Six Mile Lake Provincial Park: Video Review

Are you considering a trip to Six Mile Lake Provincial Park? We recently visited this family-friendly park north of Port Severn, Ontario. Located just off Hwy 400, this park is easy to get to and has plenty to offer including 3 beaches, boat docks, hiking trails, and more!

In this review, we are going to share our trip to Six Mile Lake Provincial Park with a focus on pet-friendly travel. For this trip, we were accompanied by our 3 dogs Daviana, Indiana, and Lucifer.

At the start of the video, we will share some of the beautiful sights and experiences we encountered during our 9-day stay at the park. Then, we’ll dig into the review with some tips and tricks, a breakdown of what the park has to offer, and 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.

Six Mile Lake Provincial Park – July 2022

Britt: So, here we are at Six Mile Lake. This is a park that is special to me because I have been going since I was a baby.

John: In your mama’s belly.

Britt: In my mama’s belly. So, it’s one we go to every year but, of course, we have to make sure to cover it here for all of you so you know how pet-friendly it might be. Indy here is going to give his two cents and spirit by being present.

John: He’s our special guest here today.

Beaches, Boating, and Campsites (5:23)

Britt: The first thing you guys want to know when you’re thinking about a pet-friendly site obviously is the dog beach. The dog beach here is a total win. It’s not huge but it’s sandy and they actually groom it just as often as the day use beach and the regular camping beach. So, it’s kept in really good condition.

John: That’s the first thing I really noticed about the beach here, that it’s really well taken care of. It’s really groomed and…

Britt: Plenty of space to swim and dig.

John: Yes, plenty of places for your pups to dig.

Britt: There are no backcountry sites here. There are some more private or walk-in sites. Our site is actually a walk-in site. It’s like 75 m from the dog beach parking lot, actually, to our site. There are other walk-in sites here at the park. But, there’s also some larger RV sites. So, if you’re coming with a larger trailer or an RV, there are options.

John: There is also a boat launch. You can actually reserve slips up at the front office to unload your boat.

Britt: Which is great if you want to come boating. I mean there are some sites right by the boat docks down there where you can hang out and literally see your boat right in front of your site. You can go out whenever you want. So, boater dog lovers, cat lovers, it’s a great one!

Road Noise (6:57)

John: Just a heads up that on the majority of the sites you might hear a little bit of road noise. It’s close to the 400. I don’t know if you can hear it on the recording or not.

Britt: You might hear it behind us. Most sites have road noise here. Ours does. But if you go into the very back of the Maple loop, which is the furthest loop away from the road, you can get away from that for the most part. Most of them really far back there are free of the road noise. But the problem is you are then closer to the marsh, so you have more mosquitoes. So, it’s kinda that balancing act to find out what’s right for you.

John: Also, if you’ve been here for a while, the road noise tends to get washed out by the sounds of nature, everybody at the day use beach, and whatnot.

Day Use Beach (7:38)

Britt: Ya, for sure! And I mean, for the day use beach, it does fill up quickly. We are relatively close to Toronto. So, on a weekend it’s not uncommon for it to completely fill up and then it spills into the other beaches. Even the pet beach we find sometimes, on the weekends, people will kinda filter over there and you’ve got all the radios and parties and whatnot on the pet beach. But, during the week, complete opposite. We can actually see the day use beach from our site here and during the week you hardly see anybody.

Hiking Trails (8:10)

John: And the cool thing is there are three separate trails at Six Mile Lake. They are the…

Britt: Sorry, Dav is actually breaking into our cooler right now to drink water, so… the joys of being pet-friendly flyers!

John: So, anyway, there are three trails here and they all pretty much intertwine with each other. They are different levels of difficulty.

Britt: Different lengths, different views. Some of them just take you through the woods, some of them will take you right past the marsh. There’s the David Milne Trail, the Living Edge Trail, and the Marsh trail, and they are all well worth it. But you do have to watch the signage carefully because it’s very easy to get from one trail to the next and to kind of get mixed up back there. So, make sure you know where you’re going and what your plan is.

John: I think we’ve been lost a couple times.

Britt: In the beginning…

John: That just adds to the adventure. The cool thing is that the staff here is super pet friendly.

Britt: I don’t think we went anywhere where we didn’t get smiles at the dogs, comments about how cute they were. We don’t have the cats here this trip because it’s a longer trip and Jinx doesn’t like long trips. She only likes short ones. But we do have all 3 dogs here and the staff were super friendly.

Firewood (9:34)

John: Another thing for you guys who don’t like the Ontario Provincial Park firewood.

Britt: Which is almost everybody who’s tried it.

John: Ya! Just a heads up, on your way in on the 400 there is the On Route… Well, it’s not an On Route but it is a service center at exit 156. There’s a Tim Hortons there, grab lunch, pizza, burgers, all that stuff. But the gas stations there actually have pretty good firewood for the price. Which is better than the Ontario Park’s wood.

Britt: And it’s super close, so it’s easy to get.

John: There’s also another spot just off of Big Chute Road, just before you enter the park. So, just keep an eye out for that and happy burning!

Britt: I mean, everybody loves a campfire. Right? It’s a huge part of camping.

