[These lists are based on my somewhat limited experiences with both provincial and regional parks so the things I mention might not apply at all parks of those types.]
Provincial Parks
Provincial parks provide free firewood to campers
Arguably, provincial parks have more modern and cleaner Service Centres for their washrooms and showers.
Have paved roads throughout rather than gravel roads
Provincial parks usually provide a full range of planned activities for kids and families throughout the summer
Though no more dedicated than regional staff, provincial parks tend to have larger, better trained staffing complements (eg. on-site conservation officers)
Regional Parks
If you have a seasonal site at a regional park, you can usually keep it from year-to-year (and some even offer winter storage so you never have to move your RV.) This also means that many people at regional parks will build up their site with decks, windbreaks, wood and tool sheds, etc.
Many regional parks will provide water and/or sewer hookups which you don’t get at provincial parks
Regional parks are generally less expensive for both overnight and seasonal sites
Arguably, you’ll find a wider range of amenities at regional parks – paddling pools, swimming pools, attached golf courses, playgrounds with more variety than at provincial parks (which I think are all one design, pretty much across the province) and more.
Some regionals allow you to pay for “extras” – a second camper parked in your site, having an outdoor fridge or freezer, etc. but I don’t think provincial parks have an option to do this, even for a small fee.
There was no shortage of songs to listen to during today’s solar eclipse. But in terms of a song to highlight for my Music Monday post, there is only one choice – a song I’ve loved since it came out in 1983 (and which I kept playing on repeat throughout the morning before the eclipse started!)
And how lucky for us to be on a stretch of five days of holidays which meant we were able to sit right in our camp site watching the eclipse with the properly ISO-certified solar glasses we got from Best Buy, long before there was a run on them?
Not sure if there’s another name for this style of campfire (maybe “log cabin”?) but I’ve become a big fan of it this summer, partly because you can build it so big, sort of like the world’s most dangerous game of Jenga! 😉
The day after a fun pot luck supper with many of the seasonal campers who live near us on Saturday night, Shea and I got busted the next day trying to build a giant honeycomb fire (not lit) in the firepit of another couple whose husband is a particular aficionado of this style of fire (they’d run into Fort Qu’Appelle for supplies but pulled up at their camp site just as our tower was starting to reach out of their fire pit, not the five foot height we originally planned!) 🙂
We were out at the lake all weekend and just got back today (Tuesday) but I’m going to do a few quick backdated posts for the past few days starting with the Friday Fun Link I missed – Reddit’s r/solareclipse sub-Reddit which actually works really well as a delayed link because it now has lots of great images from Sunday’s solar eclipse.
