MacGregor Point Provincial Park: Video Review

Have you ever considered visiting MacGregor Point Provincial Park?

This is a park that we can’t recommend enough! Located on the shores of Lake Huron, the park is one of the few Ontario Parks that is open year-round. With a wide range of activities available, there is something for every season, including multiple beaches (2 are dog-friendly), 5 hiking trails (4 of which are suitable for biking), birding with over 200 known species of birds, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and an ice-skating trail.

The park has 3 campgrounds, each broken down into 3 different areas – Algonquin (Ash Wood, Cedar Lane, and Birch Boulevard), Nipissing (Deer Drive, Fox Way, Egret Circle), and Huron (Grouse Landing, Iris Grove, and Hawk Ridge). In addition to the standard electrical and non-electrical campsites, MacGregor Point PP offers designated double sites, 2 group camping sites, 6 yurts, and 10 rustic cabins.

We spent a weekend at the park, even making the last-minute decision to extend our trip by one day, creating our own long weekend.

In this video, we’ll share our campsite setup (and our updated pet-friendly tent setup), take you for a hike on the Tower Trail, and check out both dog beaches. At the end, we sit down at our campsite to discuss our thoughts about the park and share our final rating.

This video is part of The Kas Pack’s Ontario Parks Reviews series. CLICK HERE to visit our YouTube channel and subscribe to get notifications when new parks are added.

MacGregor Park Provincial Park – June 2023

John: I always heard camping was better with dogs. Is that right? You guys go camping? Ya! Let’s go…

Our Campsite (1:56)

Britt: Well, we’re here. We are in a different part of the park than we usually stay because we usually come in the spring. And so, over here in this area is generally closed still.

The site is smaller than the sites we usually get where we are. You can see right through here to the neighbouring site. But all in all, it does look like a pretty nice place to spend the weekend.

Our Tent Setup (2:42)

Britt: Okay, so we’ve shown our tent set up in the past, but we made some changes this year. So, let’s show you guys what we’re doing in 2023.

Instead of the big queen-sized air mattress we used in the past, we decided we are done with air mattresses because air mattresses pop. Especially with animals. No matter what you do, you can’t 100% pet-proof an air mattress. So, we now have cots.

On this side is mine, and Lucifer actually sleeps with me on the cot, so that is ours, I should say. We don’t have any pillows in here yet.

But we’ve got, like, a puppy area here, and that’s Dav’s bed. A table that we can use as, like, a bedside table.

And then over here is John’s side. You can’t really see it, in the far back, but you can kinda see there’s a bit of a blanket back there. That’s where Indy prefers to sleep. Why he prefers to lay in the corner, I’m not sure. But hey, if it works for him.

All in all, it gives us a lot of space. And while we only have the dogs here on this trip, we can also make things work to include the cats in the center area – whether it’s moving back the table. The cot here isn’t right against the side, so we can move back. But there’s plenty of space there for the cat’s stuff as well.

Tower Trail (3:57)

Britt: All right, so we’re going to do the Tower Trail here at MacGregor Point. All the pups are beyond excited.

I do want to draw your attention over here to what John was just doing. So, in an attempt to control invasive species, they actually have a brush here where you just rub off your shoes and boots to take off anything invasive that might be on them.

Lucifer’s interested. Let’s get going…

Well, it’s safe to say if, like me, you have seasonal allergies, this trail may not be the best option. Right, Lucifer? Look at that, bub, it’s like they still have snow. Eh? Lucifer’s going to show you the next patch. Look. Look at this. It’s like they still have snow.

Here on the trail, they have a bird blind where you can come up and check out all the wildlife. There was a sign back there that said it’s the Friends of MacGregor Point Bird Blind. But as you can see, it’s just a little structure here at the end of the boardwalk.

The way that it works is that it provides you with a view where they can’t necessarily see you. You come in here. There’s some benches to sit on. And look at the view. So, you have the opportunity to see the birds in their natural habitat.

Proceed with caution – Nesting bird of prey ahead. There would be the nest. I don’t know if it’s up there right now. We’re still on the trail, so this is partway along the trail.

We’re at the top of the observation tower here on the tower trail. Check out this view. Lucifer says if you need to take a break, you’ve got some benches here at the top of the tower trail. You can just sit and enjoy the view. Eh, little man?

Hi, little snake friend. Off he goes.

John: We did it, guys! We did it! We did it! Good puppies!

