Craigleith Provincial Park

During a recent stay at Meaford Memorial Park, we were in the mood to explore the local area a bit more.

After some discussion - and Googling - we decided to check out Craigleith PP. It’s located a short distance from Meaford, at the base of Blue Mountain.

It’s also a WIDELY panned Provincial Park in Ontario camping Facebook groups, reaching almost legendary status for how much hate we’ve seen posted about this park.

Clearly, we had to consider checking it out!

So, I Googled for some basic information on it, and came upon mention of fossils.

This revelation was WILD to me. In everything we’ve heard about this park (poor maintenance, loud traffic noise from the highway, etc etc)... never once have I ever seen a mention of there being fossils there!

While there’s only a single line dedicated to the existence of fossils on their own page, that was enough to seal the deal for us - we’re always down for fossil hunting!

So, we spent a lovely afternoon hunting fossils on the shore of Georgian Bay, and had a grand old time.

Then, we checked out the campground, to see how it measured up to the derision we’ve seen about it.

Let us tell you all about it!

The Basics:

Campground Name: Craigleith Provincial Park
Address: 209403 Highway 26 Blue Mountains, ON, L9Y 0T6
Website: https://www.ontarioparks.ca/park/craigleith
Price: Ontario Provincial Parks uses a pricing matrix across all their parks. See 2024 Camping Fees for more details.
Reservations: Ontario Parks Reservations

Logistics

Registration and Check In

We booked our day pass online, just 30 minutes or so before the park office closed. We had no plans, wanted to explore, and it seemed like a good - if spontaneous - idea.

We showed up only 10 minutes or so before the office closed (it closed at 4, but day passes go til 10 pm), but the staff was still super nice and helpful.

We liked that the guy suggested a picnic or fossil hunting, and gave us a tip on where the best area for fossils was. (Down the dog beach and to the right).

A note on check in: This is a gated park, you need to check in and get a bar code to scan, in order to enter.

There’s a small parking lot to the right as you approach the gate, with a 15 minute limit.

I thought this seemed pretty obvious as we drove up, but after we checked in, we watched someone park *in the lane in front of the gate* and go in.

... luckily, there were 2 entry gates,

Maps and Signage

Park Map

The park map is a 2 sided, 11x17", full colour/non-glossy map. Along the top of one side of the page is a big park overview map - with all the campsites listed.

The rest of the page is information on making reservations for camp sites, day use, and the picnic shelter, as well as a max fine table for offenses in the park.

The other side of the page is general information about the campground and surrounding area, as well as a map of nearby trails and nearby provincial parks.

One weird thing: There are references to areas on the website - Accessible showers in area B, a park alert for the washrooms in area D - but there is NO mention on the map as to where these areas are!

No campground divisions are shown at all, much less labeled as such.

Signage

The signage for the day use area was adequate - you really don’t need much, it’s pretty much a straight shot.

The signage in the camp ground was kind of a mixed bag. For instance, a sign would point you in the direction of the trailer sanitation station, but once you go there... NO idea what you’re supposed to do.

(More on the weird poop loop setup in a bit, though!)

Also: The campground roads are a bit confusing, and there’s not really much in the way of signage to help.

You basically need to keep an eye out for what camp site # you pass, and refer to the map to see where you are/where you’re going.

Services

The trailer sanitation station set up was WEIRD.

Signage would point you to the area of it, which LOOKS to be a loop - and normally, you’d enter from the right side, unless told otherwise.

Going to the right, you come to the dump platform, which is on your left, as it should be.

... but then you end at a road, and basically have to U-turn to get to the fill platform, which would be on your right.

So, without directional signs to tell you where to go, I’d say the best bet is to use the dump platform, then turn left at the road, skip the U turn.

Take the next left after that (just past the washroom building), and loop back to the beginning of the trailer sanitation station - then take the left road, and fill as usual.

As a note: The fill platform is basically in someone’s campsite. When we were there, there were two people sitting right out there, a couple metres from the fill site.

So, be prepared for it to feel awkward.

Also, if you’d like to avoid booking that site: It’s #307.

Accessibility

This is not an accessible park.

They have a couple barrier-free sites - and THEY looked pretty good, cement platforms, big in size, etc - but I wouldn’t expect to leave them much during your stay, if you’re a wheelchair user.

The comfort station/washroom building that was 2 sites away from the barrier free sites wasn’t marked as being accessible, and - even if it was accessible - its closed “due to operational issues”.

