Manitoba: Beaches, Bugs, & Bears

Manitoba stands out as a rather interesting experience in my mind. I guess this was partly due to the fact that I had no real expectations for Manitoba. Turns out, this province is beautiful and full of adventure. Take a read, to find out why we refer to Manitoba as "The Three B's".

We arrived in Manitoba on the evening of July 10th. Our first night was basically spent looking for a place to park the car overnight. We did get pretty lucky finding a rest stop just off the Trans Canada with no other cars. The rest area was called Lyons Lake, and was just beautiful. It was located right on the lake, with a dock which we walked out on and watched the sunset. This rest area also offered a short hike around the lake, which made for a nice evening walk. When we returned to our truck it was dark, so we decided to set our tent up just beside the truck for a better sleep. We woke up at the crack of dawn the next day, we literally woke up with the sun, and just like that, as quickly as the sun rose it disappeared and storm clouds rolled in. Needless to say, we packed up our tent pronto, and luckily had everything pack up just before the storm started. So what do you do on a rainy, stormy day in Manitoba?

Canadian Museum for Human Rights

We decided to make the drive to Winnipeg and spend our day exploring the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. On our drive to Winnipeg we passed through Tache, Manitoba, which just happens to be the longitudinal center point of Canada! The Center of Canada Park sits at 96° 48’ 35” W, located just off the Trans Canada Highway. It was a nice additional stop, and the sun came out just long enough for us to get out and read the historic signs, and get a few pictures in. Its a really cute place for a quick driving break, and a massive milestone for our cross country journey!

From the center point of Canada we were only 100 km away from the Museum, which meant we had a bit of time to kill until it opened. So we stopped for a warm breakfast at Tim's, and arrived at the Museum just in time for opening! The museum for human rights was actually amazing. We spent the entire day exploring the 7 levels of galleries. The first level was an exhibit entirely devoted to Nelson Mandela. It was incredibly fascinating and very informative! This was our favorite part. The levels from 2-7 covered major Canadian milestones and Canada's progression on human rights, as well as extensive exhibits on major events like the Holocaust, and Genocide. All the galleries offered interactive exhibits, short films, and plenty of famous artifacts. The third level, offered an area called the garden of contemplation. This area was put in place to offer a quiet place to digest all the intensive information from the galleries, and provide you with the opportunity to ponder what you had just learned. This area was beautifully made, with glass windows and ponds surrounding the sitting area. The final floor of the Museum was a staircase leading from level 7 to level 8, called the "Staircase of Hope". The tower of hope offered amazing panoramic views of downtown Winnipeg. The architecture of this building is amazing and something worth seeing in itself, never mind the incredibly interesting and valuable information this museum has to offer!

After our adventures at the Museum for human rights, we headed over to explore the Forks Market, which was just a short walk down the street from the Museum. The Forks is a historic site in Winnipeg, filled with amazing food vendors, local wine and beer, and cute shops. We enjoyed walking around the market, and taking in all the local goodies. For those of you who know me, you know i'm all about the sweets. So, when I saw a sign stating that the Cinnamon bun was a classic Winnipeg treat, I was all over it. It was most definitely the best cinnamon bun I've ever had too by the way ;).

The First B: Beaches

The beaches in Manitoba are so beautiful! Probably the nicest beaches I have seen in Canada yet! The first beach we visited was Winnipeg Beach. We arrived just in time for sunset, and spent the evening swimming, and relaxing on the beautiful grassy/sandy shoreline. The beach itself was so clean, with a sandy bottom and such nice water.

The second amazing beach we explore was located in Hecla Island Provincial Park. Originally we planned on going to Hecla Island for a canoe trip, but once we got the canoe out in the open water, the waves took us for quite a ride, and we were getting soaked. It was clear to us that we needed to turn back as the waters were not safe to cross. So we ended up stopping by a light house, at a different island on our way back, where we found our first lucky stone. The lucky stones are famous among Manitoba beaches. These lucky stones have naturally occurring holes in them, said to bring good luck. So I was pretty thrilled to have found one! On our canoe ride back to the beachy shore, we passed by a couple pelicans. Once we reached the beach, the sandy bottom was so inviting that we jumped in and enjoyed the cool waters! That night we found the perfect place to

park the car and enjoy the most amazing sunset among the prairies in complete peace and quiet. In fact, it was just a road side pull off with the Hecla island Sign, but it served the perfect place to park overnight for us.

Beach visit number three, Lake Manipogo. Legend has it that a sea serpent roughly 50 feet long roams the waters of Lake Manipogo. However, nobody has been able to catch a photo of this so called "sea monster". Unfortunately, neither were we. Although we did have a beautiful day spent on this amazing beach. Jesse spent most the afternoon snorkeling the clear waters, while I spent the afternoon alternating between swimming around, and soaking up some sun.

The Second B: BUGS!

