A female hiker looks out over Mazinaw Lake from the top of Mazinaw Rock in Bon Echo Provincial Park. (Shutterstock)

ONTARIO - Nearly 1.5-km long and 90 metres high, Mazinaw Rock's sheer size makes it a compelling attraction.

But the Rock, located in Eastern Ontario's Bon Echo Provincial Park, has much more, pictographs, ochre-coloured symbols painted by natives as far back as the 1700s, and tiny cedars nearly a thousand years old that cling tenaciously to its crevices.

Another oddity is lines from American poet Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself. Flora Dennison, owner of an inn built near the Rock around 1900, so admired Whitman that she hired stone masons to carve an inscription from his poem Song Of Myself.

Later, Dennison's son, Merrill, invited Members of the Group of Seven to come and paint, offering free or reduced room and board in exchange for promotional materials. Merrill's donation of the property to the province led to the creation of Bon Echo park in 1965.

Artists still come. So do climbers who test themselves on the Rock's granite face. Tens of thousands of others visit to cruise along the base of the Rock or to hike the Cliff Top Trail.

Friends of Bon Echo, a volunteer group, operates the two boats involved in those activities:

- Wanderer Too'r does 45-minute cruises with a Natural Heritage Education interpreter on board that focus on the rock face. Passengers get to within a couple of metres of several of the hundreds of ochre-coloured Indian pictographs. Departures are at 11:30 a.m., and 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m. Phone 613-336-9863 for a reservation.

- Mugwump ferries visitors on demand across the lake for the Cliff Top Climb. Trails and a series of steep stairs lead from the water's edge to observation decks offering fine views of the lake and the white pine forests.

Park staff say they have noticed an increase in the number of people walking or hiking. An estimated 10,000 a year do the Cliff Top one, and there are five other trails in the park, plus a canoe route.

"This is very much a family park" says Derek Maggs, executive director of Friends of Bon Echo, and camping is a major activity. There are 525 sites, some of which can be reached by canoe (rentals are available in the park) or on foot.

Tip: Walk-in sites numbering 164 through 168 have fine views of the Rock. So does Cabin on the Hill, which sleeps six and rents for $900 a week in peak season. Phone 1-888-668-7275 for for reservations. Two yurts -- insulated tent structures accommodating up to six persons each -- are also available.

Also worth a visit are the visitor centre, where one of the rooms contains information and photographs about the area's logging past, and Greystones Gift Shop, run by the Friends of Bon Echo.

An easy way to reach Bon Echo is to take Hwy. 401 east to Napanee, then go north on Hwy. 41 to the park entrance. A slower but more scenic alternative is to drive east on Hwy. 7 from Peterborough to Kaladar, then north on 41.

Phone 613-336-2228 for more information about the park. The Friends of Bon Echo's web site is mazinaw.on.ca/fobecho.

While you're in Eastern Ontario, set aside time to putter along the Rideau Canal, a chain of lakes, rivers and canals which runs between Ottawa and Kingston. It's celebrating its 175th anniversary and has just been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visit rideau175.org.

When I was in the region in May, I stayed at Sam Jakes Inn in Merrickville, an attractive canal-side village about two hours' drive east of Bon Echo and less than an hour south of Ottawa. Phone 1-800-567-4667 or visit samjakesinn.com.