Chuck and I absolutely love living the road trip life. We’ve tackled quite a bit of this magnificent country by car (west coast in 2010, east coast in 2014, Ontario in 2015), but we haven’t road tripped so much here at home in Manitoba. Before you begin throwing shade and shame at us, we are trying to fix this erroneous error!
Last year we explored the Whiteshell and this spring we decided to tackle Riding Mountain, via a journey through the Narrows. The weather wasn’t our friend this time, but that didn’t keep us from seeing some of the province’s loveliest spots…
Steep Rock at the start
Ok, Steep Rock, you look like a lovely place to hang and all, but it was freezing out and snowing and windy, so we stayed a maximum of ten minutes. See you next time!
Rando buildings!
I love decrepit-looking old farm buildings and houses. I think most of us do, right? There’s a beauty in those ghostly looking rickety places.
East Gate!
I was like, “what’s the big deal about East Gate?” when anyone would bring it up. Then I saw it, then I knew. It’s damn cool. So much Canadiana in this one Parks Canada structure — the last one standing in all of our National Parks, btw. Doesn’t it look like it should have a Mountie sitting astride a gigantic horse there 24-7?
Yes, those are ELK!
Saw these beaut’s far from the road. Chuck thought deer, I thought lady elk. I had to Google it. That’s how great we are with knowing our wildlife creatures. They looked like elk in my Google Image search, so that’s what I’m sticking with. Plus, they had bigger butts than all the other deer we saw. The butts don’t lie.
Bison buddies
Not sure these guys wanted to be our buddies. One of them saw us and immediately turned around and took a big poop. Not as much a fan of us as we were of them.
Roam, roam on the range.
Ominnik Marsh
This is one of my favourite places in Riding Mountain. I just love floating boardwalks — everybody has their thing I guess. We saw loads of birds and caught glimpse of a beaver (I think!) swimming to its house. So many beaver houses in this park. They should pay rent for all their prime real estate. We also saw some makeshift new dams being created around a few beaver houses. Expert landscapers.
Relaxing on the floating boardwalks
Appropriate, no?
Flora and fawns
Loved being in the park at this time of year. First, there was no one around. Truly! Second, you can see quite far in the brush as its not quite full yet. Third, deer were out like crazy! (Maybe that’s all year, I didn’t Google it…yet.)
Share the Chair
We found the famous red chairs that Parks Canada puts out throughout the province. These ones were at the top of a hill off the highway. Great view of the Manitoba escarpment — when the wind isn’t whipping your hair in your face!
Townies
Wasagaming, you pretty. Showing off with all your lovely storefronts and cottages created out of logs and wood. We stayed at the newly updated Lake House, which used to be McTavish’s. Great location, cozy rooms, sweet ice cream shop.
Nomnomnom
Wasagaming, you tasty! We ate very well on our trip. Our favourites were the ice cream sandwiches from The Lake House and the pastries and cinnamon buns at Whitehouse Bakery. Oh, and the pizza from Foxtail Cafe. So that’s pretty much everything. Still thinking ’bout it all.
The Foxtail and the Cinder & Smoke
Sunset over Clear Lake
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Weird-ass clouds
Anyone know what these cloud formations are called? They had an ethereal quality to them.
On our way home, we stopped at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum for what was to be an hour. Three hours later, we were still exploring! That’s a blog for another time.
