Pamela:
Hello and good day, eh? Welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela.
Tim:
I’m Tim
Pamela:
and we are from supergoodcamping.com. We are here because we are on a mission to inspire other families to enjoy camping adventures such as we have with our kids. Today we have with us a lovely couple. They’ve been camping together for over 30 years doing Ontario Provincial Park reviews on their YouTube channel for four years. They also do other camping-related tutorials and gear reviews. The park reviews are rather in-depth and hands-on. They love to bike around the parks and give sections of the reviews directly from the source. Tim has mentioned how spot-on the reviews are of the parks they’ve been to and that he’s amazed by their ability to be honest about the pros and cons. Not that the negatives obscure the positives of any given Park. Please welcome Cheryl and Ben Coles from Camping with the Coles!
Ben:
Hi.
Tim:
Hi, thanks for dropping by and having a yak with us.
Cheryl:
Thanks for having us.
How It Started
Tim:
I’ve so wrestled with this first question. I will do one and the other right after because I just flipped a coin. You guys have a gigantic travel trailer that you camp in?
Ben:
Yeah.
Tim:
Have you always?
Cheryl:
Well, it’s average size.
Tim:
Well, okay. I camp in a three-man tent.
Cheryl:
It’s gigantic, then, yes.
Tim:
Have you always camped in the trailer? Did you ever do a pop-up tent before?
Cheryl:
How we started camping was backcountry. Just the two of us. We were what? 18-19 years old?
Ben:
Yeah.
Tim:
Cool.
Cheryl:
Yeah, we did that for quite a few years. And then it was funny. Our first front country or car camping trip was with friends; we’d never done that before. We got to the campground and still packed as if it was for the backcountry. Our friends all had camping chairs, a cooler, and cold drinks. We’re like, what??
Pamela:
Big air mattresses…
Cheryl:
And we had nothing!
Ben:
I had a Honda Civic CRX, which is a little two-seater car. We had everything in the back of that, which was two canoe packs. We were camping. And we had two of those canvas canoe packs. And we went there, and we were watching our friends. And we’re going, wow! They brought chairs! It never crossed my mind to bring a chair.
Cheryl:
We didn’t know any different at the time.
Ben:
Then we saw them load up their tents, and they brought pillows!
Cheryl:
Real food, not the dehydrated stuff.
Ben:
The one guy had a barbecue, and we thought this was crazy. We’ve never seen anything like this. That’s how it started.
Tim:
Excellent. Okay, good. I didn’t expect that answer. That’s awesome.
Ben:
As we had kids, we still did some backcountry camping. And then we moved into more car camping.
Cheryl:
With a tent.
Ben:
Yeah, with a tent. And then it was in 2010 that we got our first travel trailer, a hybrid. So we didn’t do any real step up. We never had a pop-up or anything. We went from a tent to a decent-sized travel trailer.
Cheryl:
I needed a bathroom at that point.
Pamela:
Do you still do any tent camping?
Cheryl:
No, I’ve kept the tent, so you never know.
Ben:
Our garage. Oh my gosh!
Pamela:
We have an extensive collection of tents.
Ben:
We’ve got every level of camping in there. And she keeps on saying we’ll do it again. And as we get older…
Cheryl:
Just in case!
Ben:
Just in case, that’s what she says. So we still have those old canvas canoe packs. We’ve got all the dry bags. We’ve got our canoeing paddles. We don’t have a canoe anymore, but we’ve got all that stuff in the garage, and it just doesn’t see the light of day anymore.
Cheryl:
You never know, though.
Tim:
That’s it. You never know. That’s what I keep saying with our six tents. You don’t know, we might need it. Yeah. Cool. That’s awesome. I want to ask a quick question: a hybrid is fibreglass, but then it folds out, and it’s a 10-footer, correct?
Cheryl:
Yeah, one at each of the ends, so you still have a bit of a tent experience, but you still have the amenities of everything else in the main part, right?
Ben:
You sleep in a tent, like a pop-up. You sleep in the ends. And there’s generally no main bed in the main part of the trailer. It’s the living area. So it’s nice, especially as a starter, because you’ve got a fairly small form, and then you drop out the beds.
