Rainbow Falls Provincial Park

It’s close enough to a couple other campgrounds - Neys Provincial Park, Pukaskwa National Park - that it didn’t really make sense to stop.

We like to get a few hours of driving in on a drive day, after all - especially when it comes to that stretch between Lake Superior Provincial Park and Thunder Bay.

This time around, we decided to add it to our little tour of Ontario’s Superior Country.

First, there was our second visit to Aguasabon Falls & Gorge - an attraction we first visited in 2023.

Then, we took a short drive down to Terrace Bay Beach, which - like Rainbow Falls - is located within the region of the Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area .

Unlike Rainbow Falls though - which is a Provincial Park - Terrace Bay Beach seems to be a Parks Canada location.

Anyway, definitely check those places out, but - for now - how about we talk about our experiences at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park.

The Basics:

Campground Name: Rainbow Falls Provincial Park
Address: P.O. Box 280, 1004 Hwy 17 Terrace Bay, ON P0T 2W0
Website: Rainbow Falls Provincial Park
Price: Ontario Provincial Parks uses a pricing matrix across all their parks. See 2024 Camping Fees for more details.
Reservations: Ontario Parks Reservations
Park Classification: Recreational
Season: May 17, 2024 to October 15, 2024 (Day use & Rossport Campground), May 17, 2024 to September 15, 2024 (Whitesand Lake Campground)

Logistics

With two separate campgrounds, the logistics at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park are a little odd. Here’s the basic information you’ll want to know, when planning your visit:

Registration and Check In

We booked our trip 5 months ahead of time, on the Ontario Parks website. No problems at all, and we were able to secure an amazing waterfront site!

Check in was quick and easy, as usual at the Ontario Provincial Park.

Maps and Signage

A few thoughts on getting around at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park:

Park Map

The park map is mostly pretty good. It’s an 11 x 17, double sided, full colour map. One side has a full map for the Rossport Campground, as well as a park overview map for the Whitesand Lake Campground.

The other side has a more detailed map of the campground area of Whitesand Lake Campground, including the East Beach day use area.

No real complaints, aside from the fact that there are some connecting trails - in Whitesand Lake, in and around the trailheads and the dog beach - that are not shown on the map.

I would have liked to know where all they went, especially as the campground and east beach areas weren’t accessible by road.

Signage

There wasn’t a ton of directional signage in the Rossport Campground, but then again... you can see pretty much the entire campground from almost anywhere in the campground.

It’s tiny, and it’s very open.

When it came to the signage at the Whitesand Lake section, there was some VERY contradictory information on the signage.

On one sign, it said that there was no one on duty, and that the hours were 8 am - 10 pm.

Right across from it - on the actual gatehouse - there was a hand written whiteboard sign, telling people to get out by 4pm.

We managed to miss THAT sign on our first visit to that section. We drove in after setting up, hoping to get in a walk on the Rainbow Falls trail before supper.

We saw the blue sign, and figured we had tons of time.

As we got closer to the trails section, we happened to see another one of the hand written signs - it was already after 4 at that point! So, we turned around - thoroughly unimpressed with the situation.

Waste and Water Services

The situation at Rainbow Falls is... less than ideal.

The fill and dump stations are split up by several kilometres, and the garbage dump area is really small.

So, the main Trailer Sanitation Station is located in the Whitesand Lake Campground - a single platform on a loop off the main road, as soon as you get into the park. (Before the gate).

This was a single lane, with no bypass. There WAS a fill platform after that, but the hose was tied up to a tree, with a big notice about it being non-potable / boil water advisory.

There’s a fill-only station in the Rossport Campground, kind of right in the middle of the campground, next to the picnic shelter. Kind of awkwardly placed - for us to fill on the way out, we would have needed to pull a really tight U turn in the RV, whichever way we tried to do it.

Filling on the way in was no problem, though - it’s a threaded hose, BTW.

The garbage dump was small and up a few steps, and the recycling bin was tiny.

Of note: There were a couple campsite clean up stations - with a rake and shovel. That’s nice to see!

Connectivity

We had really great phone and internet connection - with Rogers Mobile - throughout the Rossport Campground, and in all the areas of the Whitesand Land Campground that we had access to.

Accessibility

Overall - at least in the shoulder season - this is not an very disability-friendly campground.

The garbage can is located up a set of stairs, there is no wheelchair access to the beach. (And getting down to the beach will be difficult for anyone with mobility impairment.

None of the trails are wheelchair accessible. The Superior Trail isn’t really appropriate for anyone with a mobility issue / using mobility aids.

Rainbow Falls Trail is boardwalk the whole way, which is nice... but there are a LOT of stairs. I mean .. A LOT.

