As some of you know, Dave and I have decided to procure a seasonal site this year for a change. It will be a first for us as we’ve traveled every year since 2007 to many, many beautiful campgrounds. We will still be traveling between time spent at the seasonal site, but the majority of our time will be spent there. For those who don’t know about this change, let me tell you a little bit about the park that we’ll be staying at!

Long Beach Conservation Area, on the shores of Lake Erie will be where we park it from Victoria Day weekend until the end of Thanksgiving weekend. It is a shorter season than I’d like, but there were plenty of things about the park that I really think we’ll enjoy. We have stayed at Long Beach a few times over the years with varying sites in both the North and South Campground. As our trailer grew to the current 36 foot length of our fiver, our choices became more limited. Every time we stayed at the park, we had an enjoyable time. We’ve launched kayaks from the park into Lake Erie and fished for bass, quite successfully I might add! Here are some kayak fishing photos!

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So, the good things about going seasonal will be having a place to leave our fiver without it being in storage. In between travel, we can keep it stocked with the power on and all the slides out ready for our next camping visit. Since it’s only 40 minutes from my job and 25 from Dave’s job, we’ll be able to commute easily should we stay for any extended length of time. Home is about 45 minutes away which makes it easy to make a quick trip back to do laundry, check on the house and should the cats not be with us, check on them too. I suspect with my shift work, we’ll be spending a lot of time during the week along with every other weekend out there. We’ll also be able to take our SeaRay boat and leave it at the park. Although there isn’t a launch large enough for us at Long Beach, Mohawk Marina is close by as is Port Colborne and Port Maitland. We didn’t use the boat as much as we would have liked to last year because we can’t double tow. Our fiver combined with the boat is just too long. In order to enjoy the boat while camping, we had to bring a second vehicle to tow the boat.

The park is right on the shores of Lake Erie with a very nice beach and as I mentioned, a very nice place to launch our kayaks. I plan on leaving one up at the park for those days during the week when I’m alone. There is a rail trail very close by and hiking trails at the park. We’re also in close proximity to the Welland River for kayaking and many more Conservation Areas with more trails. There will be plenty to do, which is important to me since I’ll have my share of time alone at the park. Here are some park photos:

The campsite we’ve booked is very large. At least 50 X 100 feet. It’s a back in with easy access for getting in and out. This is very important to us as we plan to still travel a few times to other parks while we’re seasonal. I love the large pine tree that is on our site. It will provide some shade and maybe a some privacy, since the site we chose and in fact all are very limited for privacy. The site is all grass which we plan on maintaining ourselves. I must say, I’m really looking forward to this new experience. I think the best part for me is being able to stay at our fiver anytime we choose. As well, storage was a challenge last year and I won’t miss it at all!

Besides seasonal, we plan on visiting Selkirk Provincial Park and County Shores in June then Trailside Resort and Balsam Lake Provincial Park in September.  When our seasonal ends in October, we’ll have to find storage for a couple months or at least until our Winter Warriors camping program begins again at the end of December 2018. Of course we’ll still be camping in October with another visit to Bronte Creek Provincial Park planned for the Campers Halloween Weekend and a couple trips to Fifty Point to round out November. I know I will miss Fifty Point this summer. We spent a lot of time there last year and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it! I’ll be posting our itinerary for travel again soon.

Happy Camping!