Laurel Creek Conservation Area
Address: 625 Westmount Rd N, Waterloo, ON N2J 2Z4. It is about 1 hour and a half to 45 mins drive from the GTA depending on traffic. This is a beautiful park and campground in Waterloo.
Admission: You will need to pay the admission fee at the entrance, reservation is not required, but there is a staff at the entrance kiosk to take your payment. I had a family of three including a kid, and we paid $16.5 for the general day-pass admission fee. Once you got inside, you could drive around to find a suitable parking space for you depending on the purpose of your visit, like making picnic or tenting then you will need to find a spot where you could get access to a picnic table easily. Just note that, there are plenty of parking lots, so Nothing to worry!
Boardwalk Trail
The park is quite big and it has several trail options. And one of them leads to a boardwalk as well. But it is not a long boardwalk but you could still enjoy it and saw lot of chickadees flying around and if you have bird seeds you could also feed them from your own palms. Within the conservation area, the trail length is about 4.5 km, which is decent for a family with kid(s).
Nearby Lake Picnic Tables
What I like about this park/conservation area is that it has a lot of picnic tables all around and you could also park your car near one of the tables and get your stuff ready for your BBQ or picnic for the day. Along the trail, you could also find some benches to lookout the lake as well as some picnic table near the lake to enjoy your early BBQ or lunch/dinner.
Lot of wildlife there
It was unexpected when we were walking back along the trail to the parking lot, we encountered amazing creatures who were just enjoying their dried berries on the trees, those were waxing birds. There were so many of them just flying around and ate the berries without noticing anyone around them. Also, there were other black-capped chickadees flying around and trying to find their seeds as well. I put some sunflowers seeds on my palm for them to take but seems they did not get interested. Nearby, there were also fresh holes in the trees that were just created by woodpeckers searching for worms.