Some places you can only reach by boat, and the second your boots hit the dock the rest of the world gets quieter. Canada's secluded island park is one of them. A small slab of limestone and forest floating in Georgian Bay, part of Fathom Five National Marine Park up on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. You take a ferry from Tobermory across water so clear it looks fake, and then you're there.

Flowerpot Island gets its name from the two sea stacks standing just offshore, stone pillars the lake has been carving for thousands of years. Walk out to the viewpoint at low light and you'll stop caring about measurements entirely. The water underneath them shifts from turquoise to deep green, and on a calm day you'll check whether your phone camera is broken or whether it's just refusing to do the place justice. It's usually the camera.

The hiking is better than an island this size has any right to offer. There's a loop trail that runs along the cliff edge through cedar forest so old and gnarled it looks prehistoric, trees bent sideways by wind and growing out of almost bare rock. The terrain is rooty and rocky in that classic Niagara Escarpment way, so wear real shoes, not the sandals you bought because I once wrote about buyable sandals. Different context. These trails eat cheap footwear.

Wildlife is a big part of the draw, and the island's remoteness is exactly why. Keep your eyes open on the trail and along the shoreline, keep the kids close, and consider yourself lucky at whatever shows up. An island with no roads and no year-round residents tends to hold onto its animals.

But the beaches might be the surprise. Small cobble and smooth-rock stretches where you can swim in water that's shockingly cold even in August, and clear enough to see your feet at chest depth. Bring a picnic, claim a flat rock, stay the afternoon. Just know the island has limited services, carry your water, pack out everything, and check the ferry schedule before you commit, because the last boat back is the last boat back.

When's the last time you took a boat somewhere with no roads? Might be time.