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Rural Manitoba Road Trip: Quiet Places Worth the Drive
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items Manitoba is more than flat fields on the way to somewhere else. Sand dunes, prairie grain elevators, Icelandic fishing villages, old dams in the bush and the highest hill in the province. These are the stops worth slowing down for, from the Whiteshel...
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Open sand dunes in the middle of the prairie. Walk the trail out to the Punch Bowl, a sunken pool of blue-green water. Bring water and good shoes; the sand is harder going than it looks.
Spirit Sands Self-guiding Trail
The escarpment rises right out of the farmland. Clear Lake, the bison range at Lake Audy, and quiet trails in the fall when the crowds are gone.
Riding Mountain National Park
Five wooden elevators built between 1922 and 1941, still standing in a row. Once these lined every prairie rail line; this is one of the last places you can see them together.
Inglis Grain Elevators National Historic Site
Not for everyone, but nowhere else like it. In spring, tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes come out of the limestone dens. Go in late April or May.
Narcisse Snake Dens
A working windmill, a village street and the story of the families who farmed this land. A good stop for anyone who remembers how things used to be done.
Mennonite Heritage Village
Icelandic heritage, the Viking statue, the harbour and the pier on Lake Winnipeg. Fresh pickerel if you time it right.
Gimli & the Viking Statue
An old Icelandic fishing village on an island in Lake Winnipeg, reached by causeway. Lighthouse, boardwalks and long, empty shoreline.
Hecla Island
White sand and dunes on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. Busy in July, peaceful in September.
Grand Beach Provincial Park
Boardwalks through restored wetland. In fall, thousands of geese come in at sunset. Bring binoculars.
Oak Hammock Marsh Wetland Discovery Centre
Ancient Indigenous rock arrangements laid out on the bare granite. A sacred site; walk quietly and leave everything as you found it.
Bannock Point Petroforms (Whiteshell)
The concrete ruins of an early 1900s hydro dam, with the river rushing through the old spillways. A picnic spot with a story.
Pinawa Dam Provincial Heritage Park
Manitoba's Lily Capital, with lily gardens in summer and the childhood home of author Margaret Laurence. A tidy prairie town worth a walk down the main street.
Neepawa & the Margaret Laurence Home
Baldy Mountain is the highest point in Manitoba, with a lookout tower over miles of forest. Clear lakes and very few people.
Duck Mountain Provincial Park & Baldy Mountain
Formal gardens straddling the Canada-US border in the Turtle Mountains, south of Boissevain. Bring ID; you exit through a border crossing.
International Peace Garden
Old tractors, steam engines and a pioneer village. The Threshermen's Reunion in late summer brings the machines to life.
Manitoba Agricultural Museum
A rare old curtain dam and lock on the Red River north of Winnipeg, a National Historic Site. Fishing below the dam and a hot dog at the local stand.
Lockport & St. Andrew's Lock and Dam