If your camping setup is a nylon dome and a sleeping bag rather than a 30-foot trailer, Ontario's Parks of the St. Lawrence just gave you a reason to book. The agency, which runs ten campgrounds along the river, has added walk-in sites and suspended tree hammocks at its Upper Canada Bird Migratory Sanctuary — a rare nod to campers without wheels.
The contrast with the wider provincial system is stark. Ontario Parks has been busy expanding too, adding up to 300 new campsites and refreshing around 800 existing ones, but most of those are electric sites built with big RVs in mind. Tent campers have watched that rollout feeling a bit overlooked. Parks of the St. Lawrence hasn't abandoned the trailer crowd — far from it — but this year it carved out options for people happy to carry their gear a few minutes down a groomed trail, away from generator hum and patio-lantern glow.
Travel writer Kevin Callan (better known as The Happy Camper) tested the new offerings twice this summer. First came a beachfront walk-in site: not exactly private wilderness, given how busy this corner of the province gets, but a quiet waterfront pitch for a few nights. Two weeks later he returned to work through the other walk-in sites, weathering a proper rainstorm on site #376 — where the reward was serious peace, quiet and birdlife drifting past the tent pad.
The standout, though, was site #301 and one of the new tree hammocks. Picture a suspended shelter you climb into up the middle — Callan compared the manoeuvre to crawling back into the womb, or climbing into a Star Wars starfighter. Awkward entry aside, he slept well and says he'd do it again without hesitation.
What makes these sites genuinely practical is that you lose nothing in comfort. There's still a sandy beach for kids, a comfort station close by, and a long list of attractions along the St. Lawrence — including complimentary tickets to Fort Henry and Upper Canada Village bundled with your camping permit. You trade a parking pad for a two-minute walk, and gain a site that feels like your own.
For tent campers tired of scrolling past wall-to-wall electric RV sites in the reservation system, this is one of the few new developments actually built for them. It's also a gentle intro to backcountry-style camping: you get the walk-in, off-the-grid feeling without straying far from hot showers and family attractions. Book early — novel sites like these tend to fill fast — and pack a rain fly you trust, because river weather doesn't always cooperate.
Story via Explore Magazine Canada.
