Soooo Close to the USA, but not Quite! At Ivy Lea Campground

16 - 20 August, 2021

We left MacLaren Campground and headed west on highway 2, choosing to take the smaller and slower two lane highway rather than the 401. It was so much more relaxing driving along with the windows down! We stopped in Morrisburg at a dog park that was by the water, but it was essentially a large, round, fenced grassy area with 2 or 3 trees and a few benches. The weather had warmed up quite a bit, so any shade was welcome. We met a gentleman who was there with an almost white in colour Golden Retriever puppy named Ollie. Ollie was a gorgeous dog! But he was also large and very rambunctious. He had no idea how big he was and he was very eager to play with Daisy, who was a just a little petrified. We had to pick her up pretty quickly and Ollie’s owner nicely offered to leash him for a few minutes so that Daisy could run around a little and do her business.

We continued towards Prescott, where we stopped at Katarina’s Coffee Shop for some lunch – delicious sandwiches and coffee on the patio. It turns out it’s quite the local hot spot for ice cream, as there were many people who came after us, just for the ice cream.

After Brockville, we connected with the scenic 1000 Islands Parkway to take us the rest of the way to Ivy Lea Campground. It’s such a pretty parkway! We’ve taken it a few times, but many years before and always going east. There’s a paved pathway (The Waterfront Trail) that runs parallel alongside the parkway. It’s pretty flat and we saw lots of people biking along it..

We arrived at the Ivy Lea Campground in mid-afternoon. It was heating up outside! We checked in, stopped to dump our tank, filled up with fresh water and proceeded to our site. (When we checked in, we learned that the Parks of the St Lawrence have free WiFi, but only if you’re close to the camp store).

The Ivy Lea Campground is quite hilly, especially as you get closer to the sites near the water. The sites at this campground are diverse in both size and layout. Our site was at the top of a hill, with pretty much no large tree coverage (great for solar, when the sun is out), so we needed to use our awning during the day to keep our front door shaded from the sun. There are loads of large trees in the campground, just none on the site we camped on! Our view of the St Lawrence and the bridge to the US was outstanding, especially at dusk! On the downside, we weren’t able to access the water directly from our site (the site right next door has a beautiful walk out into the water - we’ll have to try for it next time!) and there was no spot to hang our hammock or even put up a clothesline, unfortunately. Being able to hang wet clothes, bathing suits or towels is important when staying somewhere for longer than a day or so and we were staying for 4 nights in the heat of the summer!

We took Daisy for a walk, first to the dock, where she had fun chasing sticks in the shallow water, and then to the beach. Right on the St. Lawrence Seaway, this campground is popular for divers, and next to the regular beach is the area where all of the divers enter the water. To our surprise and delight, dogs are allowed on the diver’s side and Daisy LOVED it there! We walked back to Holly, changed into our swimsuits and went back to the beach for a dip. Getting to the beach is interesting and unnerving all at the same time - you need to walk under the massive bridge that goes to the US, first! The 1000 Islands is a major Canada/US border crossing, so there’s constantly traffic (especially trucks) going across (although, because of Covid, when we camped here, almost all of the traffic was truck traffic, as the borders were still closed for regular travellers).

The beach is small and shallow, but the view is pretty and the water was very refreshing and surprisingly quite clear (considering it’s the St. Lawrence!). We took turns swimming so that one of us could stay on the divers beach side with Daisy. On our first outing to the beach (without our swimsuits), she got totally wet and then rolled around in the dirt and was super muddy and dirty. The second time, we took her towel as well, and when she came out of the water, we wrapped her in her towel and Chris carried her back to our site. She whined almost the whole way back! The things we do for our pups! But, at least she was clean and sort of dry by the time we returned and she didn’t track too much mud and dirt into Holly!

We didn’t really feel like cooking, so we finished off our leftover sausages and veggies for dinner. Our new BBQ is coming in handy! We love that we can use it to avoid heating up Holly as the weather warms up.

We started watching a new series on Amazon Prime called Modern Love. It’s a bit slower, but the stories are interesting and enjoyed the cast of characters. We watched two episodes and called it a night. Even though Holly was in the open, high up on a hill and beside the water, we didn’t get as much breeze as we would have liked, so it was a warm night for sleeping, even with help from the fan. Daisy must feel the heat at night, as she seems to prefer sleeping on the floor for much of the night, especially when the weather is warmer.

It started to rain very early in the morning. There was a short reprieve and Chris took Daisy out, but they didn’t make it back in time and were soaking when they came back. We put out the awning so give us some protection from the rain, which was helpful. There was hardly a stitch of wind, though and the humidity made it feel really warm. We’re not about to chance anything going wrong with our awning, so despite the lack of wind most of the time, we’ve still been putting the awning down when we go somewhere and before bed.

Chris had meetings in the morning so I read a bit and caught up on my blog. Once he finished, I cooked some eggs for brunch and then we went to visit Gananoque. The rain stopped, but it was still quite cloudy (which thankfully kept the temperature down), but not good for charging our batteries! It’s a conundrum. We needed the sun to charge our batteries, but when the sun came out, the weather was SO hot and humid! The temperature only dropped down to about 20 or 21 at night, but with the humidity and no wind, it still felt like 25 or 26! We find it hard to get a good night’s sleep when it’s that warm.

Gananoque is a cute little town. Despite living so close and passing it so often on the highway to and from Belleville/Toronto area over the years, we’ve never actually been! We parked at the marina, walked through the park and then made our way to the Main St where there were a few cute shops. I found a used bookstore (my favourite!) that I went into and came out with a few “new to me” books. I could have browsed in there for hours! Afterwards, we picked up a few groceries and drove back to Ivy Lea.