John: Ya, we’re having one tonight.

Park Store (10:32)

Britt: Exactly, we’re having one tonight. So, those who like getting souvenirs or maybe forgot something. You came to camp and realized, oh shoot, I have no toothpaste, or something. The camp store here is really good. It has everything you might need and more. We’ve swung up a couple times even just to get ice cream because… we could. Like, not ice cream scoops but like popsicles and stuff like that. They’ve got a nice little freezer section.

John: And they have your daily use needs like if you forgot a lighter or even stuff to have s’mores or things like that.

Britt: Sorry for the movement of the camera. Dav has decided she needs to lay under the tripod today.

John: She’s a little bit of a character, that one. But ya, they have basically all your stuff that you need and they do have your souvenirs. Anything from a tiny little canoe to shirts, mugs, everything.

Britt: And, of course, they have your patches and your stickers for those of you who are collecting them. So, the camp store is a great place to quickly pick those up. They’ve also got the traditional Ontario Parks ones. That option is there.

Bathrooms and Comfort Stations (11:37)

John: Yep! And bathrooms…

Britt: Oh, bathrooms. So, around here there are a lot of smaller bathrooms that are ‘long drops’ or compostable toilets. For those of you who don’t know what those two are, ‘long drops’ are literally a hole in the ground, and it stays down there until it’s pumped out. Compostable toilets, there is a solar panel on the top and it churns what’s down there to compost your waste. But there’s still a bit of smell. It’s great for the environment, but there is still a bit of smell. There are a few flush toilets around, but they are kinda far and few between.

But, the comfort stations, there are two. There is one up near the front of the park. It’s right by us, actually. And then there’s one right at the base of the Maple loop. They are both very clean, very well taken care of. They have showers and flushable bathrooms for you.

John: The one over at Maple, it’s just a couple years old. Solar powered. The difference between the two is the one at the front, by the store. They both have laundry. But the one is outside and the one on the Maple loop is actually inside. So, you don’t have to worry about getting soaked or anything like that while you’re trying to do your laundry.

Canoe, Kayak, and Paddle Boat Rentals (12:56)

Britt: Ya, so if it’s rainy and you need to do laundry, obviously the place to go is the base of the Maple loop. For those who want to get out and explore, if you’ve been following our social media, you already know that they have canoe, kayak, paddle boat rentals here. Because we took the little one out for his first canoe trip. Which was exciting and Lucifer loved his first canoe trip.

The nice thing about the water here is that there is a no wake zone on this side of the park. Now, that’s not all of the park, but this side of the park is a no wake zone. Which means there are no fast-moving boats, no jetskis, no anything that would make it difficult when you’re taking the dog out the first time. I mean, for Lucifer that was a big deal because he is a little nervous. He’s a nervous pup. He came to us nervous. So, we were able to start here, get him used to going out in the water and comfortable, and then move out to slightly more challenging waters.

If you’re new to canoeing, kayaking, paddle boating, stand-up paddle board, I forgot that one, this is a great place to come out and have that chance to start. And the rentals are super easy.

John: A prime example, for the canoe rental, for a two-person canoe, it was, for two hours, $30. But there is a $100 deposit, so keep that in mind. That will be reimbursed to you as soon as you return the canoe and all the equipment included in that, not damaged or anything like that.

Britt: And it includes the paddles and everything you need. There’s life jackets there that you can borrow. There’s options for all of the above. Make sure thought that if you’re bringing a furry friend to come canoeing or kayaking or whatever with you, that you bring your own life jacket because they don’t have pet life jackets there. Just human life jackets. So, we brought our own pet life jackets for them.

But ya! Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?

John: Not that I can think of.

Britt: I mean, there’s a lot of great waterfront sites. Ours actually has water access right off the site, so our pets were able to go right off the site swimming. That exists all along the lakefront part of the park. They are hard to get. They are very hard to get. So, be prepared to be on at 7 AM and ready to click the button. But it is so worth it.

Our Rating (15:22)

John: Leading into that, what would you give Six Mile Lake Provincial Park?

Britt: Okay, so we’re going to use a paw system. Now, we have 5 pets, 3 dogs and 2 cats. So, we’re going to use a 5-paw system. For me, and it could partially be nostalgia, but I’ll give Six Mile Lake a 4 out of 5 paws.

John: Originally, I think I was at 3.75 paws, but thinking about the nostalgia value… We’ve been together for 12 years now and this was the first place that we ever really camped together. We’ve been here 12 years in a row. So, I think I’ll give that a 4.

Britt: Secret… So that you guys know a little more about us. When we got together, he had almost no experience camping. I asked him if he’d ever camped, and he mentioned a cabin. So, we introduced him, and he learned how to really camp and get out and be out in the outdoors. I started him on tenting, he’s been tenting ever since. But this is the park it all started at.

John: Yep! Full circle!

Britt: So, that’s our review of Six Mile. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments. We will watch them and answer anything that we can and if we can’t answer something, we are more than happy to direct you to where you could get those answers.

John: For sure! I guess the only thing to say is ‘Happy Camping!’

Britt: Happy Camping!