Long Point Provincial Park: Video Review

Britt: Alright, we are getting packed to head to Long Point Provincial Park.

Now, this was a last-minute decision, so we didn’t exactly choose, you know, the best campsite in the world. It’s a little bit less private than we would want. But it is workable. It looks like we can easily make it function the way we need to with a “Lucifer Wall” slash tarp.

So, we are excited. We’re just getting packed.

But, of course, little man, that’s not your spot! If we’re going to finish packing, you gotta come out. Let’s go, bub!

OUR CAMPSITE (2:14)

Britt: Alright guys, so we’re at our site. We’re at 266. That’s over in the Cottonwood Campground, which is the older park.

You can see here that it is pretty much all sand, which is going to be nice for sleeping on because  you don’t have any rocks or logs or bumps.

He’s going to fall back there.

But it also will mean a little bit of a sandy mess for this little goofball here. We did set up the KUMA and his pens before I started filming so that we can get him some water and get him settled in the shade.

So, he’s just relaxing there for now.

And we’re going to set our tent up. We’ll be back with you shortly.

And now that we are all set up, we’ve got our bathing suits, and we are going to head to the beach because this may look somewhat shady, but it is surprisingly hot for May.

So, we’re going to go cool off. We’re going to the dog beach, and we’ll let you know what it’s like.

DOG BEACH, BEACH AREA 2 (4:10)

John: Oh, look what we’ve got here Goose.

Britt: Go to the dog beach?

John: We’ve got the dog beach!

TRYING FOOD FROM A LOCAL VENDOR (5:42)

John: So, usually our tradition that we do every camping trip is we stop off locally and grab a bite to eat.

This is the… For whatever reason I want to say halibut, but it’s not halibut. It’s a pickerel on a bun. I got two of these from First Mate’s, it’s a food truck just around the corner there, by the R&R ice cream place.

And then we got pickle rolls, which is like pizza rolls but it’s pickles and I think there’s some cheese in there, too. So, ya, it looks like there’s some coleslaw in this bun here.

Goose is going to help himself.

Britt: No, he knows better.

John: Hit the spot!

RAINY CAMP MORNING (6:47)

Britt: Well, the morning weather’s less than ideal. But, we have a dry tent. We have comfortable beds to lay in and relax.

And we can just enjoy the sound of the rain on the tent, which is something that I have always loved.

So, I’m here for it.

COOKING BREAKFAST AT CAMP (7:14)

John: So, on today’s menu for brekkie, I’m going to do something really easy. I’m going to do hardboiled eggs because I don’t like the clean up after with frying eggs at camp. It’s true.

But then, we’ve got some breakfast sausage and some toast to go along with it.

Of course, gotta make coffee first.

You guys may have seen this last time. We love this thing. We make it for our coffee. You just put the k cup in it. You can check out the Cabinscape video for that – how to use it right.

I forgot our kettle. So, we’re just going to boil some water.

We’re going to boil some water for our eggs. We’re going to boil some water for our coffee.

Britt: We’re cooking inside the shelter because, as you saw earlier, we had a bit of a wet morning. Which is cool because, like, we were comfy in the tent. We enjoyed sleeping in.

But, there’s supposed to be another round coming through, so we’re just gonna get ourselves situated in here instead.

John: Alright, so how 100% this is going on the blooper reel.

Okay. Got the cup under there. K-cup. Put that on top. Push down on it. And then… You can hear that we’re pretty close to the highway.

Now, I don’t know if you can see this in the video or not, but we’re going to pour some pretty hot water on, ugh, switching hands, in here. I’m going to sit this down for a second. Move my hand a little further back on that.

Alright, wish me luck!

Goose is on the other side of the KUMA. Just to let you know. He is nowhere near this craziness.

Then you take this, I call it the plunger, and it kinda works like a French press. This does work better with the plastic k-cups versus the compostable ones.

And then, my favourite part. Pop!

Okay! Now you’ve got a full cup of coffee, right there.

I’m gonna make some tasty maple flavoured breakfast sausages. This video’s not sponsored by Johnsonville. Even though I’d be okay if Johnsonville would be cool with that.

Have your people reach out to my people.

I got a big ole’ batch of breakfast sausage here. Usually cook up a little big breakfast here. If there’s leftovers, great. Save it for tomorrow. That type of thing.

Okay, so breakfast is done. You can see that I did hard-boiled eggs, breakfast sausage – maple breakfast, maple sausage breakfast sausages, you know what I’m talking about. And then we did some toast on the stove there, which is always an adventure.

