Two nights in a furnished safari tent at Four Corners Algonquin, four kilometres from the park's East Gate, over the Thanksgiving long weekend. The coach, the tent, four meals, a night of stargazing with an astronomer and a day in the park are one ticket. You book once, with us, and there is nothing to arrange with anybody else.
One ticket covers the bus and the bed. Most overnight trips make you book twice, once for the seat and once for the place you sleep. Not this one. Pick which version of the ticket is yours: a place in a shared tent, or a whole tent for your group.
There are 24 of these. You are placed with up to two others, by the rooming preference you give on the tent survey. Book on one order if you are coming with a friend, or we cannot promise you the same tent.
Sold outFive tents go this way. One king bed and two twin floor mattresses. Select one passenger to book the whole tent, not four.
Sold outNot included: lunch on any of the three days · evening rides into Whitney, $5 each way, booked with Four Corners · your own bedding and pillow, or a $20 gear package from Four Corners
Both kinds of ticket have sold out for this year.
Cancel 14 or more days before you go and you get 90% back.
Choose your own adventure: we drop you off, and the bus picks you up in the same spot.
A few hours on real trail with roots, rocks and some climbing, so wear proper shoes.
Algonquin Provincial Park has more sugar maples per square kilometre than almost anywhere else on the Canadian Shield. By early October those maples are done being green. The red maples go first, flaring into scarlet and burnt orange across the park's old rolling hills. Sugar maples follow in amber and rust. Then the poplars and birches take their turn and fill the understory with gold. It is not a backdrop. It is a full performance.
Your seat for it is a furnished safari tent on a private deck at Four Corners Algonquin, a 90 acre off grid property on Highway 60 in Whitney, about four kilometres from the park's East Gate. The land has been in the same family since the 1920s and the property opened in 2018.
Four Corners is a certified dark sky site with Bortle 2 conditions: off grid, unlit at night, and a long way from any city. That means next to no light pollution. Just stars, the odd meteor, and the Milky Way across the ceiling of your weekend.
A real bed, four meals, and the maples doing their thing.
Saturday night, after dinner
Dinner is done, the fire is going, and then the lights go out. Astronomer Caroline El-Khoury takes the group out into the dark and tells you what you are looking at, as you are looking at it.
Four Corners is a certified dark sky site with Bortle 2 conditions, which is about as dark as Ontario gets. The whole property is built to keep light down. That is the point of it. The Milky Way is not a faint smudge here. It is a bright river of light from one side of the sky to the other.
You do not need to know anything before you come, and you do not need to bring anything but a warm coat.
Your astronomer
What turns a good night of stars into one you remember is having somebody beside you who knows exactly what they are looking at.
Caroline is an astronomer trained at the University of Toronto, with a degree in physics and astronomy. She has done pulsar research at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. These days she runs stargazing tours and night sky workshops across Ontario, and posts her astrophotography as @nightsky.adventures.
She is with us for the whole weekend, so the session is not the only chance to ask her something. That is rather the idea.
Saturday you arrive and eat. Sunday you choose. Monday is slow on purpose.
We pick you up
Just north of the Yonge and Bloor subway station. Please arrive fifteen minutes early.
A furnished canvas safari tent on its own raised deck, with one king bed and two twin floor mattresses and solar lighting inside, and Muskoka chairs, a BBQ, a picnic table and a fire pit outside. Firewood is delivered free. The washrooms are heated, with hot showers, flushing toilets and USB charging ports.
Good to know:
The shuttle bus leaves Four Corners at 9 AM and is back at 5 PM. Pick one of three ways to spend the day. Park day use permits are included. The bus holds 45 people and forest bathing is capped at 20, so spots are first come, first served.
Good to know:
Dinner is on site, so the village is an after dinner outing rather than a meal run. Bongopix Tavern has drinks and live music in a cottage country sort of room, about a five minute ride. Evening shuttles are booked with Four Corners directly and are not part of your ticket: $5 per person each way to Whitney or the Logging Museum, $10 for anywhere further into Algonquin Park.
