Hiking the Marsh Trail – Rondeau Provincial Park

The Marsh Trail is one of the many trails you can visit when at Rondeau Provincial Park.  I camped at Rondeau from July 24th to July 26th, and the day of our departure, we headed to the Marsh Trail for a hike to stretch our legs before our 4 hour drive back home.

Here is the description of the trail from the @ontarioparks website : http://www.ontarioparks.com/park/rondeau (I hope it’s okay that I quote this? )

“Marsh Trail – 7.2 km one way, 14.4 km return, 5-6 hours, easy
The Marsh Trail travels through the heart of Rondeau’s extensive marsh on an old gravel base roadway. One kilometer into your hike you will come to our two storey viewing tower that will provide you with a true bird’s eye view of the marsh and Rondeau Bay. The marsh is dominated by wild rice, cattails and water lilies. Dozens of species of wetland birds breed here during the summer and thousands of waterfowl stop to feed during migration. Watch for our resident pair of Bald Eagles as you travel along this trail. This trail can also be used for cycling.”

The trail here is beautiful and we enjoyed many sights along the way.  At the start of the trail you will find a dock that overlooks the marsh. It quite picturesque. There is also a really cool tree at the parking lot that I had to photograph. There wasn’t any information about the tree that I noticed, so if anyone knows anything about it, please let me know? Thanks!

The portion of the trail I was on is very easy, flat, mostly gravel, and there are cottages on the left side of it. For this hike, I am going let the pictures give you a description of the trail as I do believe they are worth a thousand words!

Pretty wildflowers lined the part of the trail we hiked on.

After the first kilometre of the trail, you arrive at a two story viewing tower. At the base of the boardwalk that takes you to the tower we saw this boulder which I thought was really cool! There is also a sign with lots of helpful information on it.

There is a long boardwalk that takes you to the tower with an informative plaque part way down advising of what you will find in the marsh.

After our stop at the viewing tower, we decided to turn back and start the drive home.  My hiking partner wasn’t feeling well and it was really hot out, we were both burnt and we had a 4 hour drive ahead so we headed back to the car to embark on our journey back home.

If you want to see more great views of the Marsh Trail or any others in Rondeau Provincial Park, book a site for the weekend and go do some exploring!  There are alot of amazing things there to see and do and I am pretty sure you will have a great time!  My blog post on the park can be found here, if you’d like to read more on the park: http://wp.me/p6r4RK-97

I hope you enjoyed this post and as always, if you have any questions, comments, advice or just want to say hello, please leave  me a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I am able to!

Thanks for reading!

Happy Hiking!