On a Kawartha Highlands lake north of Peterborough, the canoe goes quiet between strokes, granite and pine around the shoreline. The water is still enough that the drip off the paddle is what you hear. Portages stitch one lake to the next, a short carry over rock and roots with the boat on your shoulders. You work a loop of those lakes until the light goes flat on the water.
Ontario Parks allows only backcountry canoe-access camping here, with no car camping, and calls the park the second-largest in southern Ontario after Algonquin. Algonquin Provincial Park is the Toronto campervan trip.
You park at an access point, unload the canoe, and start at the water. Parking is limited, and facilities are limited, so you treat that lot as a put-in. Pick the access point from the Ontario Parks map, because the park does not name a road into it.
The backcountry stays open year-round. A night inside the park is a canoe-in night on one of those lakes after the portages. Paddling is the ice-free season trip.
The van night is Warsaw Caves Conservation Area, a short drive northeast of the city, in the woods along the Indian River. You wake to river and trees, and you can walk from the site to the mouths of the seven caves. The Lookout Trail is the longer walk, across potholes and kettles scoured in the rock, to the stretch where the Indian River disappears.
It is the closest vehicle campground to a Kawartha Highlands paddle day. A canoe and kayak launch opens onto the Indian River, and rentals run from there if you did not bring a boat. Sites are unserviced, with a comfort station for washrooms, showers, and laundry. If you need more sleeping space than a van, look at RV rentals in Peterborough.
Otonabee Conservation takes every campsite booking online only, so lock that site first. From November to May, as of September 2026, camping is closed and the gate is day parking only, with no caving.
Petroglyphs Provincial Park
You walk a boardwalk that rings an open rock face of carvings, the Teaching Rocks, the shelter there to protect the stone. Ontario Parks calls this the largest known concentration of Indigenous rock carvings in Canada. The park is day-use only, with no camping, and it opens seasonally in spring through fall.
Peterborough Lift Lock
Two hydraulic tubs hang over the Otonabee, and a boat rides up between them in the open air. Parks Canada runs Lock 21 as one of only two hydraulic lift locks on the Trent-Severn Waterway, with no camping and overnight mooring for boats only. Lakefield is the next lock town up the corridor if you want another station on the same water.
Balsam Lake Provincial Park is the Kawartha Lakes drive-in night on these lakes. Sandbanks Provincial Park is the Belleville trip, dunes on Lake Ontario.