As you can see, if you don’t pay attention to it, that’s what happens.

So, good eatings!

DOG BEACH, BEACH AREAS 10 AND 11 (12:02)

John: Okay, second day, second dog beach. We’re at dog beach 11, there’s also dog beach number 10, at Turtle Dunes.

Britt: He’s going!

John: Oh, he’s going! He’s not waiting for me. Let’s go, Goose.

I don’t know if you’re going to get much swimming in today, dude. We had some storms come over through the night. So, it’s probably from all those storms. Eh, Goose?

So, Beach 11 meets up with Beach 10 over there. And what was it, Beach 2 we went to yesterday? The other dog beach?

Britt: That was in the day use.

John: That was in the day use. You can probably see it way down there.

You’re getting your feet wet. You’re getting your feet wet. You’re getting your feet wet. Oh no, there’s a wave! No!

A RABBIT VISITOR (13:25)

Britt: So, just a word of warning for those who have high prey-drive dogs, there’s no shortage of rabbits around here.

We saw a ton of them while we were out walking, because we walked from Cottonwood over to the New Park. And then that one that just ran in over there. It was right on our campsite.

So, just keep your eyes peeled.

CAMPFIRE TIME AND WHERE TO FIND FIREWOOD (13:48)

John: Okay, so we’re getting the fire going for Saturday night. Going to be doing some steak on the grill here.

Sorry for being a little bit quiet, but some people have actually gone to bed already.

So, firewood – got it just down the road. I’ll mention the name of the place once we do the review. I forget the name of it, to be honest. But, ya.

It looks like it’s lighting up pretty good compared to park wood. Not too smoky. Pretty good heat.

We’ll let this burn down, get some nice coals going for those steaks.

TIME TO PACK UP (14:42)

Britt: Well, as you can see, it’s teardown day. Aka, John gets to play Tetris with the vehicle.

But, before we leave, after everything’s packed up here and the vehicle’s ready to go, we’re going to do one last trip to the dog beach with this little guy. Because he loves it so much and he deserves the extra trip.

And we don’t care that it means that we’re coming home with a bit of a wet dog smell. Right, John?

John: Wet dog, wet dog, wet dog, wet dog.

Britt: You’re a good boy! Yes, you are! Alright, let’s finish getting packed up.

FINAL VISIT TO DOG BEACH, BEACH AREA 2 (15:19)

John: Eh, Goose? Are you a happy puppy? This is day 3. Last day, we’re all packed up, and Goose worked so hard packing up the tent and everything else that he deserves a little dip.

Britt: In you go! Goose, in you go! Good boy!

John: You can see it’s a little foggy, but the sun is coming out and it’s going to burn off all that fog. Right, Goose?

Let’s go! Come on! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!

Britt: So, one of the reasons we absolutely love Beach 2 in particular is because just the way that the beach is set up here, you can see that there’s the actual lake.

But the tide comes in, and there’s this little pool here that it leaves behind every day. Which is perfect for a little man who’s nervous about waves. Eh, Goose? In!

John: Woah! Oh, silly Goose!

FINAL REVIEW (16:27)

Britt: Okay, so we were going through our footage for Long Point and we realized that we’re missing a couple things, and the main one being our missing our big final review. And we always give you guys our final thoughts.

So, we’re not in Long Point. We’re actually sitting at Fairbank right now, over by the beach, and figured this was a beautiful enough setting that we will try to do a couple reviews – get them knocked out here. Because there’s a couple that we’re missing.

John: Ya, there’s a few missing. A few that we’re missing.

Britt: And then we can get all these videos ready and up for you guys to enjoy.

CAMPGROUNDS (16:58)

Britt: So, Long Point… This was a last-minute decision for us. Like, literally three days before we made the trip to the park, we booked our site.

We didn’t have a lot of choice for our sites. We ended up staying at old Cottonwood. That’s the older park, so the original park. The sites are all sand. Like completely covered in sand. We came home with sand in everything. But the one beach is directly there

Unfortunately, for those of us with dogs, it’s Beach 1 that’s off the old park and that is not a dog-friendly beach.

John: Correct.

Britt: So, the one catch was that we had to travel to the beach. Although, you do in a lot of parks. I mean, Port Burwell, you have to leave the park. It wasn’t like a make it or break it thing for us.

Willow’s getting up on the picnic table to say Hi.

John: Just saw her paw.

Britt: I gotta…

John: Hi, miss lovey dovey.

Britt: She wasn’t even there, but apparently, she has an opinion.

This was a solo trip with Lucifer. It was before Willow.

John: Last solo trip.

