Bon Echo Provincial Park Back Country Camping - Joeperry Lake: Site 514

Located on the opposite side of the boat launch at Joeperry Lake, site 514 is a bit of a trek through rough waters on a windy day.  We arrived at the boat launch near 10:00 AM and sat patiently watching the waves bash against the shore.  Hoping that each passing hour would bring a lull in the weather and allow us to launch the canoes, we sat ashore drinking water, eating sandwiches and checking weather reports on our smartphones whenever we could get even the tiniest signal.

The photo above doesn't do justice to the water conditions that present on this day.  Most people would hop right into their canoes head to their site without simple knowing that it would be tougher to paddle on the water.  We on the other hand, brought so much gear and knew that it was a risk.  After waiting a couple of hours for the wind to calm, we decided that it was best to load the canoes and head to our site. 

We had to paddle around an island that sits in the middle of the lake.  The biggest problem was paddling north on the lake into the wind.  Our canoes resembled tiny freightliners because of all of the gear that each of us brought.  Turns out that the weight of the canoes may have helped us keeping steady on the waves.  Regardless of sitting level through the waves, we still had a lot of work to do.  The wind was so relentless and kept pushing us back and at times into the rocky shoreline of the island.  It took us over an hour to make it around the island and finally to site 514. 

After finally reaching site 514, we unpacked the gear and sat exhausted.  The site itself sit's on a small peninsula between Joeperry Lake and Pearson Lake.  The wind didn't stop at all.  Putting up the tents was even more exhausting on this site.  Having so much of the site exposed to the lake, we didn't have any cover from the wind.  At one point we even tried to hang a tarp between trees as a wall hoping to get some relief.  That didn't work at all.  In fact the tarp ended up tearing and almost flew away.   It wouldn't be until late that evening when the sun was setting that we would get some relief.  The site was quite private however we could see another site directly across the water from us.  The backwoods behind our site were quite dense with the a few bogs, we didn't explore much.  Our tents were on a slight incline and didn't have much flat surface here.  A decent site but I doubt that we will book this spot again.