One Benefit of a Travel Trailer
Tim:
It’s probably easier to park and wrangle around the trees when you’re getting in your site.
Cheryl:
Definitely, yeah, they’re a little more user-friendly.
Pamela:
Watching other people trying to back their trailers into their sites is enjoyable.
Cheryl:
Yeah, that’s always the big joke of people backing in, especially late at night.
Ben:
You hear a lot of domestic disputes with backing in.
Tim:
You hear a lot of bad words, man. Cool. Okay, what started you guys on the path of doing Park reviews and do-it-yourself stuff and gear, all that sort of jazz? What led you to that?
Ontario Provincial Park Reviews
Cheryl:
When we started checking out provincial parks, we would research stuff ourselves, but then we’d look online to see if there were any YouTube videos of what the park looks like and the amenities, etc. There wasn’t a whole lot. Everybody was pretty much doing just like a home video. So you’d see their family splashing in the water and what they’re cooking for dinner, and that was about it. And we’re like, there’s not enough stuff out there, and people want to know this information. So we decided we should make our videos, and we had a list of things we would cover. And that’s what we did.
Pamela:
Cool. Yeah, like a comfort station. You say the words “comfort station,” which is a vague idea for people who have never been to a Provincial Park before, right?
Cheryl:
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true for all the newbies. They don’t know anything about it. When we first started to camp, we didn’t know anything, either. So we thought, well, we’ll just put out these videos and help others.
Tim:
And I like your sections. Like the Loo Reviews, The Coles notes, you know, that sort of stuff. It’s nice that you have pieces that have become familiar. So you’re looking for those things, and it teaches. Certainly, in the last few years, we’ve had a boatload of new people out camping because there was nothing else to do. The number of times you walk into a comfort station and find somebody washing the dishes, it’s like: “No, no, no, no, no, bad.”
Pamela:
Some parks have added a dishwashing station at the comfort station.
Cheryl:
Yes, exactly. Which is helpful for those people that can’t do it on their site.
Ben:
Our reviews have changed over the years too. When we first started, we thought, okay, this is what we want to show. And then we got people commenting fairly quickly when we started doing the videos. And then people told us what they would like to see. So they developed a lot over the last few years. And people were telling us they wanted to know about cell service. And they wanted to know more areas of the parks.
Cheryl:
Off-leash dog areas…
Ben:
And playgrounds. And they want to see more of the campsites and stuff. And so I think we’ve gotten to a point now with the videos that we do have a set format. Some people want to see the campsites. So we will show some of the campsites. But other people could care less about that. They kind of know on our videos now we put chapters in there. If they want to skip the campsites, they can skip them and go on to the next thing.
Tim:
That’s a great idea, too. We do well in the podcast world. I suck at video editing. So our YouTube stuff is very small.
Pamela:
The formatting of your videos is great. They’re really easy to navigate. It’s entertaining, too, how you add things to them. But how long does it take you guys to edit a video?
Cheryl:
That’s his job.
Ben:
Yeah, that’s my job. But for most of our videos now, I just taught myself four years ago. I taught myself by watching YouTube. I’ve developed and gotten a little quicker at things. Most videos now, if you’re talking hours, it’s probably taken me about 14 or 15 hours to do a video.
Pamela:
The music is great. And as I said, the formatting is awesome. 14-15 hours is long.
Ben:
Because I’m not all that fast at it.
Tim:
I’m not fast at it at all. I don’t do it. It’s like, I know, I’m gonna work on that next weekend. Doesn’t happen. I have all the pieces. It’s there. I just have to do it. Mostly, I need to drag one of the kids out and say sit down and go, okay, show me again. Because when I do it, it’s like, yay! and then I won’t do it for six weeks. By the time we get back to it again, I have no idea what the shortcuts are or how to drop the pieces in…
Ben:
That happens to me all the time. I’ll do something and say, Oh, that was great how I did that in the video, no idea how to do it again. I gotta look it up again on YouTube to find out how to do it. In all our videos, before they get published, I show them to Cheryl, of course, and make sure there’s nothing too embarrassing. And then I show them to our youngest daughter. She’s a professional photographer. And so she’s very helpful. So she watches the videos, and she says, “Okay, you should take that out,” “you should take that out,” “you need to do some colour correcting here,” “you need to bring the saturation up here.” She goes through that sort of stuff to help me out a lot. So she’s very beneficial with that.