Despite the humidity, Chris set out for a 10 km run on the parkway trail. When he returned, he said the air was so heavy and he felt the run was much more difficult than the 22 km he did just a few days earlier, when the humidity was much less. He walked over to the beach for a dip and then went for a shower. When he returned, it was my turn for a swim at the beach. It was so humid and the water was very refreshing.

It was too hot to cook inside Holly, so we made hamburgers on the BBQ for dinner and had some leftover cake and banana bread for dessert. Yum. We watched two episodes of Modern Love and then went to bed. It was super hot for sleeping and we needed to ditch the duvet all together and sleep with just a sheet. We put the fan on 2 and crossed our fingers for sunshine the next day to charge our batteries.

It didn’t rain overnight and was cloudy but dry when we woke up. I made coffee while Chris took Daisy for a walk. We sat outside and I read while he worked with almost no breeze in the air.

The Ivy Lea campground is in an interesting location. It’s close to a few nice towns (Brockville, Kingston, Gananoque), as well as the 1000 Islands bridge. It’s pretty and the set up is different than most other campgrounds we’ve stayed at. Campsites are interspersed in many places and there seems to be quite a bit of privacy for many of the sites. Some are in the trees and others are right out in the open. Sites closer to the water are good for small trailers or pop ups, and tents, but there are good places for larger trailers in the trees as well. This is another campground that has some seasonal campers, maybe about a quarter of the sites are seasonal? For anyone looking for a camping experience that’s quiet and in nature, this is not the one. There’s a constant hum from boats, jetskis and traffic on the bridge. Sometimes you hear the trucks braking or accelerating. On the upside, for us, this is pretty close to home and the view is fantastic. Next time, though, I will try to book a different site with water access (with the the humidity, I was a bit jealous of my next door neighbour, who was able to just cool off right from his site!)

On Wednesday, Chris spent most of the morning in meetings, working and after lunch, we took a drive to Brockville to see the train tunnel, which was really cool! There’a also a pretty waterfront to walk along.. It was cloudy out but still very warm. The tunnel was cool and damp. Such a huge relief! We had supper in Rockport at Cornwall’s Pub (the wait at the only restaurant open in Rockport was nearly an hour, but we were able to pass the time sitting on a bench with a cold beer! So nice!). We were seated and the service was really fast. We had crab cakes to start and I had a salad while Chris had pizza. Both were delicious and huge. We brought home a lot of pizza, so I wrapped it and put it in the freezer for another time.

Enjoying the view with our beer while waiting for dinner

The daylight was disappearing quickly when we arrived back at Ivy Lea, so we drove down to the beach with Daisy and took turns going into the water. It was EXTREMELY refreshing and set us up for a cooler sleep (it was still pretty hot though!). We tried to watch 2 episodes of Modern Love but started nodding off and called it a night.

On our last full day, Chris initially had no meetings scheduled, but it turned out he had to work after all. He spent most of the morning working at our picnic table. The cloud cover made it bearable to sit outside. I went for a 5 km walk, first around the campground and then another almost 3 km along the parkway. I saw another Airstream Bambi pass by!

I came back, went for a quick swim and then we headed to Kingston. We stopped for an ice coffee at Starbucks which was delicioius and cold and hit the spot! We walked down near the waterfront, found a pair of Adirondack chairs and sat down to take in the view. The chairs were in the shade, which was a welcome relief from the heat and there was a bit of breeze from the water. We didn’t stay for long and returned to Holly for supper. We had chicken rolls ups that were super tasty. Our BBQ has been handy on this trip for keeping the heat of cooking out of Holly. Even with a solar panel, we still had to run the car a few times during the day to boost the batteries as they were dangerously low. It was so hot outside that there was no way we would have been able to sleep without running our fantastic fan. Most nights, the temperature was around 22, but felt more like 26 with humidity!

After dinner, I went back to the beach for a swim and there was one other couple in the water when I arrived. It turns out they live two blocks from us and one of them had just started volunteering on the community finance committee that I’m also a member of! We’d never met in person, but she recognized my voice from our zoom calls! Such a small world.

We watched a few more episodes of Modern Love (Season 2) before the ipad ran out of juice and then called it a night.

We woke up early, with batteries pretty low, a black tank that was not quite full and a fresh water tank that was nearly empty. Time to pack up and go home!

Four nights at an unserviced site tested us! If it had been sunny, we would have been ok on the battery front, but it was cloudy almost the entire time. Luckily, the sun’s rays came through the clouds and gave a small boost to the battery, but it didn’t last very long and we continued to drop below 12.0 (11.8 was the lowest) by the second day. If the sun had come out, we would have been roasting though! So that was the upside. We were pretty worried about the batteries, so we hope to come up with some better solutions for future trips. We decided that we should invest in a Jackery lithium battery pack to keep our devices charged, instead of relying on Holly’s battery. We might also look into lighting that doesn’t run off the battery as a way to help keep our batteries from running too low..

We used just about all of our fresh water (we also need to buy a funnel to be able to add more water to our tank without having to hitch up and leave our site!). Our black tank was at about 80% full, so we managed that much better by showering at the campground, diverting our dishwater a few times and pooping at the campground bathroom.

Next up: Bonnechere Provincial Park

MacLaren Park - Ivy Lea - Ottawa

Towing: 265 km

Driving: 194 km

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