After all this fun soaking up the sun at Manitoba's beautiful beaches, we decided to continue our adventures and drive down to Duck Mountain National Park: home to Manitoba's highest peak! After a fun evening hiking Baldy Mountain, Manitoba's highest peak, with an elevation of 832m. It was only an hour long hike, but all uphill which left us feeling the burn. Anyways, the day was coming

to an end and we needed to find ourselves a place to park for the night. We found the most beautiful spot, located on beautiful lake actually. The lake views were just stunning! However, we were tricked by the beauty of this place and quickly found ourselves regretting this decision.

First off, the weather went from a perfect summer day, to a perfect thunderstorm. pouring raining, loud thunder, and bright lightning strikes.

First off, the weather went from a perfect

summer day, to a perfect thunderstorm. pouring raining, loud thunder, and bright lightning strikes. The storm went on and off all night, which created a real mosquito problem for us trying to get some sleep in the back of our truck. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep. We spent the entire night until 2 am, smacking mosquitoes, trying to keep ourselves covered, but with the small holes in the back that we couldn't see, this was not working. The mosquitoes were finding there way in no matter how many we killed. So we had reached our breaking point, and made the switch to the front seats. However, during the switch, the mosquitoes had followed us. The only positive here was that the front of the truck was sealed, so once we killed all the mosquitoes they would not continue to come in. So we solved that problem, however, sleeping in the front seats are not comfortable, especially when you forget to grab any blankets or pillows ;). I think in total we got possibly 2 consecutive hours of sleep?? By 5 am we were up, and decided to find a nice warm place for breakfast. Considering the night we just had, we decided that tonight, we were finding a campsite! Which brings me to the next exciting event on our wild adventure.

The final B: Bears

We decided to check out Riding Mountain National Park. On our drive into the park we passed a Mama Black Bear and her three cubs walking out along the forests edge. It looked like she was teaching her cubs how to climb a tree. Then, once we reached the park, we noticed traffic was stopped up ahead of us. Once we reached the area, we realized that another mama bear had just crossed the road with her two cubs. So many black bear sightings for one day. We couldn't believe it. Before this trip, I had never seen a black bear before. Now our black bear count is already at 10! When we reached the Wasaming campsite in Riding Mountain National Park, we though for sure that there was NO way we were getting a site. It was PACKED! But we decided to try our luck anyways. Luck was definitely on our side tonight, because we scored the LAST available site in the entire park! And the site was a really nice, private site. We seemed to have lucked out big time. We took advantage of having this site, and cleaned out the tuck top to bottom, before setting up the tent and having the best sleep ever. Completely bug free ;). The next morning we woke up refreshed and ready for a day full of hiking! First up on the agenda was a nice short 4 km hike at Bead Lake. The trail followed along bead lake, through a dense forest. Since it was so short, we decided to find another hike before calling it a day. We drove up the road to Moon lake, a 9.6 km hike, also surrounding a lake though dense forest. About a km into the hike, we noticed a sign stating to travel with caution, bear in area.

We took note, and continued along the trail. As

we hiked along, we noticed the vast amount of raspberry and berry bushes on either side of the trail. In fact we stopped and picked handfuls of raspberries for a nice afternoon snack.

As we continued on, the hiking trail became more and more filled in with overgrowth and tall grass. It

was difficult to see much other than the trail directly in front of you. But we kept trekking. We reached the halfway point, with the famous red national park Muskoka chairs, and stopped for a quick rest. It was after this nice refreshing rest, we were confronted with a situation, neither of us could have ever expected. We had completed 6 km of the 9.6 km when we came between a mama bear and her cubs. One of the worst situations you could put yourself in with a black bear. We were walking along, when we heard a grunt and rustling in the tall weeds up ahead. Before we had a chance to react to what was happening, a mother black bear was charging us and was only 6 inches away from Jesse's face. When she reached that point, she stopped. We had given our all to make ourselves big and make all the noise we could. I had a whistle and Jesse was yelling. Like I said, the bear stopped and turned away. We later learned that black bears with bluff charge people when they feel their young are being threatened. Regardless it was a terrifying experience, and we turned back and got out of that trail as quickly as we possible could. We completed the 6 km, within 45 minutes, and I didn't stop using that whistle until we were out! I was beyond thankful to make it out of that trail, it felt like it took us a lifetime.

Once we reached the trail head, we headed for the truck to report the bear encounter. When we told the park warden what had happened, they informed us that a couple of kayakers had flipped on the other side of the lake, out by where our bear encounter had occurred. The situation had become very scary for many people. Although we were safe, there were 2 people out there, whose safety was in jeopardy. The park Warden had sent an RCMP officer with a fully loaded shotgun to go into the forest and rescue the kayakers, along with a rescue boat. We left after the rescue boat was launched, and are unsure what ended up happening with the black bear.

Well that's it for this blog. Thanks again for taking the time to read our adventures. We hope you enjoyed our wild adventures and challenges in Manitoba. Be sure to check back for the next blog. If you like our blogs, be sure to subscribe to our website just down at the bottom of this site. You'll get an email for each blog we post!

Stay Wild.

Jesse & Jessica.