Tim:
Well, that would certainly contribute to why they look so great. I mean, they’re great graphics, and the pacing is really good, too. It’s all the levels. Then there are a couple of times where you can tell there might have been the wind in the background, so you’ve had to boost a level to get more of the vocals. I quite enjoy watching them. And for me, that’s kind of weird. I will take any excuse to have anything to do with camping. It’s undiagnosed, but it’s a bit of an issue for me, but I’m a backcountry guy. That’s my number one passion. I love to do that stuff. I often watch your videos back to back, but I could be looking at canoe guys. There you go. That’s your big endorsement right there.
Ben:
Great. Thanks.
Tim:
So here’s a question. I read statistics on it but can’t remember what they were. Ballpark, how many parks do you hit in a year, and is it a three-day shot there? Or do you spend a week there? How does that all play out for you?
Cheryl:
It has varied over the years. This has been our biggest season yet. We’ve hit a total of 20 parks for this season. That hasn’t been the case in other years. I think we will slow it down again after this; it was quite busy. But we’ve gone anywhere from a weekend, which is two to three nights, to two full weeks.
Ben:
We no longer spend much time in one spot because we want to see more parks and check out more things. We did fewer parks in the last two years because the season was shorter due to the pandemic. I think last year it opened middle of June or so, June 11. And then the year before that, I think it was our first trip wasn’t until the middle of July. Yeah, so those are shortened seasons. And this year, with a wide-open season, we just went crazy and said, “Okay, let’s book everything we can do because we don’t know what’s gonna get cancelled”, and nothing got cancelled, so we got a lot of camping in.
Cheryl:
The other thing is when we hit a certain area, like, out east or something, we want to hit more than one park at one time while we’re out there because they’re all in the same area. So you go boom, boom, boom, and tick them all off.
Ben:
When we did our Lake Superior tour, we didn’t want to drive up to Sleeping Giant for 14 hours to spend a few nights there and then drive back. So we made it to seven parks over three weeks. And that was a little much for us. By the time we reached the end of the last park, Killbear, we were pretty wiped from that. And it’s a shame because it’s such a nice perk, but we were pretty wiped out.
Tim:
Yep, yeah. Killbear is a favourite, for sure.
Pamela:
What’s one of your favourite parks?
Cheryl:
Oh, gosh, that’s a hard question. We’ve always said Algonquin was our favourite. It still is, but I think we have to say Agawa Bay at Lake Superior Provincial Park is way up there now.
Algonquin Provincial Park
Ben:
Yeah, that’s a new one. But I still have my heart on Pog Lake. And I know you were at Pog recently.
Tim:
Yeah.
Cheryl:
It’s been our go-to for quite a few years.
Ben:
Yeah, we had a waterfront campsite at Pog. I think it’s campground A. That was the best! We do kayaking. We love kayaking, going down the river to Lake of Two Rivers, and going to the other side of the dam and exploring. Is that the Madawaska?
Tim:
Yes, yeah.
Ben:
And checking that out. And then the bike trails. Taking the rail trail heading over to Mew and Lake of Two Rivers, all that sort of stuff is excellent. That’s the activities we like to do. We like to get out and be active and
Cheryl:
We do tonnes of hiking too.
Ben:
Yeah. And that’s what we liked about Agawa Bay, too, at Lake Superior Provincial Park. It’s a massive Park. So you can travel around, drive to many places and do some amazing hikes and things like that. So we like the scenery.
Cheryl:
The scenery is always the big thing for us.
Tim:
Cool. Yeah, I like it all. But I like big parks. Pog was a fantastic experience. It was very weird to be without our kids because I didn’t even know how to do that.
Pamela:
We were empty nesters.
Cheryl:
You’ll learn to love it more and more.
Pamela:
We’re gonna have to!
Ben:
Your kids might be listening to this.
Tim:
Yeah. So what’s the secret? How do you guys have that much time to camp? How does that work out in your lives that you can go and do a three-week tour? And it’s not the only tour you’re gonna do this summer?
