Killbear Park Camping Review: The Pros and Cons While Tent Camping There

Killbear Provincial Park is a located on Georgian Bay in the Parry Sound District of Ontario, Canada. Killbear offers many amenities and gives access to some of the best sandy beaches, and Canadian Shield with rocky ledges to hike too. The best part for of the cliffs is how they over hang and allow people to cliff jump off with only a bit of a hike.

It takes approximately 3 hours to drive from Toronto to Killbear Provincial Park.

Amazing Bathrooms - Killbear contains so far the best bathrooms I've ever seen. Not only was the comfort stations impressive. The showers were bigger than some places I've lived in the past and were nicely cleaned. What is even more surprising is the out houses have flushing toilets and running water. How crazy is that?

Natural Scenery - While walking and enjoying the scenery, you can clearly see the camp has been left untouched with as much as possible left to it's own natural setting. The park showed well since it had with very little change or disturbance to the forest and plant life caused byhumans. I also noticed the Park had left a lot of the fallen trees to remain and bush plants to be left to their own outcome v.s having someone go around spending their day to make it look pretty for campers. Besides the roads which can not be helped, the camp grounds is almost as natural as you can get from todays camp grounds.

As you can see from the picture to the right, even deer just roam around the front entrance. My kids went crazy when they saw it.

Cliff Jumping - Killbear Park has some of the nicest cliffs I've seen. Many of the cliffs or jumps face a large body of water with a a simple and easy to run setup for those who are worried about tripping and falling. There is one cliff in particular that is very high and hangs over the water and this allows you to get an epic cliff jumping experience if you like. I won't tell you where or how to get to it. Ask around when you are there and you will find it. Just be sure to be safe and take precautions when jumping or around cliffs. Have fun!

Size of Camp Sites - The camp sites are of decent sizes compared to other camping parks. Sure they may not be as big as those found at Sibbald Point. But they are still good compared to the average and in my opinion, much better than Algonquin park. The sites contain a fair amount of trees in-between most sites and the trees don't have branches hanging low so you don't have to worry about the chance of burning the forest down if you decide to have a camp fire. I only wish the sites were a little further back from the road. Just a little bit more would of been perfect. However, this is simply solved by just parking your car length wise and blocking more of the road view.

Sites Proximity to Road - Now I know I breifly mentioned it in the pros section how I like the sites but I wish the road was not so close. I had to mention it again in the cons section of this review. There are sites that had water view, good soil and level ground, and a nice mix of shade and sun to keep you comfortable if the weather is too hot or cool on a particular day. I found I was sitting too close to the road at times and it is very noticable on Sunday mornings when people are leaving. I guess the sites could of been deeper.

Can Not Buy Ice - We went to buy ice at HQ or base camp at the entrance and they told us they told us they do not have ice and are not allowed to sell it. Some sillyness about park opening up and local merchants losing money, bla, bla, etc. Its just ice they should have some. Every park so far I've been to does.

Sites a bit messy - This is not so much Killbear Staff's fault but more the fault of the many people who camp there. We found lots of garbage remained at all 3 sites we had. There was left over garbage in the fire pit, two bags of dog poo, beer caps, and lots of little wrappers and pieces of plastic. We got to our site later in the day on Friday so I think the staff should of be able to do a clean up before we made residence there. However for those of you reading this..... Clean Up After Yourself when camping!

The Beaches - This was minor and just me being spoiled with nicer softer beaches, but the beaches were very rough and had lots of stones sticks, and stuff. If only they were machined raked it would be amazing. I saw tractor marks but I don't know what they were for but it was not for raking the beach line.

Over all we had a fantastic time. They have lots to do and lots of beaches. The water was good and the sites were better than average. I can now see why many friends and family I know say they enjoy camping there and many of them claim to camp there every year because they enjoy it so much. So if your looking to camp in Ontario's beautiful provincial parks and don't know were to go, than I would really suggest giving Killbear Provincial Park a try. I only wish I had of had the chance to get some fishing time in while there.