travel dates: June, 2024
We’d never been to Toronto before our summer, 2024 trip…but we had planned to go to Toronto more than once. Or at least thought about it. We considered a stop there on our canceled 2020 trip. And then again for our 2021 trip that actually happened…but happened without the Canada parts owing to the border still being closed.
And for as long as I’ve been looking into a Toronto RV trip, I’ve been reading about how there’s a great urban campground in Toronto called Glen Rouge Campground. And for as long as I’ve been looking into a Toronto RV trip, Glen Rouge Campground has been closed for renovations. Right under the notice on the website about how you can’t stay there anytime in the foreseeable future, there’s this description: “Glen Rouge Campground is the only campground in the City of Toronto. Set next to the Rouge River, it’s the perfect place to submerse yourself in nature while staying in the city!”
Sounds awesome! Maybe you guys should get going with those upgrades and reopen already! The story is–as near as I can tell–that Parks Canada took over the campground and park to create Rouge National Urban Park and…nothing. At least as far as the campground goes. There don’t seem to be any updates on the progress; they just change the public information once a year or so to tell you you still can’t camp there.
So! I’ve now written the first three paragraphs of my campground review of Bronte Creek Provincial Park without once mentioning Bronte Creek Provincial Park.
Here’s what it comes down to: Bronte Creek was one of our favorite campgrounds of the summer. It features huge, private sites (just look at our site up there! Look at the size of that yard!), nice facilities, etc. etc….but it’s not particularly close to Toronto. It’s about a 30 mile drive on often congested roads, so that you could easily spend over an hour making the drive. There are a few campgrounds a little bit closer, but none of them looked nearly as nice as Bronte Creek to us. A lot of my campground reviews for this trip are going to talk about the ease or difficulty of getting into assorted cities from assorted campgrounds. This is the nature of urban RV trips. So I’ll get into how we got into Toronto later on…but despite that and a couple of other drawbacks, we were still happy with our choice.
Location
We picked Bronte Creek as a base camp for exploring Toronto (around 30 miles away), but as we were planning the trip we realized it has great proximity to a lot of non-Toronto locations as well. It’s only an hour drive to Niagara Falls, so one could certainly camp at Bronte Creek and spend a day there (and probably save some money over staying at a Niagara Falls campground). Bronte Creek is also only about 20 minutes from Hamilton, ON, and, we discovered, there are a number of great things to see in an around Hamilton; we were happy to take some time off from trekking into Toronto to check out some things within easy driving distance. We got the impression that most of our fellow campers were weekenders from Toronto and other nearby areas rather than non-locals like us. As far as the immediate area, Bronte Creek is in a suburban area with plenty of shopping and restaurants just a few minutes away.
Getting into Toronto
During the research phase of this trip, I thought a lot about driving into the city, what traffic and parking would be like, etc. But after actually observing people driving in Toronto, we quickly decided we had no interest in doing that ourselves and took trains in both times we went downtown.
We found two reasonable ways to get into the city via public transportation: one day we drove to the end of the subway line and took it; the other day we drove to the closest GO station (regional commuter train) and took it in. There are advantages to each. Taking just the subway is considerably cheaper, but it’s a longer and more traffic-intensive drive to get to the station. We went with the subway option on a Sunday when traffic wouldn’t be as much of a factor and took GO on a weekday.
Subway day we drove to the Kipling station, about 30 minutes from Bronte Creek, where there is ample surface parking (important with our big old van and often a limiting factor with city parking). The subway was around $3 and free for kids under 12; there’s also a day pass you can buy.
The Bronte GO station is just an easy 10 minute drive from the campground and also has tons of surface parking. The ticketing system is a little convoluted here. My notes tell me that we bought a pass for 3 people for $40 (cheaper options available on weekends). The way it works is that you buy the tickets online and you have to activate them at least 5 minutes before getting on the train. And then no one ever checks them. At least no one checked ours either on the way in or out of the city. I looked into this, and apparently it’s on purpose; they check the tickets very occasionally and will fine you if they do catch you on a train with no ticket, but for the most part no one checks ticket. It’s panopticon-esque….someone could catch you ticketless at any time and that keeps most people buying tickets instead of playing the odds and trying to get free train rides.