So if you’re in a walking boot or using a cane, it should be fine, but definitely not wheelchair accessible.

Beyond that, the comfort station is designated as being barrier-free... but that’s about it.

Pets

Dogs aren’t allowed on the beach at Rossport Campground, but there’s a really nice leash-free pet exercise area and dog beach at the Whitesand Lake campground - several kilometers up the highway.

It has a small parking lot, which leads to an open area with a few small, looping trail areas around it. There’s a picnic table and a fire pit there.

There’s a short set of steps down to a private dog beach, on Whitesand Lake.

Aside from that area, dogs are required to be on leashes at all times, and owners are expected to pick up - and properly dispose of - their dog’s droppings.

Parking

Overall, the parking situation seems pretty decent, for the size of the campground being supported. None of the parking areas we used at the Whitesand Lake Campground were busy at all.

Then again, those parking lots were just supporting the Rossport Campground campers - they didn’t need much in the way of parking.

It’s hard to say how the parking lots may fare in the summer, when the other campground is open.

Miscellaneous

So, a couple things to mention:

1. After the horrible stay at White Lake Provincial Park, I made a point of googling “train” with “Rainbow Falls”, and it really didn’t bring anything up.

... there was a train. It was relatively close - you could hear the rattle of the tracks - and it didn’t blare the horn as much as the one at White Lake did, but it was definitely there, and it was annoying.

2. Rainbow Falls is in an area of low light pollution, and is fantastic for star gazing, especially down on the Lake Superior shoreline. We got a few good photos of the Milky Way over Lake Superior.

That said... not great for Northern Lights viewing.

There WAS Aurora Borealis activity on one of the nights of our stay, but the best view we could get was down on the lake, looking back up over the campground.

There were headlights from the highway that would ruin some photos, and the treeline is definitely too close to get great photos.

That said, East Beach in the Whitesand Lake is *probably * a good place to see the northern lights... if we’d had access to it. We did not, though, so we can’t comment on any intrusive light sources, etc, that may be present there.

Campground Amenities & Info

We visited during the off season - so many of the regular campground amenities were closed for the season.

Here’s some basic information, though:

Creature Comforts

There are two comfort stations at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park - one in the Rossport Campground, and one in the Whitesand Lake Campground.

Both are designated as barrier free, with flush toilets, showers, and laundry facilities.

We were unable to see the Whitesand Lake comfort station, and did not end up using the Rossport Campground comfort station.

Aside from the comfort stations, there are a couple privies / vault toilets in the Rossport Campground, and a couple more were accessible in the day use area of the Whitesand Lake campground at the time of our visit.

Park Store

There’s no standalone park store at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, but there’s a small selection of souvenirs and camping supplies available at the Rossport Campground gatehouse.

You can also buy ice and firewood there.

Visitor Centre

There is no Visitor Centre at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park.

Day Use Area

There are a few day use areas across the two campgrounds, though not all of them were publicly accessible at the time of our visit.

The Rossport Campground has a small picnic shelter, as well as some picnic tables along the grassy area, overlooking the Lake Superior Beach. There’s even a firepit!

The West Beach day use area was accessible though - it was cute! A small, clean beach with several picnic tables scattered around it.

There’s a firepit with a few park benches around it, as well.

There’s also the aforemention dog beach area, as well as a picnic table early on, on the Rainbow Falls Trail. It’s on a big wooden deck, overlooking the lake and the start of the falls.

Campsite Details

As mentioned, there are two separate campgrounds:

On the north side of Highway 17 (The Trans-Canada Highway), the Whitesand Lake location offers about 100 wooded sites.

About half of these sites have electrical service, a few are pull-through sites, and a few are near the shores of Whitesand Lake.

There are only 36 sites - and it honestly doesn’t even feel like that many! - about ⅔ of which are electrical sites. All have a fire pit and a picnic table, and about a dozen of the sites have water views.

It IS wide open, with very little in the way of privacy... but it was a surprisingly quiet place, at least during our visit.

We realized that it was likely the back of someone’s campsite! We think maybe site #21, but it could be #25.

Imagine walking out of the back of your campsite to THIS! Probably the best lake front site I’ve ever seen!

Our Campsite

We may not have had a private little inlet to ourselves, but we had an AWESOME site.

Wide open view over Lake Superior, with a little path through the embankment, down to the beach.

Immediately behind our campsite was the little stream where McLean’s Creek ran into Lake Superior, which was a salmon run at the time of our visit!

I’d never seen salmon head upstream, so I spent a fair amount of time down there, watching nature happen.

