Ontario Parks: Visited and Next
Built from the geotagged photos in Daniel’s Immich account (yevtushenkodan04@gmail.com). Every park below was matched by dropping photo GPS points onto the official Ontario GeoHub provincial park boundary layer. Distances are drive times from home in the Innisfil/Bradford area.
Parks we have been to
| Park | Class | Drive | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beattie Pinery | Nature Reserve | 17 km | May 11, 2024 |
| Earl Rowe | Recreational | 19 km | Regular, 22 visits 2023-2025 |
| Mono Cliffs | Natural Environment | 43 km | Nov 2023, May 2025 |
| Wasaga Beach | Recreational | 56 km | May 4, 2024 |
| Devil’s Glen | Natural Environment | 70 km | May 4, 2024 |
| Pretty River Valley | Natural Environment | 79 km | Oct 7, 2023 |
| Arrowhead | Natural Environment | 160 km | Aug 17, 2024 |
| Kawartha Highlands | Natural Environment | 254 km | Sep 5, 2021 |
Notes: the Wasaga Beach photos sit just outside the regulated boundary, close enough that it counts as a visit. The Kawartha Highlands photos are the same story, 0.8 km off the boundary. Big East River photos all landed on the Arrowhead day trip, so that park is folded in there.
Parks at the same distance we have not done yet
Grouped by the distance bands we actually drive.
15-45 km (the Earl Rowe / Beattie / Mono Cliffs band)
- Springwater, 37 km. Day-use park, 12 km of trails, big playing field. Open year-round; cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in winter. Nothing else operating in this band, which tells you we have basically cleaned out the near zone.
45-90 km (the Wasaga / Devil’s Glen / Pretty River band)
- Sibbald Point, 65 km. Large sandy beach on Lake Simcoe, camping, the Eildon Hall museum. Good day trip or weekend.
- Forks of the Credit, 65 km. River gorge, waterfall, and Bruce Trail section. The closest “real scenery” hike to home.
- Bass Lake, 62 km. Small recreational park with lake swimming and camping, north of Orillia.
- Mara, 69 km. Beach on Lake Simcoe, about ten minutes south of Orillia, picnic shelter and playground.
- McRae Point, 77 km. Lake Simcoe shore, pull-through sites for bigger rigs, 1.2 km nature trail.
- Awenda, 91 km. 2,900 ha of forest on Georgian Bay with 31 km of trails, interior lake for canoeing, and a beach. The standout in this band.
90-180 km (the Arrowhead band)
- Six Mile Lake, 101 km. Muskoka family park, three sandy beaches, canoe and kayak rentals, right off Highway 400.
- Craigleith, 85 km. Georgian Bay shoreline with 450-million-year-old fossils in the shale, at the base of Blue Mountain. Your permit gets you into Wasaga Beach free.
- Oastler Lake, 157 km. Small lake park near Parry Sound with swimming and canoeing.
- Sauble Falls, 162 km. Cascading waterfall with spring and fall salmon runs, base camp for Sauble Beach and the Bruce Peninsula.
- The Massasauga, 167 km. Backcountry camping across hundreds of Georgian Bay islands between Parry Sound and the Moon River. Boat-in or paddle-in only, and yes, it is the rattlesnake’s namesake.
- MacGregor Point, 171 km. Diverse Lake Huron shoreline south of Port Elgin, famous for migrating birds and the spring Huron Fringe Birding Festival. Yurts in winter.
180-260 km (the Kawartha band)
- Killbear, 196 km. The classic Georgian Bay park: rocky shoreline, sand beaches, wind-swept pines, sunset views. Great camping and a visitor centre.
- Silent Lake, 205 km. 19 km of hiking and 17 km of mountain biking trails, no motorboats, two sandy beaches, yurts and camp cabins.
- Presqu’ile, 216 km. Lake Ontario peninsula with a 2.5 km beach, marsh boardwalk, and a serious bird migration hotspot. The lighthouse is a bonus.
- Pinery, 227 km. Lake Huron sand dunes, oak savanna, and 10 km of beach. One of the best beach parks in southern Ontario.
- Grundy Lake, 247 km. Just off the Trans-Canada near Britt. Great beaches, canoeing on countless inland lakes, hiking.
- Algonquin, 249 km. 7,635 square km of interior paddling, plus the Highway 60 corridor with eight campgrounds, 14 interpretive trails, and the visitor centre and logging museum.
How this was built
- Photos: 2,651 geotagged images in Daniel’s Ontario library, pulled straight from the Immich Postgres database.
- Park boundaries: Provincial Park Regulated layer from Ontario GeoHub (LIO Open Data), 347 parks.
- A photo counts as a visit when its GPS point falls inside a park boundary, or within a few hundred metres of it.
- Drive distances: OSRM car routing from the home cluster at 44.195, -79.700.
- Parks listed as “good to go” are all operating parks (116 of the 347 are), so you can actually visit them.
One caveat: this only catches parks where photos have GPS. A visit with no geotagged photos, or photos from before the library existed, will not show up.