Outdoors

Presqu'ile Provincial Park is located in the Southeast Parks, south of Brighton. We were in the Hidden Valley campground and originally booked site#259 but found it way too small for our tent and re-booked at site#259. This park is amazing for bird watching and actually has a huge bird sighting board near the gatehouse.

We arrived after two days of rain and the mosquitos were everywhere. All the campsites were fairly small but the new one we had worked out okay. Privacy wasn't fantastic but with proper placement of the car and tent, it ended up fine.

On our first day there, we checked out the Lighthouse Footpath (0.3KM). It is a historic trail important to the history of the park. There is a great gift store and information centre as well as lots of frogs poking up from the mud. We also went to Calf Pasture Lookout which was very pretty but had no luck in seeing a heron.

Jobes' Woods Trail (1KM) was an easy trail with SO MANY mosquitos. It was hard to stop and take pictures because the little things attacked you with any chance they got. We did however see a Green Frog and a Banded Garden Spider.

The Marsh Boardwalk (1.2KM) was by far, my favourite trail in the park. At the very first lookout we saw an egret and saw a great view of the surrounding land. As you walked along the boardwalk, it was a really amazing experience. The reeds and grass were tall and you couldn't see much on either side but you could hear the birds singing and the flapping of the wings. They were close but you couldn't see them. Once in awhile one would flitter out and land infront of you but by the time you pulled the camera up, it was gone.

We were very surprised as we walked around a bend and came face to face with a Mute Swan. Now if you have ever been to Stratford, Ontario and seen the swans there, they seem small after the ones at Presqu'ile. There were 4 adults and aproximately 3-4 babies...it was hard to tell as the babies were all bundled together.

This trail also took us through a really interesting part of the forest where we discovered "Horse Trees."

Owen Point Trail (1.6KM) was probably the most interesting trail. It had many lookout points onto protected parts of the beach where various birds breed/live. We saw a cute family of geese, hundreds of seagulls, and killdeer.

Needless to say, our first day there was packed full of hiking and exploring.

Our second and last day we returned to the Marsh Boardwalk in the early morning and once again saw the egret. We also saw 2 small beavers splashing in the water just before the second lookout.

Before we left, we decided to hike the Pioneer Trail (3.8KM). The grass was extremely long in the field portion and actually made it very difficult to get through and not enjoyable at all...but it is what it is and it's part of the trail...I definitely liked Jobes Woods Trail better.

We had 2 raccoons travel through our campsite Saturday night but they didn't stop and stayed close to the edge of the forest.

It took us approximately 2.5 hours to get back home to the GTA which makes this place great for a short weekend trip when you're looking to get out of the city.