Entertainment and Activity

Some basic information on the outdoor experiences you can participate in while staying at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park:

Hiking

There are 3 main hiking trails in the park, plus a few extensions off them. Here’s some information on the trails:

Back 40 Trail / Back 40 Lookout Trail - 3.5 km, Moderate/Difficult

This trail was in the gated area of the park, so we didn’t end up doing it. Per the trail map, though, it starts out with a 0.57 km trail, which leads to a 1.5 km loop.

128 metres from where the loop starts, there’s an offshoot trail - the Back Forty Lookout Trail.

No distance is given for that one, but - after mathing it all out - it’s got to be a bit less than 0.5 km, each way. (Assuming all other distances are accurate, anyway).

The site description says it’s an old road that “climbs steeply”, taking you up for views of Whitesand Lake and the surrounding area.

Rainbow Falls Trail - 2.2 km, Moderate/Difficult

This trail is listed as being 1.1 km, but it’s really more of a “choose your own adventure” kind of thing.

Starting out from the parking lot, you come to the park’s namesake waterfalls pretty quickly, with a nice deck type overlook over the start of the falls.

From there, it’s a series of stairs and boardwalk sections that follow the cascading waters of rainbow falls for about 0.3 km, to the bridge that crosses the falls / Hewiston River.

These gave you the BEST views, IMHO - but involved some steep rocks, roots, uneven footing, etc.

As you go down the final steps to the bridge, you can look down to the right and see the moss-covered remnants of an earlier set of stairs.

Anyway, the bridge gives you some nice views up and down stream - and that’s where I ended my trail, each time. So, for me the trail ended up being about 0.6 km, round trip

I’ll let him tell you about it:

“The trail gets much more difficult at this point, with steep inclines and rocky paths, winding up with some great forest views.

I wish I had time to keep going, it is a really nice trail if you can handle the difficulty.”

The Extension Trails

Had he continued along that trail, he’d have been on the 52km Casque Isles Trail section of the Voyageur Trail.

This is a very challenging hike, known for some rugged trail conditions, amazing panoramic views of Lake Superior, and a few Red Chairs along the way.

This section of the trail leads to the village of Rossport.

If you exit the campground and cross the highway (a little to the west of the gate), you can access the Schreiber Channel Segment of the Casque Isle Trail, which is another 13 km long segment of trail.

This section takes you to / through locations such as Twin Harbours, Flint Island, Winston Point Lookout and Selim Lookout.

You can continue along the same trail all the way out to the communities of Terrace Bay and Shrieber, including Terrace Bay Beach and the trail terminus at Aguasabon Falls & Gorge, should you so choose.

Superior Trail - 1.1 km, Moderate to Difficult.

This trail is 1.1 km long on the trail itself. You can do it as a 2.2 km return trail, or walk back to your starting point along the campground road.

Neither trail head is particularly well marked, we accessed it via the parking lot at the Dog Beach.

Porter did this one alone, so I’ll let him tell you about it:

I chose to follow the road, which doesn't offer a great view but is faster.”

Biking

There aren’t any dedicated bike trails at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, but guests are welcome to go cycling on the campground roads.

The park also rents out bicycles and helmets, on request.

Swimming

There are a few swimming areas across the two campgrounds, which offer wildly different swimming experiences.

If you’re looking for sandy beaches, you’ll want to head to the warm inland waters of Whitesand Lake.

If you’re not up for driving ~5 km to seek out the warmer inland waters of Whitesand Lake, there’s always the cooler Lake Superior experience, with a rocky beach and crystal clear water.

I LOVE the rocks on the Rossport Beach - every colour of granite stone you could imagine. I even saw a bright yellow stone with white and black inclusions.

If you’re going to swim in Lake Superior, just be mindful of the undertow - especially at the mouth of McLean’s Creek.

Birding, Wildlife, and Nature

When we pulled up, we weren’t under then impression that we’d see much in the way of birds.

Over the course of our stay, though, we didn’t do too poorly!

We saw Rusty Blackbirds for the first time, right in our campsite... and both Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles flew overhead, as we photographed them from the beach below our RV.

While we didn’t see or hear anything along the boardwalk trail (the falls were pretty loud!), the short walk from the parking lot to the first platform on Rainbow Falls trail *erupted* with bird activity.

Overall, we saw : American Crow, American Robin, Bald Eagle, Black-Capped Chickadee, Common Raven, Dark-Eyed Junco, Golden-Crowned Kinglet, Golden Eagle, Hairy Woodpecker, Ruffed Grouse, Rusty Blackbird, Turkey Vulture, and White-Throated Sparrow.

... and we heard: Fox Sparrow, Great Horned Owl, Northern Flicker, and Northern Parula.

Boating

Lake Superior is the largest fresh water lake - with a total surface area of over 31,700 square miles (over 82,000 square kilometres), you can imagine that Rainbow Falls Provincial Park is a popular spot for a variety of water sports.

