This is one of the most loved and camped loops in Killarney Provincial Park. It can be done over a weekend (very quickly) or thoroughly enjoyed over a week. During my July trip – I took six days and five nights to do the trip and loved every second of it! It was the perfect balance of moving lake to lake, setting up and tearing down camp, and relaxing.

Join us for a quick recap of our trip!

Firstly, no that was not my campfire that created all that smoke. It was the wildfires in Northern Ontario! As you can see – there is a sepia look to the sky.

This shot of my truck was taken along our route up North.

Bell Lake was very smoky and I considered cancelling our trip.

I’m glad I didn’t. The winds came and by morning the smoke was gone.

We got to our Bell Lake site about 20 minutes after shoving off at the access point. After a 7.5 hour drive, it’s nice to be at the campsite by dinnertime. The next morning was clear and windy and we were on the water by 11 which is a late start for us, but I had a insomnia possibly due to breathing in smoke all night. That wind was good for getting rid of the smoke, but it slowed us down quite a bit. We arrived at the Balsam Lake portage to David Lake after about 4 hours.

I’ve learned that mosquitoes LOVE the portages. They were out in full force on the portage. However, I also noticed (now that I do a triple carry here), that when we passed by a second, third, fourth, and fifth time – the mosquitoes ignored us. Maybe they realized we didn’t taste that good the first trip.

Okay, so about the triple carry. A) I’m 56 years old. B) I had knee surgery last year. C) I’m in no hurry in my older age. D) I love the extra hiking! I see the best stuff when I have nothing to carry. Warblers, flowers, fungus. I highly recommend the triple carry until your weight drops as your food stores are reduced.

This is one of my all time favourite sites on David and the wildlife here is part of the reason why. Here you can see 13 Mergansers – a mom and 12 babies, and a small group of loons. These amazing birds were around our site all day long! At one point there were nine loons all calling meters away from our shore.

We stayed at this site for two nights and I was incredibly grateful for the rest. I caught up on my sleep and enjoyed some reading and creature watching. Our final night, we were accosted by a group of Black-throated Green Warblers who much like Chickadees were very curious and playful. They called and sallied around for about an hour before retiring to the tree canopy as their calls got more sleepy sounding by the minute. We were all asleep by 9pm.

The next day was an easy one. After coffee and a relaxing breakfast by the shore, I packed up camp and the boat by 1pm and we were at our next David Lake site by 1:15pm. The loons were already there.

This is a great site – it’s open and breezy. The wind can get a little crazy on this site, but I always put my tarp up as a wind block. Having a wind-free haven has come in handy many times.

I was so happy to have two (and a half) days at this site! For some reason I was very homebody-ish and stayed at the site the whole time. I didn’t feel like exploring, or hiking, or trying to find Silver Peak again – I just wanted to chill.

So that’s what we did. Swim, rest, journal, eat, creature watch, repeat.

The trip back to the car was fun. It’s way shorter going from David back to Bell. The lift over the beaver dam was interesting to say the least.

I found out later there is a short portage – so we don’t have to drag our boat over the dam. It did make for a cool photo though.

Thanks for reading about our trip. We hope to get back to the park later this year for a couple more trips – stay tuned for updates!

PS I LOVE cooking on the fire. It makes me feel like a cowboy in an old Western movie.