The Parks of the St. Lawrence runs a number of campgrounds that jut into the St. Lawrence near Cornwall ON. Generally less busy than the better known Ontario Parks, these campgrounds offer lovely campsites by the river. There is lots to do in the area, from the Upper Canada Village, to Cornwall and the Saunders hydro generating station.
The campground is about 400 km from Toronto, along Hwy 401. There is ample charging available. We stopped in Bellville, a 4 cabinet Flo station, and Gannanoque at another 3 cabinet Flo station. There is a fair bit of charging in Kingston, and also at the various OnRoute stations along the way. The one in Gannanoque had a lovely food truck right by it, which made for a convenient lunch stop. On the way back, we also stopped in Coburg, for a top-up, also it turned out, the dog needed a walk.
One certainly could stop in Kingston to explore the city on your way. But somehow the kids just wanted to get to Camping, so that is what we did. The Leafs 550 l boot held our camping gear quite comfortably, and as we booked an electric campsite, we simply charged the car while we slept. Magical.
The Upper Canada Village explores life in the region in the 1800’s. At the time Canada was divided into “Lower Canada” and “Upper Canada”, which roughly corresponds to Quebec and Ontario today. For May, the water was surprisingly warm, although my daughter did compare the swimming experience to an ice-bath.
Al told, the drive took us about 7 hours. Divided between 5 hours of driving and 2 for charging. We did wind up spending a little more time charging than we needed, at the first stop, the kids had a hard time finding the bathrooms, while at the second we enjoyed our lunch a little longer than necessary. We might have gotten away with 5 hours of driving and perhaps 1 or 1:30 of charging with more attention paid to these things. Of note, we were only about 100 km out of Montreal, had we gone for a city weekend instead in Montreal, I recon it could have been done in 8 hours, 6 hours of driving, with about 2 hours of charging.
Electric car adventures 