Apparently, canoeing and kayaking on Lake Superior is similar to doing so on an ocean, which I find cool.

That said, there’s no actual boat launch at the Rossport Campground, or anywhere in the park where you can launch onto Lake Superior.

There IS a boat launch at Whitesand Lake - but it was gated off, and far enough off from the gate that we were unable to see it during our visit.

Those boating on Whitesand Lake are required to avoid swimming areas, as well as the area above the falls.

Fishing

Fishing happens in a few areas at Rainbow Falls provincial Park:

On Whitesand River, you’re likely to find Brook Trout.

If you go out on Whitesand Lake, you can expect to find Bass and Lake Trout.

For those who venture out onto Lake Superior, expect to find Lake Trout, Rainbow Trout, Salmon, and Whitefish.

I had originally assumed them to be trout - thinking salmon was quite a bit bigger than what I was seeing - but it turned out that they were pink salmon.

My cousin works at Quetico, and was able to identify them for me. Unfortunately, she told me that by the time they run into the streams - and turn the colour they were in my photos - that they weren’t any good to eat.

I don’t want my first fishing experience to be for mushy fish, so we skipped attempting it. Which, really, is probably for the best.

Fishing for them after they finally get intro that stream after SO much effort... seems kind of mean, TBH.

I did kind of want to scoop them up out of the lake and transport them upstream a bit, though. They were definitely having serious difficulty fighting the stream out.

Discovery Program

As with most of the parks, Rainbow Falls Provincial Park runs a Discovery Program during the summer.

It sounds like this is mostly the Exploration Station / Discovery Activity Book, exclusively in July and August.

We didn’t see any facilities where other programming or events may take place, nor did we see any old event calendar signage left up from the summertime.. So no real idea what may have been on offer!

Miscellaneous

While the campgrounds are both gated during the winter, the campground roads are “open” for cross-country skiing.

Niantic Games

There were a couple Ingress Portals / Pokestops / Gyms in the Rossport Campground, and we were in range of one in our own campsite.

There were a few more in the Whitesand Lake campground, mostly at the Rainbow Falls Trail head / parking lot area. Plenty of cell phone connectivity in both places (Rogers).

Final Thoughts

So, kind of a mixed bag on this one. I liked that there was easy access to the campground, directly off the Transcanada Highway.

Loved, loved, LOVED our campsite. It wasn’t great for privacy, but that VIEW - and the salmon run! - were spectacular.

We were lucky to have a lot of wind/big waves during our stay, which muted the train noise a fair amount. On a calm day... that could have been a lot more miserable.

There wasn’t a lot in the way of amenities or activities available at the time of our stay, but we LOVED the Rainbow Falls Trail. I can’t think of any other trail - anywhere -that we’ve done multiple times on a trip, never mind 3 times in one day.

The situation with the separate campgrounds was annoying, especially with the 4pm gating on the one that had all the trails, etc. The sunlight would have been best over the falls AFTER the 4pm close time, so that wasn’t ideal.

Overall though, I’d say that the campsite view + the Rainbow Falls trail were strong enough pros to bring the whole experience into a net positive.

More Provincial Park Campground Reviews

Want to read some more of what we have to say about the campgrounds we've stayed at? Here are some more reviews!

Agawa Bay Campground, Lake Superior Provincial Park
Arrowhead Provincial Park
Awenda Provincial Park
Balsam Lake Provincial Park
Bass Lake Provincial Park
Bon Echo Provincial Park
Bonnechere Provincial Park
Bronte Creek Provincial Park
Canisbay Lake, Algonquin Provincial Park
Chutes Provincial Park
Darlington Provincial Park
Driftwood Provincial Park
Earl Rowe Provincial Park
Emily Provincial Park
Fairbank Provincial Park
Ferris Provincial Park
Grundy Lake Provincial Park
Inverhuron Provincial Park
Killbear Provincial Park
Long Point Provincial Park
MacGregor Point Provincial Park
MacLeod Provincial Park
Mara Provincial Park
McRae Point Provincial Park
Neys Provincial Park
Pancake Bay Provincial Park
Pinery Provincial Park
Point Farms Provincial Park
Port Burwell Provincial Park
Quetico Provincial Park
Rabbit Blanket Lake, Lake Superior Provincial Park
Rainbow Falls Provincial Park
Rideau River Provincial Park
Rock Point Provincial Park
Rondeau Provincial Park
Sauble Falls Provincial Park
Selkirk Provincial Park
Sibbald Point Provincial Park
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
Turkey Point Provincial Park
Wheatley Provincial Park
White Lake Provincial Park