the bathroom while we were driving (we still had plenty of room in our black tank). We also did this so that we’d be more easily able to have a shower at our next stop, if we wanted/needed to. When we arrived at Pancake Bay, we had enough water in our fresh water tank for the night, so didn’t need to fill up until we left the following morning. We were only one night at Pancake Bay, so our batteries were more than enough, even with the fantastic fan on all night.

One of the things we learned quickly when on a road trip… Just using the toilet during a travel day adds to the black tank (which is already tiny). Because the showers at Provincial Parks were not open at all in 2020, we needed to be more careful with our tank usage, so if we wanted to have a shower, we needed to be sure our black tank had enough space. Dumping as we arrived at a campsite, instead of when we left, helped with this, since we tended to dump with a fuller tank (it also helped us to preserve our tank solution, that we were hoping would last us for the rest of the season!).