Cell Phone Service: Bell, Telus, Koodo & Virgin Mobile - cell service was excellent and reliable. If you've been to this park please let us know your experience with cell service, especially if your with a service provider different from the ones mentioned.
Virgin Mobile was excellent at site 171 - Jingwakoki West. Not so great when visiting family camping out at Babawasse. Loved, loves, loved our campsite. Killarney is next in August. Our site was non-electric but electric has been restored to the park!!! Jingwakoki comfort station had zero hot water. Bruuutal. Babawasse wheelchair accessible comfort station also had no hot water. Deplorable. Showers to the left had semi-decent water temps but we didn’t learn that until our last day and a half. This was a huge source of frustration and disappointment. There was no showable effort of resolving the water issue. Will prepare to solar shower or set up a shower station outside our trailer to enjoy. Ended up “bathing” in the sink in our pop-up aframe-does not have a washroom. Despite the water frustration, we will be back!!!
Glad you gave our favorite park at least a 9. We have been there for 14 night trips and still run out of time of everything we like to do. you'll have to take the trip to Eau Clair Gorge next time. it is gorgeous. Also there are trails and falls in North Bay to do too. We love Long Lake usually when we are on it we are the only ones on it. Serenity. This year we did the Superior route and although they are beautiful parks Samuel is still the favorite for us
Just arrived here, and we are happy to share that hydro has been restored 🎉. This park is absolutely amazing ! All campsites in Babawasse Campground have electrical services. Additionally, campsites 190-216, 163-165, 185 and 188 in Jingwakoki Campground offer electrical service.
Amazing Park and glad you enjoyed! Our family have been going to this park for over 25 years. (We live in North Bay.) I pretty much raised my kids at Sammy D. every summer. I want to add that this is a great family park. Kids can safely run around and ride their bikes. And, paddling up the Amable du Fond River is a wonderful experience, with lots of wildlife to see and great fishing. By the way, you folks were camping just 2 campsites away from my family. I heading out that way again next week. Cheers!
I love the look at this park, such large campsites (lots of pine needles on the ground), very clean facilities and beautiful sandy beaches and many trails! Definitely adding this to my list for next year as well.
I've been coming here since I was a kid and I have so many great memories from fishing off the docks in Babawasse to having a car breakdown and being forced to leave it there a week or two before we could come back and pick it up! Heading there again in a few weeks too! I do miss the bridge that connected both campsites but I do get why they had to take it out.
Great video, yes Ben one of the best things I purchased 2 years ago was a Alberta Lithium 100 amp hour battery, replacing my two extremely heavy golf cart batteries, had to buy their 10 amp charger as my converter won’t charge battery fully, absolutely no issues, especially with our schwintech slid out ( need full voltage to avoid issues)
So nicely produced and made . Also a great park would love to go to . Really appreciate this and all your vids Thanks so much for all . Keep doing it .Am a a camper myself. Great Awesome
Hello Ben and Cheryl. I am here right now and love the park. However a lot of the sites in Jingwakoki have a lot of rocks and roots making tent placement difficult. It is pouring here now and a lot of the sites here are flooded.
We have visited this park several times. It is very nice. Your description of the entry road as rough is .... generous lol. It was really bad. But nice park and interp centre.
Hi there, Coles. Jim and I are going to camp at Sam de Champ mid-August to Sept. 1/24. According to the message board for the park, electricity has been restored to this park. Not sure if all the park has electricity yet. It still shows non-electrical in the Jingwakoki campground. We are all set with our power bank and solar panels, so we'll be good. We have great affection for this park. Our family went there year after year for decades. So it is like coming home when we go there. Yes, the road in is bumpy, but it keeps the speed down. We will keep you informed about the electricity situation. Take care, Terry.
We just got back from an incredible stay at this park. We wouldn't likely have gone if we hadn't watched your review. Thank you for sharing the information with us
Thank you for this video! We just went camping at this park over the long weekend, we had site 188 and it was absolutely massive! We only camp with hammocks but you could comfortably fit multiple tents, note that this site has a downward slope. The tubing is such a fun activity, expect to get banged up a touch. Cheers.
Love the campsites, They all look great . The tubing looked fun But poor Cheryl lol. Love that it has so much to do and what a pretty park have to love those Northern Ontario area's. Electrical Yes would be nice for those of us who need or want it. Thank's so much for this.
best i find in battery's is 2 golf cart 6 volts ,you can run them down to all most 0 . plus you can recharge in any temp. also they have a high amp hour . i used them for years
Have camped there for years. That cold water spring is a wild thing. We attempted to follow it up to its source but we could not find it. Its hard to explain the difference in temperature. It has to be close to freezing.
Plans to travel to Nova Scotia fell through so looked over a few of your videos and decided to book Sammy D. Not sure if the site I picked is a good one but I think the hiking and kayaking will make up for it.
You guys are adorable! Thanks for the review! (I just got back from a three night visit to Restoule, and wanted to give you a head's up that they now have an off-leash dog exercise area! The outhouse next to our site would definitely be rated a skunk, though... I was so disappointed!)
These videos have come out at the perfect time! I'm heading to Algonquin (Kiosk) and Driftwood in September with the possibility of a day trip to Samuel from Kiosk. I'm considering changing Driftwood to Samuel now. Decisions!
Personally I would do Sammy D over Driftwood for sure. But, then again, if you have a waterfront site at Driftwood it's tough to beat that. Decisions, decisions...
Great looking park. Looks like an extension of Algoquin. Have to try it at least once. Too bad you need 2 cars to do the tubing or take a very long wet walk back to where you started. Checking the website it appears the hydro will return in the future to the campground. Some technical issues being resolved. Entertaining video. Thanks.