Ben:
Yeah. Well, I retired a few years ago. I was fortunate. I was a police officer. And I did that for 30 years. I was very fortunate that I started when I was 19 years old.
Tim:
Gadzooks!
Ben:
So when I was 49, I had to wait till 50; when I was 50, I could officially retire with a pension. So that’s what I did. I retired and did a few other small things. And we started doing the videos. And Cheryl works part-time.
Cheryl:
I’m a part-time nurse.
Ben:
So yeah, she only works generally one day a week. So that gives us a lot of time. So if we need a couple of weeks off, she has to take one or two days off, so it’s not that big of a deal.
Tim:
Excellent. Cool.
Pamela:
So that’s something to aspire to.
Tim:
Retiring? Yes. Love to.
Cheryl:
It’ll happen.
Ben:
I highly recommend it.
Tim:
Yes, I would imagine! Okay, cool. So I was thinking about Superior and how cold it was. I saw you guys where you tend to show us beaches and stuff like that and jump in some watercraft kayak, stand-up paddleboards. Do you guys have a preference? Does either of you have a preference for that?
Kayak Vs. Paddleboard
Cheryl:
Yeah, I prefer the kayak, and Ben prefers the paddleboard. He likes a board better because it’s more freeing for him. He’s not cramped in the kayak, which he finds uncomfortable doing, and I prefer the kayak because it’s more versatile. You can go in shallower waters, or if the water is a little bit wavier, rougher water, it’s a little more stable in rougher waters, so I prefer that.
Ben:
The paddleboard, me, I love it because you can stand up, you can kneel, you can sit down. I like going out on that, paddling for a little while, and then sitting on the edge with my feet dangling in the water. Maybe go for a little swim and jump back on the paddleboard very easily. It’s a lot more difficult to do that when you’re in a kayak. So yeah, I enjoy the paddle board. I try to use that as much as I can. But if the waters are rougher, I’ll take the kayak.
Tim:
Cool! This question is entirely for me. I just bought, sorry, Thomas, our eldest, just picked me up a 14-foot solo canoe. It’s got the seat inside of it deal. So I need to use a kayak paddle, a double blade. Yeah, what do I need to know about the double-blade paddles? I know nothing about them. I know about canoe paddles. That’s it. So, what should I be looking for in a kayak-style paddle?
Ben:
Well, before we got kayaks, we were always canoeing. And I was usually in the stern Cheryl was in the bow, but she can be in the stern too. We can change. Weight-wise, it’s just better that way. But when we first got kayaking, I think the first time was we rented one at Bon Echo, I think, a bunch of years ago. And I thought it looked difficult. And then I tried it out. Wow, this is the easiest thing ever. This is way easier than a canoe. And I found that anybody could get in the kayak and do a straight line, where if you throw somebody in a canoe or two people in a canoe and say do a straight line, good luck. So the kayak I found was very, very easy. You control everything yourself from both sides of the boat at all times. And I’ve seen the solo canoes you’ve talked about, and I thought those are interesting. It’s a bit of a combination. So it’s a little narrower, right in the centre, so that you can have your kayak paddle out, and it’s narrower.
Tim:
And I think they call it a tumblehome. So it’s, I’m exaggerating, but it’s much narrower at the top in the gunnels. And it sort of curves like that. So gives you more room to dip in with the double-bladed paddle.
Ben:
Yeah, I think you’ll find that is a lot easier to do. And then when you have your canoeing skills, you can do the stuff like going sideways, and the strokes we can still use those strokes the same, but to paddle straight. You don’t have to worry about J strokes or anything like that. Just paddle.
Tim:
Yeah, right.
Cheryl:
I wanted to say a quick little thing. We have something else we learned when we were at Silent Lake on the paddleboard. It’s similar to the canoe; you have one paddle and go side to side, but we saw a lady use her kayak paddle. So if you get tired and want to sit, you can paddle like you are in a kayak instead. So that was cool. And it’s a lot easier, and you go much faster.
Ben:
Yeah, so I started bringing a kayak paddle on the board. So when I’m standing, paddling, and even kneeling, I can use the paddle board paddle, but then I can sit down, pull out the kayak paddle, and take off with that. Get some good speed going.
