Mississagi Provincial Park is pretty far north for this Southwestern Ontario girl. Once you’ve reached Elliot Lake, you just keep driving for another 20 min north on Highway 639 until you reach it. The road is paved but it started to deteriorate once we left Elliot Lake and we pretty isolated. On the way we saw two different young male black bears cross the road all by themselves. They must have both lost their mothers since they are usually still together that early in their lives.

If you’ve been on the road for a while, like we had, Elliot Lake is a good spot to stop at the local No Frills for supplies and fill up your gas tank. I had never been through Elliot Lake before and it seemed like a very nice community, probably the nicest northern town we had seen during our 2015 northern Ontario camping trip.

The drive in through the park was very beautiful with trees framing the road. The park had a small park store at the gatehouse where they sold some merchandise, ice cream, wood and ice. They also had canoes for rent, although we didn’t see a lot of people on the lake while we were there.

The campground was quite small, with only 60 sites and several of those being seasonal. The park also offers a few interior sites along the longer trails (McKenzie and Semiwite Lake Trails). The park has no electricity, so many people were running generators (which could only be run from 11am to 9pm), and there were only vault toilets. Other than the water taps, you won’t find any showers or sinks to wash up in. We did read that they may be upgrading to filtered water since they pull their water from the lake which has bacteria in it that is harmful to drink.

The sites were nice and private, for the most part, but be aware that some of them have quite a slope to them. The park was probably only half full and was very quiet since it is not located on or near a busy highway.

We had a large pull through site located near the far end of the park. It had a path down to the water’s edge and we let Maya take a dip there once in a while. I found it too silty for me so I would walk down to the main beach where they had brought in a type of crushed stone to make a beach area.

Above is the view from the water’s edge in front of our site.

Here is one of the beaches created for park visitors. As you can see the lake, Helenbar Lake, is very quiet and I don’t remember seeing too many canoes or hearing motor boats.

During one of the nights we were at Mississagi Provincial Park we enjoyed the symphony of sounds created by the local wildlife. It started with the bull frogs and then the loons, but the best were the owls. At three different times in the middle of the night we heard the whistled toots of the Boreal Owl, the “Who cooks for you?” call of the Barred Owl and the deep, soft hoots of the Great Horned Owl. It was absolutely magical. The next morning we sat and listened to an unidentified bird at the top of this tree singing a gorgeous song that just went on and on.