We visited Chutes as part of Big Trip #5 in September 2026. 

From Killarney, it was an easy (if boring because we’d already done half of it) two-hour drive to Chutes Provincial Park, a small park on the edge of a small town, Massey.

Chutes is named for a logging chute that diverted logs around the big waterfall, or named for the waterfalls themselves, depending on what you read. Either way, it’s a great stop on the Trans-Canada Highway–and the only provincial park between Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie, about 300km apart.

On the way, we stopped in Espanola to stock our freezer with more Indian food from Sukhdev. We’re loving the abundance of Indian food in Ontario! Lucky for us, Ontario has the largest South Asian population of the Canadian provinces, and Indians are the largest group within that population.

Campground

Our campsite at Chutes was a small, peaceful, and wooded, but not very private. We were happy to have power (our only hookup; not all sites have power) but due to all the trees, Starlink was unhappy until J very athletically wrangled the dish up onto the Airstream’s roof. We had a picnic table, which we appreciated, and a fire pit, which we did not use due to spending our evening at a sports bar. More on that below.

Hiking

There’s just one hike in Chutes: the 3.5-mile Twin Bridges Trail. It’s a beautiful mix of woods and river and waterfalls and we enjoyed it. There’s also a swimming beach on a bend in the river below the falls. Tilly braved the water, but not her humans!

Exploring Massey

After hiking, we went into Massey to see what’s there. The answer is not much! It’s a cute little town, but the only food/drink establishments we saw were a sports bar, and a cafe/bakery, which we’d already spotted online and planned to hit in the morning.

It turned out we were in the market for a sports bar, as J was doing well in his college pick-em pool and was interested in seeing the beginning of the FSU-SMU game (he lost). So we sat at the bar at Wing House (a Canadian chain) for a bit later that evening. They have a big menu of sports bar-type food, and over 150 flavors of wings, and a friendly bartender, and we had fun despite J losing his game.

In the morning we returned to Little Brew Cafe for breakfast sandwiches, lattes, and a loaf of homemade sandwich bread. Loved the lattes, loved the bread, loved the English muffins, wished our sandwiches had not been so dry and bland.

***Tilly Update***

As I write this post (from Rainbow Falls Provincial Park), we’re three weeks into Tilly’s first Airstream trip. She’d hiked with us a few times in VA and done plenty of short road trips, but this was a big change for her. What does she think of all this nonsense? Moving every day or two? Smelling strange new animal scents? Eating exotic animal poo? Running wild for a few hours, then napping hard for a few hours, and repeating? She is LOVING this lifestyle. All three of us are very lucky to have found each other! (Related note: tomorrow–as I write; who knows when we’ll publish this–J and I celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary!)

Back to Chutes: From there we had a nice drive on the good old Trans-Canada to Lake Superior Provincial Park, stopping in Sault Ste Marie to restock at Pino’s–nice grocery store!–but we were too early to get a beaver tail while in town. At Lake Superior Provincial Park we were finally on the shores of Lake Superior!