Tim:
When you say pull out the kayak paddle, where do you stash it? If you’ve got your stand-up paddle and must bring the kayak one, is there a bungee cord in the middle?
Ben:
It has bungees attached to the front and back to carry it on. So you slide the paddle in there, and even if you flipped over, the paddle would stay there.
Tim:
Yeah, cool. Maybe I’ll have to try that because I need more water toys.
Cheryl:
You can never have enough!
Towing a Camping Trailer
Tim:
I don’t think so. Back to the trailer for just a second. It must be a heavy beast. I can’t remember what kind of truck you have. What do you use to tow it around?
Ben:
I have an F150, and the empty trailer is about 5800 pounds. The truck can tow about 10,800 pounds. So when you fill-up the trailer, and then you fill-up the box of the truck, there’s a whole bunch of different weights you have to pay attention to when doing that sort of thing. We have a weight distribution hitch on it, and everything works out okay, but I wouldn’t want to go to a trailer any bigger than that. And on that note, I’ve been to the RV shows, and sometimes you see the salespeople trying to sell people these trailers, and they say, “oh, yeah, you’ve got a Dodge Caravan, it can tow 3000 pounds. You know what? This hybrid here is only 2800 pounds. So you’re good.” Well, it’s 2800 pounds with nothing in it, empty, and nothing in your van. What about when you put another person in? That’s 150 pounds. And what about when you start loading up your trailer? You’re gonna be way over-stacked. And I’ve watched salespeople do that. And it just drives me nuts when they say that. And I have interjected a couple of times, telling people, “No, you don’t want to get a trailer that’s anywhere close to what the maximum is rated for.” Yeah, I usually do half of what they’re rated for.
Tim:
That’s a good rule of thumb. Yeah, I always wonder because you come around the bend on Highway 60, and there’s a trailer in the ditch with a truck beside it, and you know that they came around too fast or was too big, and they hit the brakes, and you’re not stopping that 6000 pounds behind you, not that quickly. So yeah, it makes me sad when that sort of stuff happens. Outdoor shows. Do you guys go? Are you junkies for that sort of stuff as well?
Cheryl:
Yeah, we’ve done quite a few.
Ben:
Yeah, we go to the RV shows, and we like going to the outdoor adventure shows because a lot of this stuff intersects. Plus, we still have a background in backcountry camping. So we still find that stuff quite interesting.
Cheryl:
We like the innovations. What’s better? What are all the changes they’ve made?
Ben:
Cheryl likes buying things. She’s a professional at it.
Tim:
I noticed that. Like your [Pamela’s] sister. Not me! Yeah, I noticed that one of the things you guys do is go into whatever the local town is or into the park store, and I notice browsing happening while you guys are shooting.
Cheryl:
You have to show the viewers what’s out there.
Tim:
Yeah. Some of it has to come home with us.
Pamela:
They have to review it, right? So you have to try it out.
Cheryl:
That’s right.
Pamela:
Any upcoming trips?
Upcoming Camping Trips
Cheryl:
We have two more. We’re going to Mew Lake at the end of the month. And for Thanksgiving, we’re going to Bronte Creek.
Pamela:
It is one of our favourite little local parks. Brandon and I would make little overnight trips there. It’s great.
Cheryl:
Oh, good.
Ben:
We’ve never been there before. We’re just trying to find someplace that’s fairly close to home. We’re from Kitchener. So it’s fairly close to home. And because for Thanksgiving, we try to get the whole family together. So our kids and their significant others and stuff come in, we go with another family, and they get all their kids coming. So we want someplace that’s fairly close. You don’t want to be driving for seven or eight hours.
Cheryl:
Somewhere that we haven’t been to yet.
Pamela:
Well, they’ve got a harvest festival coming up next weekend. And then mid-October, I think they’re doing Halloween stuff. So you can dress up your site for Halloween.
Cheryl:
Yeah, that’s fun.
Ben:
Oh, good. More stuff to pack.
The Loo Review
Tim:
And if you don’t have enough, you can buy more. The Loo Review, what was the defining moment where you said: Oh, you know what, this should be a thing.
