Ontario Provincial Parks – 4th Stop…Marten River Provincial Park

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This is our first time to Marten River Provincial Park and we will be stopping here again for 3 nights on our way home. Marten River is located about 40 kms south of Temagami. Marten River is a wide river that begins at Lower Redwater Lake and ends at Red Cedar Lake for a total of 46 kms.

They have 4 areas to camp, Chicot Campgrounds A and B and Assinika Campgrounds A and B. We stayed at site 209 and we were pretty fortunate because there was no one across from us at all, one campsite to the right of us and we couldn’t see them. No one to the left and behind us was a large hill and there were campsites on that road. For the most part, the campsites are not really private but we liked this site. It was a bit confusing to find sites in this park, our site was next to site 158 and we were site #209.

The sites are not huge and not a lot of privacy.

We went for a paddle and put our canoe in at the Boat Launch by the other campground across the river and paddled over to a marshy area that we spotted. We like to paddle in these areas as we tend to see more than just on a big river. We had to maneuver over two beaver dams, one was very small. We saw some of the most beautiful water lilies we have ever seen and they were huge. We also saw a green heron, very hard to get a photo and blue herons. We probably spent 3 hours in there paddling around.

I always sit in the front of the canoe so you can see the nose of the canoe

We decided to leave the park and try to find Crystal Falls but all the roads were blocked by gates put up by Ontario Hydro. I did see these guys on the side of the road, got a quick shot.

Two of these were running around the ditch

Crystal Falls was a bust, so we headed another 35 kms to find Sandy Falls. We drove down a dirt road, narrow and bumpy as they always are, and finally had to stop and park. We walked the rest of the way, maybe another 2 km to get to the end. All the effort to get here and these “falls” were a little anti-climatic.

We had the cutest little rabbit come into our campsite one day, plus the requisite chipmunks. I try to have my camera nearby, you never know what’s going to walk around your site. Clint spotted a raccoon but he was too fast. The raccoon………not Clint.

I always think chipmunks look like they are plotting to take over the world, like Pinky and the Brain

There is one trail at this park, called the Transition Trail. It is a trail with 3 loops to it but we chose to do the big loop, you can break it down into smaller loops if you want. It’s about 5.2 kms maybe a bit more. We were able to walk to the trailhead from our site but there is a very small parking lot if you choose to drive to it. The trail was okay, parts of it were not maintained at all, for example the brush was growing right over the trail in different areas making it hard to see where you were going. For the most part you were in the forest except for maybe about 100 metres which went by the water.