Looking for a fun country drive for a day trip near Ottawa? I’m going to suggest you point your car to the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (SDG).
Where? I hear you ask. Good question, and easy to answer.
Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry—or simply SDG, as most residents call it—is a largely rural region tucked into the very southeastern corner of Ontario. To the east is Quebec; to the south, New York state; to the north, Highway 417 (more or less) and Prescott-Russell (more on that region in a future post); and to the west, Leeds-Grenville (again, fodder for a future post).
It’s a region of dairy farms and small villages, waterfront and nature preserves, and lots of quiet country roads. Here’s a map, to make things a bit clearer. SDG is inside the dotted red line.
SDG surrounds the city of Cornwall, so I’m going to include that city in these itineraries, too.
Convinced? Here are three fun itineraries in SDG, broken down by interest (food, history and the arts, and the outdoors). All of them are doable day trips from Ottawa, if you don’t mind a bit of driving (and, heck, isn’t that what road tripping is all about?).
For all of the places mentioned below, PLEASE check their websites before heading out! Most are small businesses—many of them family run—so hours and opening days vary quite a bit.
SDG for food lovers
Bring a cooler for this dairy-focused excursion—you’re going to need it! And leave yourself lots of time, as this is a pretty ambitious day trip. It comes in at just over 300 kilometres, which means about four hours of driving on largely secondary roads. Here’s a map of the route.
I’m going to start the itinerary by cheating, as the suggested first stop is in Prescott-Russell, not SDG. Pop into the St-Albert Cheese Co-op (150 St-Paul Street, St-Albert), where you’ll find cheeses of all sorts and you can take a self-guided tour along a mezzanine above the cheese-making operation. If you like poutine, pick up bags of the company’s famed cheese curds, and swing by the restaurant for a freshly made plate of fries topped with curds and hot gravy. The shop stocks a wide range of other local food products, too.
Cheese is also the highlight of the next stop: Glengarry Fine Cheese (5926 County Road 34, Lancaster). My favourite of their cheeses is the Dutch-style Lankaaster Traditional, but the company also makes Swiss cheese, blue cheese, a Welsh-style cheese called Glengarry Fen and several other varieties. Again, you can shop for foods from other local makers here, too.
By this point, you’re probably getting hungry. I can’t blame you!
If you’d like to eat on a farm, you could head to Butte & Bean Farm Café (5875 Glen Brook Road, Williamstown) or Fraser Creek Pizza Farm (19569 County Road 2, Summerstown). Both of them put a high priority on using fresh, local ingredients.
You’ll also have lots of restaurant choices in Cornwall. For a table overlooking the St. Lawrence River, try the Blue Anchor, which is technically just east of the city limits (18396 County Road 2, Glen Walter). For pizza, if you didn’t stop at Fraser Creek, I’m fond of the inventive pies at Esca (317 Pitt Street, Cornwall).
Feeling parched? Craft brewery options include Rurban Brewing (412 Cumberland Street, Cornwall) and, west of the city, Lost Villages Brewery (16133 County Road 36, Long Sault). If wine is more your style, try StoneCropAcres Vineyard + Winery (5242 Smiths Road, Morrisburg), which also hosts a popular concert series.
Next, I have one more cheese stop for you: Upper Canada Creamery (11575 Waddell Road, Iroquois). At this organic farm, you can buy yogurt, milk, cheese and cheese curds.
At this point, it’s time to point your car back toward Ottawa. If you need a pick-me-up on the way home, pop into Harvest Coffee (509 St Lawrence Street, Winchester) for a specialty coffee and some baked goodies. Alternatively, you could go straight to dessert by getting a huge ice cream cone at the Scoop of Jo’s food truck (parked behind a cool shop called The Makers’ Hub, 515 Main Street, Winchester).
SDG for road trippers who like history and the arts
This is a slightly shorter itinerary than the previous one, at about 260 kilometres and 3.5 hours of driving. It’s still pretty long for a day, but doable.
You could shorten it substantially by focusing just on the eastern half (Dunvegan, Alexandria, St. Raphael’s) or just the western half (Morrisburg), leaving the Lost Villages Museum in Long Sault for another day. Also, visiting both the Glengarry Pioneer Museum and Upper Canada Village on the same trip is a bit of pioneer history overkill, as they have a lot of similarities. But if you’re up for a rather ambitious day of driving, read on for the whole route.
You’ll start by heading east on Highway 417, with your first stop a bit off the highway at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum (1645 County Road 30, Dunvegan). This collection of largely 19th-century buildings is smaller and quieter than Upper Canada Village. It hosts lots of workshops and special events, especially on weekends.
Next on the itinerary is the Priest’s Mill Arts Centre (16 Mill Square, Alexandria), where you can shop for original pieces by local artists and artisans. Plan ahead by signing up for one of the centre’s painting, drawing or stained-glass workshops. The centre is located on a site that has been home to various mills since 1819; the current building dates largely to 1902. At the opposite end of the building, you can get a reasonably priced pub lunch in the North Glengarry Restaurant.
Next up is a spot I discovered by following one of those “historical plaque” road saigns. St. Raphael’s Ruins National Historic Site (19998 County Road 18, Williamstown) is a wonderfully atmospheric roofless church on a quiet side road. Just shy of its 150th birthday, in 1970, the grand stone church was partly gutted by fire. It’s a lovely spot for photography or just a bit of reflection. (Feeling fanciful? Think of it as the Eastern Ontario version of Tintern Abbey, the roofless Welsh ruin made famous by William Wordsworth.)
