Prince Edward Island National Park is a tenuous rainbow of coastline divided between the park proper and the Greenwich Extension, a collection of sand dunes 30 miles to the east. A sliver of red sandstone cliffs, pink sand dunes, olive-green marram grass and marine marshes, white and red sand beaches, and green tide pools, it clings to the island’s north shore like a wilderness mirage that could disappear at any moment. Such evanescence is the product o powerful forces of nature.

Most of the park’s many ponds, home to a diverse collection of wildfowl, are barachois ponds – saltwater bays that changed to fresh water after encroaching dunes cut them off from the ocean. The best way to see the ponds is to take the Reeds and Rushes Trail, which starts on the Gulf Shore Parkway 1.5 miles west of the Dalvay Visitor Center.