Anyway, the trains are nice for the most part. Interesting things we observed: both times we ended up on “quiet cars” and thus felt like we needed to be….quiet. I’m not sure there actually are any non-quiet cars. Maybe there are. Anyway. The train on the way in was not very crowded, but our rush hour train back out of the city was quite full, and we experienced one of our many Ontario “we’re not in Newfoundland anymore” moments, noting that there are lots of jerks on the GO train who will deliberately take up one of the scarce seats with their bags and not move them unless pointedly asked to do so. It turns out not ALL Canadians are exceptionally nice.
Booking and Arrival
Reservations open up 6 months in advance at Bronte Creek, and there’s a 2 night minimum or a 3 night minimum on holiday weekends. Nightly fees are around $45 Canadian for electric sites. We booked early because we that’s how we generally do things, but we did note the campground was pretty full while we were there. I would book early if possible, particularly if you’ll be there on a summer weekend and/or if you need one of the relatively limited 32+ foot sites.
The drive here from Niagara Falls was both very short and very straightforward. Make sure you have directions to the actual campground and not the day use area, as they’re in completely separate areas about 20 minutes away from each other. The entrance/check-in area is spacious and easy to maneuver….you’ll need to pull around to the water fill station after checking in if you haven’t come with your tanks filled. Check in time isn’t officially until late afternoon, but we called in advance and they said we could check in early if our site was free, so we ended up getting there before noon since we had such a short drive.
Campsites
Most of the sites we saw were huge, well-kept, and very private. We had site 110, and it was a long gravel back in with a huge yard of grass; they mowed a big area and then left it growing long with wildflowers in other places to create privacy between the sites. We were in the Prairie loop, which is the one recommended for trailers over 25 feet. It was easy to back in to and plenty long for our 32 foot trailer plus van (we’re right at 50 feet all together). As long as you reserve the appropriate size site, there should be no trouble getting any sized rig into the campground. Important note! The sites are electric only (water fill and dump station are available at the entrance), but the electric posts are shared between two sites, which, since the sites are so big and far apart, means you’ll have a long way to go to reach your outlet. A lot of reviews note this, but most don’t mention (because most people probably don’t realize) that you can rent an extension cord (a 30 amp extension cord I believe; we’re 50 amp but have an adaptor) at the front office. I can’t remember what the charge was, but it was a nominal fee. They have a limited number of these, so it might be worth just buying an appropriate extension cord in advance to guarantee you’ll have electricity. For some of the sites, I’m sure it’s possible to reach the electricity with a regular cord, but we never would have been able to in ours (nor would the site next door to ours have been able to). It’s a very weird and annoying set up, but not an issue as long as you come prepared.
Sites are equipped with picnic tables and fire pits.
Amenties
My memory tells me that I spent a whole lot of time waiting outside the bathhouse at Bronte Creek.
There aren’t really enough of them to meet demand at a campground with no sewer hookups. There are large bath/shower houses at the entrance to the loops, and then these smaller, toilet and sink only buildings, in the middle of the loops. Everything was clean and well-maintained. Showers are free, but the kind where you have to push the button every few (maybe 3-4?) minutes to keep the water going.
Aside from that, there’s a laundry room available, hiking trails, and playgrounds. The dogs appreciated the trails:
And then there’s the separate day use area of Bronte Creek, on the other side of the ravine and thus a 20 minute drive. We didn’t really realize just how far it was and made the drive over one evening for a hike. It’s a pleasant hike through the woods kind of experience, with some nice views of the ravine, but not a must do, in my opinion.
There are a number of other activities/facilities including a children’s play barn, Victorian farmhouse, and pool (which was closed for the 2024 season), but we didn’t make it to any of these.
Maybe you would like to pin this?
Leave a Reply