Dog Beach #1 (10:31)

John: All right, so this is one of the dog beaches at MacGregor Point Provincial Park. As you can see, it’s not much of a beach. It’s pretty rocky.

We were here yesterday. Ya, it’s pretty rocky going all the way, going out there pretty much. We are going to the other beach today, which is a lot more sandier. I wouldn’t recommend it for older pups. It’s just a little too dangerous. Right, Ninny?

What I forgot to mention in the previous little clip there is that the dog beach you want go to is pretty much where the day-use area is. So, like right at the front of the park, before you even register your vehicle.

You will have to get a day-use pass, cause they will ticket you if you don’t have it. But ya, just a little heads up on that.

Dog Beach #2 (11:55)

Britt: Now it’s time for Dav dog’s favourite part of this trip. She absolutely loves the beach.

We are at the dog beach area that is up near the day-use area. As you can see, nothing but water as far as the eye can see out there.

Unlike the other beach, while there is some rock over here, the beach itself is a beautiful sandy beach that they can enjoy. Right, baby girl? Ya! You like the beach, don’t you?

Good girl!

John: How’s it going, boys? Hey? (x14)

Britt: So, one thing that we’ve noticed that is different than most of our trips here, not that Dav dog cares, is that the water is a little bit murkier. You can kinda see it around her getting stirred up.

There is a sign when we first entered the beach that said it’s due to wave activity and the storms and stuff. So, we knew that it was going to be that way and it’s not normally that way when we’re here. But if you go out far enough, you don’t see it.

We’re not too bothered by it. As you can see this crew is not bothered by it. That’s what matters!

Every time I turn around, he’s spoiling them again.

Meanwhile, she’s just swimming back and forth. Just happy as can be. No desire to go back in again. I’ll have to call it eventually. I don’t want her too worn out. She is older, even though she doesn’t believe it. Eh, baby girl?

Go get it! What you got? The stick’s bigger than you, dude.

Oh, jeez. Daddy went out further that time. I’m trying, dude. There you go. There you go. Good boy! Ya, is that your stick?

Our Review (15:27)

John: Hey, everybody, it’s John and Britt from The Kas Pack.

Britt: And Lucifer!

John: And special guest, Lucifer. So today, it is Father’s Day, and we decided to take the weekend over at MacGregor Point Provincial Park. So, I just want to wish all the dads, all the fur baby dads, Happy Father’s Day!

Britt: I’ll just put Lucifer down here. He’s having a war with the flies. We’ve had quite a few flies, black flies, around. He does not like them at all. So, that’s what that was all about.

Campsites and Roofed Accommodations (16:11)

Britt: We have been to this park before multiple times. We love this park. Love this park. Everybody kinda talks about having their “home base park,” that one park you would go to just for, like, a weekend away or a close trip. That’s what MacGregor Point is for us.

This wasn’t a new park to us, but it was that we hadn’t covered with you guys yet, and we wanted to make sure to do that. Now, a little bit later, because as we’ll talk about eventually here, Dav dog loves the dog beaches, and this just had some great opportunities for us.

We decided to book in June for a change, and that meant that this campground was open, Huron. So, we decided to give it a try. Long story short, I think we’re in love.

John: Ya. Ya, it’s the first time in this campground, like camp, Huron Campground, and it is very, very rustic.

Britt: It has a… Like, the other campground are great, and they have a lot of vegetation. But they have almost like a manicured feel to them. Whereas Huron is a little bit more rustic, a little bit more natural, and it is totally our vibe. We are loving this campsite.

That being said, depending on your style of camping, the options here at MacGregor are endless.

As I said, there are three campgrounds. Over in Algonquin, you also have your roofed accommodations. They offer yurts and cabins. And yes, there is a dog-friendly yurt that everybody’s fighting for all the time.

We’ve tried to get it, we haven’t yet, so kudos to those who’ve managed to book it.

But the other type of site that a lot of people find really intriguing around here, in addition to your standard electrical and non-electrical sites, is that they have multiple coupled, like double sites.

What those are is that it’s a single driveway that then veers off, almost like a Y. So, think like a Y. And these two sites are separate sites. They are booked like two separate sites. But they are booked and designed to be booked together so that your sites are connected with a single driveway, but you have your own space.

So, if you like camping with other people, that is one of the great benefits that MacGregor has to offer.

Dog Beaches (18:20)

John: And leading into that, there are two dog beaches here. First one is past Lake Huron. Not lake, sorry, not past Lake Huron, but past the Huron Campground.