Britt: Ya, it was before Willow joined the family. Yes, because after that it was the first one with her.

GETTING TO THE PARK (18:09)

Britt: As far as getting there…

John: It was roughly three hours. A lot of backroads. Pretty scenic. Enjoyable. I think you do pass through the London area to get to there.

I mean, we’re coming from the Owen Sound area.

FIREWOOD (18:29)

John: We ended up getting the firewood from one of the local stores. Right beside the food truck there. Which I said in the video that in the review I will post the name of the place that we got the wood from.

Britt: Dude, you’re wet, you were in the dog beach.

John: I forget, so I will put their name right there. It was, I forget how much we paid. I think it was like $10 a bundle.

Britt: Ya, they were in, like, baskets and you had to empty the basket out into your vehicle so they could keep the basket.

John: Or else, you could do a down deposit on the baskets, and you would have to return the baskets and get your deposit back. But we didn’t do that.

It burned really, really good. I was concerned at first because it lit, like, super fast. And I’m like oh, great, a bunch of lightwood. But no, it lasted quite a while.

CAMPSITE PHOTOS (19:32)

Britt: Now, I will say the pictures of the campsites on the park site… Thank you, baby. On the park’s website are very old.

We actually booked a site fully expecting… Woah! Careful, bud. You fell off the bench. Fully expecting that we were going to get a completely… He’s having a hard time here.

John: She’s up here, so might as well have him up here.

Britt: Sit your bum, buddy. We booked a site completely expecting to be, like, we were directly beside the bathrooms and in the picture, it showed a complete open to the bathrooms on the side of it.

We were pleasantly surprised when we got there that it has completely grown in. We had an unbelievable level of privacy for being beside a bathroom. Which is great with him. But it was completely unexpected.

So, that being said, that worked well in our favour but it can actually work the opposite, where it can actually work against you.

If you are booking based on the photos, I would highly, highly recommend go to some other groups – whether it’s our camping and hiking with dogs or cats groups, the Ontario Provincial Parks group itself, the Ontario Parks photos group is a great resource.

But go on some of those groups and look and see pictures that other people may have shared, because the pictures online on the park website are very outdated.

DOG BEACHES (20:42)

Britt: He has a love for swimming, so we wanted to check out the beach and it did not disappoint.

Now, there are a couple of different areas you can go with your dog. Up in the day use area, Beach 2 is dog-friendly, or if you go to the very end, Beaches 10 and 11 are dog-friendly.

And we did check both out, you saw both in the video. However, I will say, of those, Lucifer absolutely loved Beach 2 the best because it had a lot of areas where when the tide came it, it created slightly shallower puddles.

While he likes to believe he’s a big, bad, tough boy, he is a little nervous around big waves or having to go out anywhere too far. So, it gave  him the perfect little place to splash around and play and enjoy.

I know there’s a lot of dogs out there that are smaller than him that would benefit from it.

Dude, you keep blocking the screen.

But he thought that the dog beaches were absolutely great. We had great experiences there. The people we ran into were so respectful of the fact that he is a little reactive, especially if there are men.

If we made a point of kind of taking a wide berth around somebody, we found people there were very understanding and very respectful about that. Which is great if you are bringing a reactive dog.

That being said, we visited the park in the off-season. It was still May. It was still a little cooler. I don’t know what it would be like during peak season.

So, if you’re going during the summer for a summer beach trip, you might have a harder time with a reactive dog or a dog that can’t be around larger crowds.

HIKING (22:11)

John: There wasn’t much for hiking.

Britt: No, there were no hiking trails.

John: No hiking trails, but we did hike from our site to…

Britt: We walked from our site at the old park to the new park to check out the dog beach the one day. Like, we just walked over to the beach and back.

So, that is a walk you can take just to kinda wear your dog out a little bit. But there are no hiking trails. That definitely was a hit for us, because we do absolutely love hiking with the pups, as you guys have seen in a lot of our videos.

That did knock it down a little bit for me.

FINAL RATING (22:43)

Britt: But as far as a final star rating, what were you thinking?

John: Maybe a 4? Or a 3 1/2?

Britt: Personally, for me, I’d have to go with a 3 1/2.

John: 3 1/2, we’ll go 3 1/2.

Britt: The sites weren’t as private and the fact that there was no hiking trails was a big one for us. But the dog beach definitely really, really stands out. It’s one of our favourite dog beaches.

So, I say 3 1/2.

John: Okay, let’s go with 3 1/2.

Britt: So, there we have it, 3 1/2 paws.

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John: Stay toasty!