Good to know:
We drop you back
The bus returns to the same place it left from, so you go home the way you came.
This is our estimated return time, not a guarantee. Traffic can change it and some trips do run late, so please leave yourself some room afterwards rather than booking something tight against it.
This is a fall camping trip. Two nights outdoors in October, in a tent that is not heated. The list is longer than a day trip's for good reason.
Two honest caveats. The tents are weather tight canvas but they are not heated, and October nights in Algonquin drop to around 0 to 5 degrees, with frost possible. Pack warm layers and a sleeping bag rated for cool nights.
Four Corners is off grid. There is solar lighting in the tent and nothing else: no sockets, no camera batteries, no larger devices. There are USB charging ports at the comfort station, so you can charge your devices there. Charge everything before you leave Toronto and bring a power bank anyway.
Each tent has one king bed and two twin floor mattresses and holds up to four people. Individual bookings are placed three to a tent. If you are coming with friends, put everyone on the same order and you are placed together automatically; book separately and we cannot promise it.
After you book, Four Corners sends a short survey and assigns tents by rooming preference: all female, all male, or mixed and no preference.
Four meals are included and none of them is lunch. There is no fridge on site and food is not allowed in the tents, so bring lunches that do not need refrigeration. Food storage is provided. You can also buy lunch at Lake of Two Rivers on Sunday, or in Whitney.
One weekend only, and it does not run again this year. Thanksgiving Monday is the 12th, so you are home for the holiday.
This season has sold out
We're Canada's outdoor bus service. Since 2010 we've taken more than 300,000 people to parks and trails without a car. On this one the bus is only the start: the tent, the meals and the guides are all part of the ticket.
A permanent canvas tent on a raised deck, with a real king bed and two twin mattresses. It is the version of camping where you sleep well and wake up excited instead of sore.
The Mad Musher caters and serves them on site. No reservations, no driving, no debate about where to eat.
Four Corners is a certified dark sky site with Bortle 2 conditions, and the new moon lands on this weekend. Astronomer Caroline El-Khoury runs a guided session on Saturday night and tells you what you are looking at.
Arriving together by bus and gathering round a fire at night makes the kind of easy connection that is hard to manufacture. Come on your own and you will not feel like it.
★★★★★ 4.6/5.0 on Google
“Fantastic glamping experience! Sites are private and well kept, including stone fire pits and solar powered above-ground tents. The comfort station adds to the hospitality with clean, newer, modern style washrooms and showers. Hosts were extremely accommodating!”Steve G. · Google Review
Speaking from someone who doesn't drive. This is a must!! I highly recommend this!Linda Ann · Facebook · Jun 2024
This is a great service if you don't have a vehicle or just don't want to drive. I'm so happy to have discovered this. There will definitely be more Parkbus trips in my future!James Taylor Wilson · Happy Parkbus customer
Parkbus is a great option for nature lovers, whether it's a day trip or overnight camping getaway.The Globe and Mail
Factor in the cost of gas, parking and renting a car, it's a lot cheaper than taking a personal vehicle.Toronto Star
Cancel more than 14 days before departure and you get a 90% refund, with 10% withheld for payment processing. Inside 14 days refunds are not available, except for a medical emergency in the 48 hours before departure, which needs a signed doctor’s note within 14 days of the missed trip and returns 50%. Tickets are transferable: you can change the passenger name up to 48 hours before departure.
If Parkbus cancels a trip, you get a full refund. We decide no later than 48 hours before departure and only on confirmed conditions: the park closed or the park authority asking us to stand down, an evacuation order or alert, an area restriction order, the highway closed, or the trip judged unsafe to run. A forecast is not one of those things, and trips run rain or shine.
Trip details and booking terms
Ontario asks travel companies to put all of this in writing before you pay. We would rather you read it than skim it, so it is here rather than three clicks away.
Registered with TICOTravel Industry Council of OntarioRegistration #5003628Every place and every tent has gone. Put your name down and you will hear about next autumn first.
Not quite the right fit? These all leave from the same spot downtown.