Just a heads up, as you’ve seen in the video, it is very, very rocky. I wouldn’t even recommend it for older pups. If you’re just gonna, just relax out there with your pup, ya, it probably will work. But, sorry, Dav dog is…

Britt: She’s decided that the tarp is a bed. So, if you’ve heard any of the background noise just there, that is our sweet senior girl making herself comfortable on a tarp. For whatever reason. Cause it’s not like she doesn’t have rugs and beds to choose from. But the tarp is it, so the tarp it shall be.

John: I wouldn’t recommend that beach for older pups. Maybe younger pups, but ya…

Britt: Oh, I pointed to the wrong one originally. This is the one we’re talking about.

John: Ya, so I wouldn’t recommend it. But we did take them to the other beach. Which I said, like in the video, it is pretty much in the day-use area. You do have to register coming in. If you do not, you will get fined.

But, anyways, it’s like night and day. The pups really enjoyed it. There are some rocks out there a little bit, but…

Britt: It’s largely sand.

John: It’s large… Ya, exactly. Also, as you can probably see in the videos, the water was a little bit murky. There was some signage going into those areas saying that it’s due because there was, like, some storms going on in the previous days. The wave action was just stirring a whole bunch of stuff up. But it was very safe to swim in

Britt: The one thing I absolutely love about the beach up at the day-use area is that, and you’ll see this in the videos, there’s almost like these little rocky juts that come out from the sandy beach every now and then. It takes this one long beach, and it’s a significantly long beach area, but it separates it off into little sections.

So, if you are camping with a dog who is maybe unsure about new people, unsure about other dogs. Like we’ve already talked about many times on this channel, we have our little boy Lucifer who is reactive, and we are working with him on it.

But that allows you to, like, find where everybody else is and kinda claim your little space. Because nobody’s really running with their dogs up and down these little rocky juts because they’re uneven and they’re difficult to walk on. So, everybody kinda keeps to one of these little sections.

So, you can find an empty section and have that space where you’re not, you know, competing with others.

John: And I was completely blown away with Lucifer on today’s beach day. Just because we threw a random stick out, and he actually ran out or swam out, and got it, and returned it. It was, I think, the first time that he did that in water.

Britt: Ya, he’s been nervous about a lot of the swimming. He’ll come out only if I go out and call him out, so he’s coming to Mommy. Usually, that’s about it. But that wasn’t the case today.

John: Ya, he’ll play fetch on normal land but in the water, nope. But today was. I was very happy, and he got well rewarded for that.

Britt: Which, sneak peek. Shh, I’m not giving this away yet. When we go to Lake Superior on our next big trip and have a waterfront site with water access, he’s gonna have a great time.

John: Ya, I don’t know who’s more excited about that – me, him, or Dav. I think Dav will probably be more excited.

Britt: I think so. She may be 15 but, I mean, as you’ve already seen… She went out into that water, and she was going back and forth, back and forth in the water. She had no desire to come back in.

She loves the water. She would swim all day if you let her. We have to call it for her so she doesn’t overextend herself. So, she’s going to be a very happy camper.

John: She’ll be a boss.

Hiking Trails (22:59)

Britt: Now, in addition to the beaches that we absolutely love, and that is a huge part of why we do love this park, there are also eight different trails.

And these range in skill level from a moderate/rough is what they call it, which is the Lake Ridge Trail. It is hiking only. It is a little bit more uneven, a little more difficult to navigate. To a lot of easy, multi-use trails that can be used for walking, hiking, biking, whatever you need.

A lot of them are even completely wheelchair accessible.

So, that’s another one of the things we absolutely love about here. As you saw earlier, we did the Tower Trail. Lucifer and I even went up the little lookout tower and showed you guys the view from there.

That is a trail that we absolutely love because, 1. it’s a loop which is helpful with the pups. When you’re just going somewhere, you know, you do the loop, and you’re done. And 2. it is a little bit easier. Because as much as she thinks that she doesn’t have limits, it is a Dav-friendly trail that doesn’t push her too far. So, we have to impose limits on her, and when we impose limits on her, that trail falls into it.

Firewood (24:06)

John: Which leads us into firewood. Big shocker, we did not get provincial park firewood.

There is a spot just like… You turn left out of the park, and just past the first stop sign, and just before the second stop sign, there is a spot called Ken’s Wood. Five dollars a bundle. And we’re burning it right now. I dropped $40, got eight bundles, and, I mean, we still have… two?

