Elk Island National Park

sad

Love this place
, so much to see so much to do, great for hiking,camping, swimming,kayaking, photos, and great night skies for stargazing or checking out northern lights

Not much time to explore since we arrived here late. However took some pictures and saw alot of elks.....

Awesome! A great place to spend the day taking photos of the wild fowl.

To much bugs. And a lake you can’t swim in
But to much adventurous and a very nice playground Top of the line trails for biking and walking.

A good park, great for its conservation efforts, and park staff were incredibly nice and accommodating when we showed up late to the after hours registration office. The Otentiks (a permanent tent structure) were a step above here because they include a BBQ, which is great. There are however some downsides. We showed up late to the park and didn’t know how to get the keys (8pm, our fault for not calling ahead as it says in the email), but the front administration building (which is the first building you encounter) gave no indication of how to deal with this situation, or the fact that we could go to an “after hours” registration office located in the campground. We almost went back to Calgary since we didn’t know about that, so it is a pretty big oversight. Secondly, it is quite buggy and hot, so it can be difficult to enjoy the outside activities such as hiking during the summer, whereas Jasper/Banff/Yoho are all much more enjoyable in this respect. The trails here (from our somewhat limited experience) were not as scenic as a lot of other parks. Would recommend for people interested in camping, but don’t count on seeing tons of wildlife, because that can be quite variable. Also, we heard tons of wolves/coyote howling (much scarier than in movies), so I’m glad we were in a more permanent structure at night.