We visited Rainbow Falls as part of Big Trip #5 in September 2026. 

Rainbow Falls is only an hour and a half from Pukaskwa, or an hour from Marathon. It’s a small provincial park, and we really only chose it to break up the drive from Pukaskwa to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park (two hours further west), but it turned out to be one of the coolest campsites we’ve ever parked the Airstream in. And that’s saying a lot. [Note to self: do a compiliation post of our favorite campsites!]

Rainbow Falls Provincial Park is on the smaller side, but still offers the usual Lake Superior activities of hiking, fishing, and kayaking… and swimming for the extremely hardy. The Casque Isles Trail, a 33-mile trail traversing the northern shore of Lake Superior, passes through the park.

We restocked groceries in Nipigon on the way to Sleeping Giant. There’s nothing much in the tiny town of Rossport near Rainbow Falls–a few small inns, and the one cute cafe we saw wasn’t open.

Campground

Rainbow Falls has two campgrounds: Whitesand Lake, larger and more central to the park, and Rossport, smaller and less private, but some campsites are adjacent to the Lake Superior beach and holy cow this is where you want to camp. The views from our campsite–and our living room–were epic.

We absolutely loved our waterfront site. The pebbly beach was just outside our door, and when it rained briefly we could still gaze at the lake from our window. Starlink was great with the campground being so open, and oddly the campground wasn’t very full. I bet a couple weeks later when the leaves are popping the place is packed, but we were very fortunate to land a prime campsite and have a quiet stay.

Hiking

From our campground it was a short drive to other the other section of the Rainbow Falls park and our trailheads. We did two short hikes in the park (a view hike, and a river/waterfall hike. We recommend both!

First we did this 2.5 mile trail to a lookout over Whitesand Lake. It was an easy hike, with a short rock scramble at the end to the view, which was lovely. We had the trail mostly to ourselves and it was fantastic.

Next we walked along the river and past the park’s namesake waterfall. The trail is only about a mile, and it’s easy and beautiful, featuring more of our pink granite like we loved in Killarney, and a short off-leash area for dogs. Rainbow Falls–the actual waterfall–is pretty, but not amazing and not the highlight of the hike.

After Rainbow Falls, we moved on to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, and our last Ontario provincial park campsite.