According to the park alert, though, that’s area D... but the accessible showers are in area B. That’s... some interesting decision making.

Beyond the comfort stations and washrooms...

There are no paths to the picnic shelter or anything in the day use area, and the grass is not well maintained.

There also didn’t appear to be any kind of accessible entrances to the beach. The few entries we saw were all stairs.

Even if you got down to the beach, it’s not a wheelchair accessible beach - layers upon layers of rough shale.

That said, if you have mobility issues that require aids OTHER than wheelchairs, you’ll probably be fine.

Connectivity

We seemed to have decent connectivity down on the beach, but didn’t think to check it while driving through the campground area - whoops!

Pets

There are two dog beaches - one in the day use area, and one on the northwest corner of the park, in Area A.

We didn’t see the dog beach in Area A, just the one in the day-use are. That one’s not a BEACH-beach - it’s the same layered shale rock as the rest of the beach.

Parking

Most of the sites are pretty small and crowded together, we saw a lot of instances of a trailer fitting in the site, but the vehicle partway out into the (already narrow) lane.

There’s a small parking lot at the day use area, and a small one before the entry gate - I think that’s about it.

Weirdly, the park’s website says that all the sites are accessible by car, but a few - 14, 15, 18, 19 - don’t seem to be.

Which, fine enough if you like a walk in site... but there doesn’t seem to be any nearby parking for those sites.

Miscellaneous

Craigleith Provincial Park’s location - on the southern shores of Georgian Bay - make it the perfect place for taking in a spectacular sunset or sunrise.

While there’s a bit of light pollution off to the northwest, there’s nothing but Georgian Bay directly north of the beach in Craigleith - making it a great place for Northern Lights viewing (when they’re active, of course!).

Campground Amenities & Info

We visited the campground as day users, but did a quick once-over to get a feel for the amenities and park in general.

Here’s some basic information:

Creature Comforts

The comfort station situation is a bit weird. The website mentions that each campground has a comfort station - areas A, B, C, and D, but really there’s only two actual comfort stations.

The comfort stations in Areas A and B have flush toilets, showers, and laundry facilities.

The “comfort stations” in areas C and D are just small buildings with flush toilets - and the one in D was closed at the time of our visit.

Given that there is a park alert on the website about it, we’re assuming it’s not a short term issue.

Now, we need to have a word about the vault toilets.

We used the vault toilet that was next to the picnic shelter. What a sh!tshow.

Sorry, there’s really no other way to put it, and that may even be putting it mildly.

First of all, the building wasn’t even marked as being a toilet, even though the map showed it to be one.

We felt like we were walking up to a maintenance shed. Opening the door kinda felt like we weren’t supposed to be there.

And really... woof. You could smell the building from the road, as you walked up. It was BAD.

This was not a well maintained outhouse by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, the inside of the door had no handle, for some reason.

The door was such that you really needed a handle to pull it closed. I guess you could have grabbed the turn lock and pulled back, but it was just really weird.
So, if you’re going to use the facilities in the day use area at Craigleith, bring hand sanitizer, wipes, and someone to guard the door as you go.

(I get the feeling that up to date tetanus shots wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.)

Park Store

The park store was spacious and had a really great variety of stuff - I’d go so far as to say it seemed better appointed than the majority of provincial park stores we’ve been to.

It carries all the normal things you’d expect - firewood, snacks, ice, souvenirs, a few groceries, etc - but apparently also sells ice cream, slushies, Bruce Trail guides and nature books.

The site mentions that they also have a free book and movie exchange - a really cool idea, and something I don’t think we’ve seen in any other Provincial Park campground we’ve been to.

The store also loans Personal Flotation Devices ($60 deposit), and rents out various forms of sports equipment, like balls and horseshoes.

Day Use Area

Besides the beach - which we’ll get to in a minute - the day use area at Craigleith is... underwhelming.

There’s a picnic shelter you can rent, as well as some picnic tables, fire pits, and BBQs.

It’s just... really small and not in good condition. I feel like even just running a lawn mower through it would make a huge difference.

Also, there’s the aforementioned issue of the washroom.

I can’t imagine planning a family function, renting a picnic shelter... only to smell THAT, and watch family members be traumatized every time someone has to use the can.

Seriously, it was just one flickering light away from being horror movie territory.

Anyway, as with all Provincial Park day use areas, you can book your daily vehicle permit online.

