Grundy Lake is a great place to camp with an RV trailer.  The park is large—almost 500 campsites—but those sites are grouped into several smaller and more intimate campgrounds.

Campgrounds with names like Poplar, Jack Pine, and Balsam. Walking into the park office was exciting because this would be be the first time I’d be camping with an electrical hook-up. My enthusiasm waned somewhat as I was assigned to a campground whimsically and romantically named “Trailer.”

Happily, it turns out that Trailer is a great little campground. Its large sites are ringed by mature spruce, pine, beach, and birch trees, which provide both shade and privacy. The campground is quiet and has feeling about it that encourages slow deep breaths.

My site in the campground named ‘Trailer.’

I spent the previous two days at Killbear Provincial Park where I camped in the midst of a gaggle of young families—children tearing all over the place, dogs barking, clotheslines draped with beach towels, bedding, and underpants. The general hubbub reminded me of family camping trips when I was little.

Trailer at Grundy Lake has a completely different character. My 18-foot camper was the little one on the block and my neighbors were mostly retired couples in a very different phase of their financial life cycle than the young families at Killbear. The happy babble of kids was replaced with bird song and the sound of crackling fires. Sigh.

I have to admit that I was grateful for the electricity. For the past week or so the weather switched back and forth between torrential rain and blistering heat. I pulled up on a blistering heat day, but the rain left a gift–clouds of droning mosquitos. For some reason, I had to wrestle with the weight distribution bars when unhitching the trailer (looking back I think this was because the site wasn’t level) and by the time I had camp set up, I was a cranky, sweaty, mosquito-bitten mess. I walked into the camper and for the first time ever turned on its AC.

At full blast, it had my trailer at meat locker temperature in about six minutes and I could turn it off and take a delicious nap. That evening Milo and I took a long walk and as we were sitting down to dinner it started to rain. What a treat to be able to retreat into my cozy, dry camper, make a cup of tea, plug in my computer, and settle in for an evening of writing.