We planned to go the the pallisaded Fort Dauphin before leaving town this morning only to discover it was closed on Sunday. Rude.

John headed due south and we drove through Riding Mountain National Park which has many, many opportunities for hiking and the very large Clear Lake. We had not driven into the park too far when we encountered a nice black bear.

He strolled leisurely across the road. I was so worried the car would not see him in time but it did and slowed right down.

Shortly after we saw the bear we saw a young cow moose on the other side of the road. John took lots of photos for me from the driver’s side.

She is gradually shedding her winter coat.

We turned down one of the many offshoot roads and came upon Clear Lake. There were people there with two dogs so I had to stop and visit. Suzanne told us we needed to go to Big Valley and gave us directions.

On our way to the side road that led to Big Valley we stopped in the small town of Erickson and had lunch.

Big Valley was a small open area at a creek at the bottom of a steep gravel road. There were several families have a picnic there and the kids were playing by the creek so we just took a couple of pictures of the river and continued on back to the main road. It was a nice little detour and a change from the long, straight flat roads.

The Big Valley lookout. Does this look like your image of Manitoba?

At Portage la Prairie we stopped at Fort la Reine Museum which had nothing to do with a fort and was in fact, a collection of buildings brought from other parts of the province. There was nothing of major note, but it was a nice day and we enjoyed the wander. There is a historic marker for Fort la Reine but we missed the turn to go see what it said.

There was a large building that contained Allis-Chalmers farm equipment. I think the company borrowed Henry Ford’s expression about his Model T car when he said, “It comes in any colour as long as it is black,” except Allis-Chalmers chose orange.

A 1944 Allis-Chalmar (not orange) Snow Tractor for the US military.

I did not know you could order houses from the Eaton’s catalogue. Apparantly there are quite a few of them dotted around the prairie provinces.

The Threshermen’s Bunkhouse. Notice it is on wheels so can be moved from farm to farm. There were four sets of bunk beds – two on each side, with a stove and small table in the middle.

That would be the day that an insurance company nowadays would send around a work crew to repair damage to houses.

For some reason it never occurred to me that the inside was open right up into the onion dome.

Certainly much less elaborately decorated than the Ukrainian Church.

Every frontier General Store is the same. I do love all the goods stacked in them though.

We left Portage la Prairie at five and drove roads pretty much like this for the 70 or so kilometers to Winnipeg. We are here three nights and plan to go to Assiniboine Park & Zoo tomorrow and the Human Rights Museum on Tuesday. Depending on time we may see other things, but those are our two definites.