If you have time to detour slightly into Cornwall, at least two sites are worth a stop for history buffs: the Cornwall Community Museum (160 Water Street West) and the Historic SDG Jail (11 Water Street West). But Cornwall might best be left for a separate day trip, because there’s quite a bit to see and do!
Whether you detour through Cornwall or not, the next stop on this route is the Lost Villages Museum (16361 Fran Laflamme Drive, Long Sault). Here, you’ll learn about the communities that were intentionally flooded during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. It’s a fascinating and sad story; the government expropriated every structure in the villages, moved residents—and, in some cases, buildings—to new communities, then submerged the villages beneath the waves of the newly built Seaway. Some of the buildings have been preserved at the Lost Villages Museum.
Also related to the construction of the Seaway is your next stop, Upper Canada Village (13740 County Road 2, Morrisburg). It is home to a number of buildings saved from the Lost Villages, too. Today, it is a living history museum where you can see costumed interpreters carrying out typical 1860s tasks, such as running a general store, baking bread or operating a vintage printing press. The museum runs special events frequently from spring through fall, as well as the popular Alight at Night festival around Christmastime.
Nearby, you can visit the Battle of Crysler’s Farm National Historic Site.
Keep driving west and you’ll soon reach the Upper Canada Playhouse (12320 County Road 2, Morrisburg). From spring through fall, this professional theatre stages a wide range of plays, with both matinée and evening shows.
Here’s where you’ll turn north to head back to Ottawa. If time allows, there’s one more intriguing stop along the way for history fans: Winchester United Church. In the 1880s, a stonemason named Isaac Johnson supervised the final stages of the church’s construction. He was a formerly enslaved man from Kentucky who had escaped slavery during the U.S. Civil War and arrived in Canada in 1867. A cool and little-known story.
Outdoor adventures in SDG
At roughly 200 kilometres, this route is shorter than the previous two, on the assumption that you’d rather spend time outdoors than in the car! With a little over two and a half hours of driving, it’s a very manageable day trip from Ottawa, but it still includes several wonderful sites for outdoors lovers.
First on the list is the Long Sault Parkway, a 10km scenic route that traverses 11 islands in the St. Lawrence River that were formed during the aforementioned flooding of the Lost Villages. It’s a beautiful drive, but it’s also a very pleasant ride, as both sides of the road have wide shoulders and offer great views of the water for cyclists. The parkway is also part of the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail, a 3,600km network of walking and cycling trails that connects much of southern Ontario.
You can enter the parkway from the west side in Ingleside or from the east side in Long Sault. Along the parkway, you can stop at two beaches (Mille Roches and Woodlands) for a refreshing swim or to put your canoe or kayak in the water.
If you are an advanced scuba diver, you might be interested in a dive site off Macdonell Island, where you can see some remnants of the Lost Villages underwater.
Heads up: Mille Roches Beach is closed in 2026 due to nearby roadwork. If you’re planning to stop at Woodlands Beach, enter the parkway from the west gate in Ingleside for ease of access. Also, the Long Sault Parkway is always open seasonally (usually from late April to early November), so check ahead before planning to travel along it.
Birdwatchers keen to see shore birds have at least two excellent choices in SDG. If you don’t mind making your drive longer, you could check out Cooper Marsh Conservation Area (20020 County Road 2, South Glengarry). It’s home to some 650 species of plants and animals, which you can explore via a 9km network of boardwalks and trails. Cooper Marsh is about a half-hour drive east of Long Sault, so it will add an hour total to your round trip.
Closer to Ottawa is the Upper Canada Migratory Bird Sanctuary (5591 Morrisons Road, Ingleside), the largest bird-banding site on the Atlantic Flyway. Roughly 150 bird species have been identified here, and trails and boardwalks take you close to them. A seasonal campground (spring through fall) lets you sleep among the birds; the sanctuary itself is open year round.
If you’re travelling in September or early October, you could swing by Cannamore Orchard (1480 County Road 32, Crysler) on the way home to pick apples and enjoy family activities. In the weeks before Halloween, the orchard also hosts the very popular Acres of Terror haunted house event; you’ll want to book as far in advance as possible for that one.
Accommodations in SDG
These trips are all structured as “day trips,” but I’ll readily admit that they can be quite ambitious trips to complete in a single day! If you’d like to stay overnight and stretch the adventure out, the Parks of the St. Lawrence operates a number of campgrounds in SDG.
Not a camper? I can highly recommend Auberge Chesley’s Inn in downtown Cornwall. It’s housed in a beautifully restored 1814 red-brick mansion, a stone’s throw from the St. Lawrence River, and the breakfasts are amazing.
If you’d like to stay there or elsewhere in SDG, you can find and book accommodations using this map.
Wherever your travels take you in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, have a great time! It really is a special corner of Ontario for a day trip from Ottawa.
Disclosure: I once stayed at Auberge Chesley’s Inn free of charge for review purposes. If you book accommodations through the link or map above, I will receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting this website!
As the owner of Ottawa Road Trips, I acknowledge that I live on, work in and travel through the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be present on this land. Ottawa Road Trips supports Water First, a non-profit organization that helps address water challenges in Indigenous communities in Canada through education, training and meaningful collaboration.
