Traveling by RV offers unparalleled freedom and flexibility. Whether it’s a scenic drive, a major city, a national park, a small community, a roadside attraction or an off-the-beaten path destination, we can do it all from an RV.
From Winnipeg our next stops were two small Manitoba provincial parks – Pinawa Dam Provincial Park and Whiteshell Provincial Park.
Pinawa Dam was Manitoba’s first hydroelectric generating station, built in 1906 and operational until 1951. Today, its concrete remains stand as a fascinating blend of industrial history and natural beauty. It feels like discovering abandoned structures of a lost city or exploring long forgotten European ruins.
Whiteshell Provincial Park is about an hour from Pinawa. It’s known for its rugged Canadian Shield landscape, granite cliffs, dense forests, sparkling lakes and rivers, and petroforms created by indigenous tribes. We knew that pictographs were painted rocks and that petroglyphs were carvings into rocks, but we’d never heard of petroforms which are stone arrangements on the ground.
Ancient petroforms, such as those at Bannock Point in Manitoba have deep spiritual and cultural meanings, often for teaching or ceremonial purposes. It was an easy walk to them and fun to discern what the shapes were.
We took two walks and a hike in Whiteshell.
The first short walk was to Sturgeon Falls, which was less like a waterfall and more like standing waves in the Winnipeg River. The other one was a small waterfall near our campsite.
Sturgeon Falls Video:
Then we did a 5mi loop hike along the Pine Point Trail and the waterfalls here were again more like pretty cascades. They just didn’t seem to have the height that western kids like us expect from a good waterfall! What we did see a lot of was a geological feature that covers much of Canada called “the Canadian Shield is a massive geological formation that covers much of Canada. Large swaths of this relatively flat rock are one of the oldest and most stable parts of Earth’s crust, dating back billions of years. Near the end of the hike, Doug was swarmed by some kind of stinging insect that was pretty painful. The bites swelled and for the first few days he had stabbing pain like being poked repeatedly with hot needles. We still don’t know what they were!
.
This area, like much of Manitoba, has a lot of lakes so many people come to the park to swim, kayak, SUP, or boat, but Doug took a 13-mile mountain bike ride along the Trans Canada Trail Ride from Nutimik Lake instead.
A Video of Doug’s Ride:
These a-bit-off-the-beaten-path destinations, perfect for RVers, offered a unique experience that blended natural beauty with cultural and historical significance.