Campsite Details

While we didn’t stay overnight at Craigleith Provincial Park, we did take a quick (and respectful!) drive through the camping area, to see if we wanted to stay there in the future.

So, some general info for you:

1. There is absolutely no privacy, for the vast majority of the sites. They are VERY crammed together, with many instances of camping equipment or vehicles spilling out onto the roads.

2. Related to #1, walking in the campground felt like walking through people’s backyards.

Between that and the weird fill station issue, it was just a really odd vibe. More like a low budget private trailer park, than any Provincial Park we’ve ever been to.

3. There are a LOT of lilac bushes throughout the park - so keep that in mind if you have allergy issues.

4. Pretty much every site that we got a good look at was unmaintained, desperately in need of mowing, and with INCREDIBLY lumpy, uneven ground. I mean to the point where I couldn’t see how anyone would even tent camp there, reasonably.

5. There’s a LOT of traffic noise coming from the highway. The campground runs right along the highway, and there’s nothing to act as a noise barrier.

6. Site 34 - a lakeside site - is nice. It’s about as close as you could get to a perfect campsite, in that park.

7. There’s a weird set up with sites in the northwest corner of the camping area. There’s a road with car access (sites 26-29, 32-34 are along it), with short roads that go to another road running parallel to it, just closer to the water.

... except it looks like that entire road is blockaded off to vehicular traffic, with cement barriers at the end of each access road.

You can get to some of the sites on that back road easy enough, via those roads... there’s just no parking for them.

8. As for the site distribution, the park is made up of a mix of electrical and non-electrical sites, as well as some (area A) that are basically tent camping only.

The interesting thing is that some of the camp sites in area D actually have water hook ups, which is unique when it comes to Ontario Parks.

Each site seems to have the standard “picnic table and a fire pit” setup.

9. Areas C and D are radio-free zones.

Entertainment and Activity

Fossils

This was the whole reason we visited, and it did NOT disappoint. We had the BEST time looking for fossils, on beautiful rocky shore, with a cool breeze washing over us.

Amazing!

As with our time in Rock Point Provincial Park, it was just so awe inspiring to be able to walk through the visual remnants of life from hundreds of millions of years ago.

Once you get down to the beach, start looking at the fractured plates of shale - there are fossils *everywhere*.

The vast majority of fossils that we saw were a form of trilobite - the back of them, I think - but we did find one complete and perfect traditional trilobite fossil!

It WAS a bit weird to be walking over the fossils, though.

Unlike Rock Point, the rocks here weren’t solid, they were very thin plates of shale that would crack and break off as you walked on them.

On one hand, I felt guilty with every crack I heard.

On the other, people walking on - and breaking up - the shale is what has unearthed all these fossils in the first place.

My husband thought to check some of the pieces that cracked as he walked, and found a fossil that HE unearthed.

It’s pretty wild to think you’re the first living thing to lay eyes on something, in 450 million years!

In addition to a bunch of really clean trilobite fossils, we saw quite a few tiny gastropod fossils.

I’d been hoping to see some sort of large shell fossils, but no such luck.

Hiking

There aren’t any hiking trails in the park itself, but there are a few good ones nearby.

Across the highway from the park entrance is a trail access point for the Georgian Trail.

This is a 34 km long trail that stretches from Collingwood to Meaford (either of which is a beautiful destination to end up at!).

Apparently there’s an access to the Bruce Trail somewhere near by, but Google isn’t helping much with that, at the moment.

I probably should just suck it up and pay for the app or a guide, I’m just really salty that they make it so hard to access any information about the trail at all.

It’s a great trail when you happen across an access point, though!

Swimming

So, the park advertises swimming, but I don’t really see this as a swimming destination. Caveat: My issues with it could partially be due to seasonality.

First off, the beach is VERY rocky - not the kind of place you want to lay out a beach towel.

The water itself was shallow, with some weird drop offs... as far as we could tell.

I wanted to go in - the rocks along the shore made it look interesting to at least wade in - but they were SO slimy with vegetation.

There was also some weird funk washing up along the shore, which was similarly not inviting.

Biking

There aren’t any biking trails in the park - and the park roads are DEFINITELY not suited for cycling on.

That said, the aforementioned Georgian Trail is great for biking. Wide trail (at least in the sections we’ve accessed it!), flat, well packed gravel.

Birding, Wildlife, and Nature

The park’s website says that it’s home to a variety of birds, listing off Blue Jays, Cardinals, Chickadees, Finches, Hummingbirds, Juncos, Nuthatches, and Robins.

