Location Taken: Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010
I love visiting state parks. Or, in this Canadian instance, provincial parks.
This is Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, right on the top of Lake Superior. It’s got a few lakes, some camping, some trails, and the falls.
It’s a long chain of falls, cascading for quite a distance. This photo shows just a little of it. There’s a boardwalk trail going along the falls, so it’s quite easy to get in to see them. It was raining the day we visited, so the photos mostly didn’t quite come out. There are a few, though, where the gray sky and light only amplifies the joy of water in the photo.
Given the fog coming off that waterfall, there probably are some lovely rainbows when the sun is out. I think I rather preferred the walk in the rain, though. I’ve never done well walking in sunlight (I get headaches if I’m out in it too long – which on some days is as short as 10 minutes), and love the rain.
State parks might not be as spectacular as the National parks, but they’re quite enjoyable in their own right. National parks are usually a bit crowded (well, at least the popular ones are. Some of them are a bit out of the way), and there are lots of signs and guides all over. You also usually know what the main feature of those parks is long before you visit them, so you’re not too impressed when you get there. State parks are smaller, and don’t have much information out there about them. You can actually discover things there, and discovery is half the joy of visiting such places. I requested that we stop at Rainbow Falls purely because I saw the name on the map. It’s right off the Trans-Canada highway, so it was not out of the way in the least. I had no clue what type of waterfall it would be. We’d already stopped at some rather impressive waterfalls (both Mom and I love waterfalls, so when we see a sign saying “XYZ Waterfall, Next Right”, we’re likely to turn off), but this one was really nice. Especially since I could take a lot of photos and then pick out the three or so that actually worked out the way I wanted.