Nice park, I definitely agree with the having to go back there. Gotta check out more of the trails and the mattawa river for sure. I'm still on the fence on the tubing. Cheers!
That's "Honey Take My Hand" by Cody Francis. That was our opening theme song for seasons 4 and 5. We use a few Cody Francis songs in our videos. We get all our music from Epidemic Sound.
Sounds like our kind of park! We will have to check it out next year. We switched to lithium this year and well worth it! We also added more solar panels to our roof. We haven't been in a powered site for two years.
I'm still trying to figure out the whole camping without power thing as I'm sure you could tell in the video. I like the portable solar generator because I can move it to a sunny place. Most places we camp the trailer is in a shaded lot so we wouldn't get much sun on the roof.
May I make a suggestion for your consideration? Perhaps you have already tried this…if not, you may wish to consider this….we always camp and hike with our 30 lb Labradoodle. I always use a waist leash with a harness on my pup. It makes hiking with the dog much easier and keeps both your arms/hands free to balance yourself or grab onto rocks/trees on those more rustic/rough trails. I find using a leash and collar can easily pull me off balance and pulls at my arms too much especially going uphill where the dog wants to jaunt up quickly. Sometimes I even take her off her leash just for the hills and leash her back up where she is waiting for me at the top!
Thanks for the suggestion. He is a bit of a handful. He's so excitable and pulls so much. We started using a Halti head harness and that helps a lot. He's not to fond of it though.
Great Video folks, you`ve just made up my mind for a summer vacay ,what about the dog Beach area ? i need to get more North and do a 2 parter at Achray and there , Thx for this , Happy Camping, Cheers !
Unfortunately there is no dog exercise area. Staff said we could use the old (no longer used) group site on the way to the day use area. It's not on the water and didn't look too inviting. It's a shame they don't allow the dogs to use the boat launch area for a swim.
I guess you could say that next time you buy batteries for the trailer, either consider buying larger amp-hour rated batteries or maybe lithium like you talked about.
Yup, i made the switch to lithium batteries, 200AH and i managed 6day 5 nights with barely any sun to recharge them, my fridge is 12v only aswell and on our last day i still had 23% battery 🔋 no voltage drop nothing! Best purchase ever!
Most of the time we use electric sites, so i went with a budget solution, 2x 100AH ecoworthy in parallel, its opened the door to take those nice non electric waterfront sites and not worry about it!
Another great video!!! Thank you for sharing your trip at Samuel de Champlain. I’m hoping to go next year. I know my mother would prefer electricity, however, I’m okay without it since tenting until the recently. The tubing section, did you need a vehicle parked there to go back to the entering area, or is it walkable? Would it be beneficial to have a paddle when tubing? Looking forward to your changing batteries video. Unfortunately my battery died on me twice so I know I no longer have 100% power from it now. Thinking of changing to lithium as several people talk about it.
We were lucky when tubing, that we had two vehicles so that made it easy. Many people walk. It would be about one km to walk on the park roads. I don't know exactly what we're doing about batteries yet. I'll figure it out.
What a great park! I love how big & private most of the sites are. The waterfall was a sweet find & your taste in stickers is impeccable. :) Sorry to see the issues with the batteries - but it would seem weird if something didn't go wrong, right?
We love the park BUT the road and the hydro not being repaired in 4 years makes us feel the management there is shaudy. No one ever has an answer to our questions. It's so sad.We used to love it there.
@6:17 you posted Generator Hours. Where did you find those? I don't see them specifically listed on the Ontario Parks website anywhere other than general info about limiting use of generators.
That was on the bulletin board outside of the comfort station. It's strange that there isn't a consistent time for generators throughout Ontario Parks. Each park has their own hours. It's usually posted on a bulletin board or in the pamphlet you get when they get there.
Unfortunately they don't have any dog exercise area. I asked staff and they said that we could go to the old group site (not in use anymore) to exercise our dog. It would be nice if they made the boat launch in Babawasse a dog exercise area.
Your battery monitor was showing surface charge. If you monitor your battery charging, you will see 13 to 14 volts when it is fully charged. Then, it settles down to 12.6 once the charge is completed. so your app was misleading you. Hence your that was too fast comment. It would have been interesting using an actual battery charger plugged into your power box.
Yeah, I didn't like using that app because I didn't understand the charging process well enough. I'm glad I switched to LiFePO4 batteries with a Bluetooth monitor since then. Much easier and accurate.
Barrier free is the term Ontario Parks uses to mean it's wheelchair accessible. Barrier free sites are often next to a comfort station. They are usually quite flat with no rocks or tree roots. Sometimes they have a special wheelchair usable picnic table and sometimes a raised fire pit.
@@CampingwiththeColes That's cool and will tell you the basics. However, that one will wont give you a completely accurate reading. That tells you the current voltage which can range widely and settle after charging. You need a monitor with a "shunt" which will measure the actual power being spent. Especially if you get a lithium because with a lithium battery, the voltage stays high until the very end and that monitor wont be accurate at all.
I have a 3000 watt generator but I hate using it. The noise bothers me and I'm sure it would bother the neighbours too. It's a pure sine wave inverter generator that's much quieter than a construction type generator but it still is too loud for my liking. That's why I'm trying out the 1200 watt solar generator. No noise, no fumes, no gas. Unfortunately, no air conditioning either because I need over 2000 watts for air conditioning.
Yeah, I wouldn't complain either because gas generators are permitted and you have one of the quietest ones on the market but it would still bother me listening to it when I'm sitting out at my campsite. From past experience I had to run mine about 4 hours a day to top up the single lead acid battery I was using.