We saw crows and a REALLY big raven - that was it for our wildlife viewing!

Boating

There’s no boat launch in the park, but the park invites people to launch smaller craft like canoes, kayaks, and paddle boards from the beach.

There are several public boat launches along southern shore of Georgian Bay, though.

Apparently wind surfing is a popular activity in the area, but the closest we saw was just a really cool kite being flown on the beach.

Fishing

Once you find a way to launch your boat into the lake, you can take advantage of all the sport fishing opportunities it’s known for - mostly Rainbow Trout, Salmon, or Whitefish.

If you don’t have a boat, there’s a cool little fishing area just up the highway in Thornbury.

The parking is a bit odd - if you can’t get a spot in the tiny parking lot, you’ve got to find street parking, down a ways - but it was a SUPER cute area when we last visited it.

The Beaver river runs through town, and there were a ton of people fishing in hip waders, from the shore, and out on little rocky bars in the river.

The river is known as a favourite spot for fishing Steelhead, as well as Brook Trout, Brown Trout, Salmon, and the odd Rainbow Trout.

Discovery Program

The park runs a Discovery Program in July and August. One of these days, I need to find out what and where an “Exploration Station” is, but today was not that day!

I’m assuming this is a fairly basic offering - the site mentions a Discovery Activity Book, but that’s about it.

I would hope they’d do something with fossil hunting, though - 100% the big draw of this park, in our eyes!

Anyway, as far as educational opportunities go, there here are also plaques in the day use area, giving details on the park’s historic oil shale beach, the sinking of the Mary Ward, and the fossils, history, and geology of the park.

Niantic Games

We didn’t actually check our app while in this park, sorry!

There are plenty of portals / Pokestops /Gyms all the way up the Georgian Bay shoreline/highway in this area, so I’m assuming they have at least a few in the park itself.

Probably the front gate at minimum, but there were some plaques in the day use area that I would assume would also be stops.

Nearby Attractions

There are plenty of attractions in the surrounding area to keep you busy.

I would imagine that they all have better washroom facilities than Craigleith does, so there’s an extra bonus point in favour of exploring!

Anyway, first and foremost - Wasaga Beach Provincial Park - home of the world’s longest freshwater beach is just a short trip up the coast - under 30 minutes!

Also: if you’re camping at Craigleith, your park pass gives you free access to Wasaga Beach!

Blue Mountain Village is also just a short drive away from the park - 6 minutes, in this case.

There’s also the town of Collingwood, with all the exploration opportunities THAT local area has to offer. In particular, we’ve been eyeing the Scenic Caves Nature Adventures park.

Final Thoughts

So. This was a real mixed bag for us.

Going in, we knew that this campground had a really bad reputation in Ontario camping groups. We figured that checking it out as day users would give us a feel for it, and see how accurate all the hate was.

Will we ever camp there? No. Would we actually recommend camping there? Based on what we saw in late May, absolutely not.

Way too many red flags and deal breakers.

If you can’t get into any other campgrounds, I guess it would be a good base camp for exploring the Blue Mountains area... as a last resort.

Then there’s the day use area. Again, wouldn’t recommend it as a place for a picnic or family gathering, and wouldn’t see it as a destination if I was looking for a beach day.

But fossils?

Oh hell yes! That was an exceptionally cool experience - and I find it wildly bizarre that none of the posts I’ve seen about this park even mentioned fossils!

So, we’ll be back to see more fossils some day. We’ll just be reminding ourselves that actual fossil dig sites probably have pretty sketchy washroom access as well.

More Provincial Park Campground Reviews

Want to read some more of what we have to say about the campgrounds we've stayed at? Here are some more reviews!

Bon Echo Provincial Park
Canisbay Lake, Algonquin Provincial Park
Chutes Provincial Park
Driftwood Provincial Park
Inverhuron Provincial Park
Killbear Provincial Park
Lake Superior Provincial Park
Long Point Provincial Park
MacGregor Point Provincial Park
MacLeod Provincial Park
Neys Provincial Park
Pinery Provincial Park
Point Farms Provincial Park
Port Burwell Provincial Park
Quetico Provincial Park
Rideau River Provincial Park
Rock Point Provincial Park
Rondeau Provincial Park
Sauble Falls Provincial Park
Selkirk Provincial Park
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
Turkey Point Provincial Park
Wheatley Provincial Park