Cheryl:
That was my idea. I wanted to do something original and unique. And who is better than me to do it? Because I think I’ve covered every loo out there. So I thought I would do that. And I know we have a lot of surprisingly, we have a lot of kid viewers, and I wanted to do something fun for them too. So that’s why I made the little cartoon and the music and became Cheryl’s Loo Review. I know people want to know what they’re like. A lot of people are afraid to go in them. I want to let them know what’s all out there at each park and how they vary.
Ben:
I told Cheryl a couple of years ago that she should make an app because no matter where she is, she can tell you where the closest washroom is.
Pamela:
Absolutely! That would be valuable.
Ben:
Yeah. And I thought she should do it because she knows, wherever we go, she knows exactly where the washroom is. She may have an issue.
Cheryl:
It was challenging driving up to Sleeping Giant on Highway 17. There isn’t a lot out there, not a lot of places to go to at all. Luckily, I had my trailer with me.
Ben:
With a toilet in it.
Tim:
Yeah, I was gonna say I enjoy it. That might come across as a little weird. I thought it was a good idea. I follow 712 Facebook camping groups, and that comment comes up repeatedly. Where are the washrooms? What is a vault toilet? Or I walked into it, and it was like, “Oh! and then I ran away.”
Ben:
Most of the comfort stations in the provincial parks are fairly similar. You’ll get some that are dirtier than others. But that’s all a matter of what time of day you’re there and that sort of thing. So we thought there wasn’t any real point in rating them because they’re all similar.
Cheryl:
They vary a lot in every park
Ben:
and actually, we haven’t reviewed Pog since we’ve been. We remember when we were last at Pog; it would get a skunk. Yeah, we remember some bad vault toilets at Pog. I don’t know if they’ve improved them. That was probably four years ago.
Tim:
I don’t think I saw anything newer. They weren’t awesome. I would say they were kind of average. They didn’t make me want to run away so…
Ben:
Oh, that’s good. Yeah, we’ve had to run away from some.
Tim:
Well, it’s funny. I can’t even remember which. I watch too many of your videos now. There was one where it never occurred to me to pay that much attention to but the lack of a sink and a lack of a garbage. Or lighting.
Cheryl:
Like if you’re going there at night if it doesn’t have solar lights, you’re gonna have to have your headlamp on.
Tim:
Yep.
Ben:
I never thought of this, personally. I never use them. I don’t think I’ve been at a vault toilet in years. Actually, I haven’t had a shower in a comfort station since we got this trailer in 2017. I shower in our trailer all the time. But, going into the vault toilets and watching Cheryl do the reviews, one of the things that you mentioned is a hook on the door. I never thought of that.
Cheryl:
You want to hang your jacket or knapsack or something cuz you don’t want to put it on the gross floor.
Pamela:
Or your flashlight, even to hang your flashlight.
Cheryl:
So yeah, having something as simple as a hook is important.
Ben:
It made perfect sense when she said it. And I’m thinking, why do you care about a hook? Oh, yeah. If you’ve got a backpack on or something, just put it on the hook, then you don’t have to set it on the ground.
Tim:
Yeah, that’s a good idea too. I don’t know why we needed to discuss the toilet so much.
Ben:
That’s our expertise.
Tim:
Everyone’s got to be good at something. Yeah. So I’ll wrap this up with: I hope our listeners have enjoyed listening to you guys talk about how much you dig doing what you do, and I hope they check out your YouTube channel. It’s brilliant. And your Instagram page. Also, I recommend that when they check out your YouTube channel, they look out for Bonne Chere and Lake St. Peter videos upcoming, and probably a couple more as we head towards Christmas and stuff for sure.
Pamela:
Excellent. That’s it for us for today. Thank you so much to our special guests, the Coles from Camping with the Coles. I’m Pamela
Tim:
I’m still Tim
Pamela:
and we are from supergoodcamping.com. Please reach out to us anytime at hi@supergoodcamping.com and check out our YouTube channel and subscribe, Instagram and our Facebook, and our Twitter. Thanks so much, and we will talk to you soon.
Tim:
Bye
Pamela:
Bye