I have a feeling these fires are going to be our future for the west half of North America in July and August.
The California trip would have been very affordable, jumping from National Park to park, getting a ton of backpacking and hiking in, and then staying at Greta or Austin’s places in between. Hannah and I still had 2 weeks off work though, so we still wanted to go on a trip.
My grandparents have a lake house in the Adirondack Mountains in New York so I called them up and they said they’d love to have us. But then more bad news came: their water pump broke and it would be several days before it could be fixed. As we started driving north from Washington D.C. we debated if we should go to my grandparents’ house right away or make a pit stop while we waited for the water pump fix.
We decided to go to Toronto!
This was my first time in Toronto, and Hannah hadn’t been since elementary school. We stopped by Niagara along the way and then biked around town checking out popular spots, eating good food, and going to a few breweries.





After seeing images of the park, we really wanted to see Bruce Peninsula for ourselves. All of the backcountry campsites were full though and the other campsites nearby were quite expensive; around $45 for peak season. The park was also about a 3.5 hour drive from Toronto.
We went to a coffee shop to research more hiking options; there were some other promising locations near Ontario from our initial research. Just in case, I checked the Canada backcountry reservation website for the 5th time that day, AND THE HIGH DUMP CAMPGROUND HAD OPENED UP! To make things even better, the campsite reservation was for an itinerary reservation; In order to book High Dump, we also had to book a second night at Bruce Peninsula’s other backcountry campsite: Stormhaven.
We lucked out with Stormhaven, it was definitely the better of the two sites.









We kept hearing about Indian Head Cove so we wanted to check it out for ourselves. Here’s what we found:







Overall stats:
- 2.5 days, 2 nights in the backcountry
- >2,000′ net elevation gain
- ~18 miles total. (12 of those miles were with packs)
- 2 beers consumed (each!)
- 100+ mosquitoe bites. (For me, Hannah only got about 30.)
- No bears seen despite the ridiculous amount of warnings.
Thanks for checking out this photo essay from our adventure in Bruce Peninsula National Park!