Long Sault Parkway is a scenic road connecting 11 islands on the St. Lawrence River in the province of Ontario. The parkway connects to the mainland in the towns of Ingleside and Long Sault. These islands were created around the 1950’s as a result of flooding in the St. Lawrence River due to construction of the Moses-Saunders Power Dam.
Duration: 3 nights
It is a long drive towards the east of Toronto crossing some popular destinations along the way such as The thousand Islands, Gananoque, Kingston along the 401 highway.
How to get there? Long Sault Parkway is a little over 4 hours east of Toronto, about 416 kms or 259 miles taking the Highway 401 East. You would then take the 770 exit towards Ingleside, then turn left on Country 2 road and right on Long Sault Pkwy.
Long Sault Parkway is just 133 kms or 2 hours from Montreal. It took us 4.5 hours to reach with 2 short breaks at the Onroutes on the 401 East highway.
For this time, we booked a waterfront campsite on the Mille Roches Campground.
Staying at Long Sault Parkway There are a total of 11 islands in Long Sault Parkway and 3 campgrounds, Mille Roche Campground on Mille Roche Island, Woodlands Campground on East Woodlands Island and McLaren Campground on West Woodlands Island. There are 2 beaches in the parkway, Woodlands Beach and Mille Roche Beach. Mille Roches campground likely has the most waterfront sites. Long Sault Parkway is governed by the St. Lawrence Parks Commission. To book a site at the campground, you will have to visit this site: https://www.stlawrenceparks.com/
After checking in at the office and picking our bag of firewood, we headed to our campsite.
After our tent was set, we hopped on our bikes to explore the park.
The park office here does not have provisions for renting a canoe or kayak. You will either have to get your own or rent it from the nearby beach which is just outside the campground.
After exiting our campground, we turned right in the direction of the Macdonell Island.
The Long Sault Parkway is quite popular with bikers and the parkway has a dedicated bike lane. You will meet many fellow bikers.
We rode up to the Macdonell Island. On this park, there are informational panels where you can read about the history of the Lost Villages. Apparently, experienced divers can even get down into the waters to see the submerged lost villages.
We did not find anyone doing that at that time and we did not find any facilities provided by the park nearby such as scuba diving gear, guides to explore the waters. So if at all it is allowed, you are pretty much on your own and doing it at your own risk.
We returned soon after and spent the rest of the evening at our site.
The plan for the next day was to cover the whole parkway on the bike which is an approximately 11km stretch. We were on our way soon after breakfast.
Before starting though, we had to put up a tarp over our tent as there were chances for rain in the forecast.
It took us amateur riders about 2 hours to reach the Long Sault Parkway’s Ingleside entrance. We also stopped occasionally at each of the individual islands along the way for a break and a bit of exploration. In total, we had covered about 7 kms up to the Ingleside entrance from our campground.
We decided to go a bit further from the Ingleside entrance to the parkway where the waterfront trail starts. We went up to the Farran Park campground first. Took a short break. We continued further. This was a nice part of the trail till we reached the Upper Canada Migratory Bird Sanctuary. We have now covered another 6 kms. Going further on the Waterfront trail from here will take you to the Upper Canada Village which is another 6 kms away. At this point, we decided to return. We finally reached our camp site after a total of 8 hours of biking.
We stayed at our site for the rest of the evening.
Woke up to a cloudy day with sporadic drizzle. We decided to take it easy.
We had noticed a beach, called the Mille Roche Beach on the island which is just a short walk outside the campground. Canoes, kayaks and boats were available on rent there on an hourly basis.
To put a bit of a damper on our day, we found out that our car battery had died and we had to find a way to jumpstart it. Before heading to the beach, we enquired at the park office and luckily enough they had a car battery charger available.
What to do first when your car battery dies while at a park? This was not the first time that we had car battery issues. We had a similar problem the previous year at Darlington Provincial Park. At the time, we had called our car roadside assistance number and it took about 2 hours for a mechanic to come and jumpstart the car. The park ranger informed us that usually a car charger or jumpstarter is usually available at parks since this was a common problem and it is better to enquire at the park office first before calling car roadside assistance. If you are lucky, you will save some time. That's what we did this time.
We felt charging the car next morning would be a better approach.
We proceeded to the beach.
The Mille Roches Island has a nice, big, sandy beach. There are many spots for picnicking and also a boat launch area. The boat rental here is a bit pricey compared to the rental rates in Ontario parks.
We rented a canoe for an hour. By the time we were done, it had started to pour. We returned to our campsite and spent the rest of the evening there.
Picked up the car charger at the park office early the next morning. By the time the car battery was charged, we were packed and partially loaded.
We took the car out and drove it for half an hour around the town of Ingleside to completely charge it and returned the charger at the park office on our way back to our site.
We loaded the rest of our stuff and drove out of the campground moving slowly along the parkway to take in the views one more time.
There are many things that the parkway offers and we had just scratched the surface during this trip. We hope to return soon to explore the other adventures that the parkway offers.
For additional information, visit the links below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Sault_Parkway https://www.stlawrenceparks.com/plan-your-visit/camping/campgrounds/long-sault-parkway/
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