Britt: Ya, quite a bit.

John: Ya, we still have two bundles out of that. And it burns really, it burns hot. No popping. And they’re long burns. As funny as it sounds, I highly recommend Ken’s Wood.

Britt: Now, to touch on a topic that has come up a little bit in our Facebook groups. Quick, you know, shameless plug – if you’re not in our Facebook groups, we have two of them on Facebook available for you. One is Camping & Hiking with Dogs Ontario, and the other is Camping & Hiking with Cats Ontario.

So, if you’re not in those groups, they are a great place to network and connect with one another.

A conversation that came up in one of those groups that I saw is that people were concerned that those that are not buying park firewood are not supporting the parks. And they are worried about that is going to hit the overall sustainability of our parks to have these spaces. So, I just wanted to quickly address that here.

As far as firewood goes, we do not purchase the park wood for the most part because we have found that we can get a better deal outside of the park. That does not mean that we are not supporting the park.

So, when we come here, a) we almost always exclusively camp in Ontario Parks. The one exception being Haliburton Forest. But, outside of that, we’re almost exclusively in parks.

We try and go out of our way to visit some of the less popular parks, which is key because parks like Killbear aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

There is that constant drive of traffic. But if you can find some of the less popular parks in your area to support, whether it’s for day use or an overnight, that’s a great way to show your support and help to make it clear that all these additional parks are needed.

And then there are other opportunities and other options within the park that you can support. Whether it’s renting canoes and kayaks, which we do occasionally. It could be purchasing from their Park Store. We often will pick ourselves up an ice cream just for fun, or we’ll pick up some of the swag from the park, if it’s a park that we love.

Finally, there are opportunities to donate to Ontario Parks, and we do do that as well.

So, there are many ways that you can support Ontario Parks and not necessarily have to buy the park wood that, you know, might frustrate you because you have a hard time getting it going.

John: Ya, and speaking of supporting Ontario Parks… So, we booked originally for Friday, Saturday and then go home on Sunday.

Britt: Sunday’s here.

John: Sunday’s here, and Sunday evening has come, so… I work afternoons, don’t have to go in until 4 PM on Monday.

Britt: It’s 6:30.

John: Ya, so we booked an extra day.

Britt: We realized that we should have booked an extra day because we do love being here so much, and it did work in our schedule that we could stay the extra day. So, this morning, John got up, he drove down to the park office, and he booked that extra day because our site was still available.

So, we extended our trip one more day ‘cause we could.

John: And just a heads up, if you do decide to do an extension of your stay, you would have to bring up the paperwork from the post and from your dash up to the front with you.

I didn’t realize you had to do that, so I had to make two trips up to the front to do that. Because they will not give you the new paperwork if they have both, they require both slips back before they give you the new slips.

Britt: That being said, now that we’ve established that we absolutely love this park. We’ve raved about all the things we love about it and admitted that we ended up extending our stay so that we could stay here longer. What about a final rating?

As far as I’m concerned…

John: There’s so much for…. Not only so much for people to do, there’s so much for your fur kids to do.

Britt: Ya, the options here are endless. Everything you need, from hiking to beach time to private sites. You can find nice private sites.

Or if you prefer a more community-focused camping experience, if you like that feeling when you’re getting to know your neighbours and hanging out, the sites up in Algonquin offer that for the most part. And there are a lot of really nice big, open trailer-accessible sites up there.

So there really kinda is everything anybody could need in one park.

John: And not only that, this park is open year-round. Not all the campgrounds are open year-round, but…

Britt: Up in Algonquin, they’re open year-round with some of the trailer sites and the roofed accommodations. So, it gives you that option, you can come out. You can do some winter camping. You can go snowshoeing.

So, it does have a longer list than most of the parks we visit in terms of what you can do.

That being said, I’ve said here on our channel before, last season, I don’t believe in giving perfect because there are so many parks we haven’t visited yet. I feel like if I give a perfect somewhere, then I’m going to end up finding something that’s better, and I have nowhere to go from there.

So, I’m going to say a four-and-a-half paw.

John: Ya, I will do the same, four-and-a-half paws on MacGregor. It’s very underrated, I believe.

Britt: So, four-and-a-half paws out of five. If you haven’t tried MacGregor Point, it is a stunning park. We highly recommend it, and we think you should check it out.

John: In saying that… Stay toasty!