A Couple of Days in Riding Mountain National Park – part 1

Posted in Activities, animals, bear, birds, canada, critters, Food, Gull, life, loon, Manitoba, Nature, pictures, Riding Mountain National Park, travel, trees, Wildlife

Although I am lucky enough to have several places in or near the city where I can roam freely and take photos, I always love to go a bit further away where I can completely immerse myself in nature. I also get to see more variety and sizes of wildlife when I head up to Riding Mountain National Park (RMNP). So, I booked 2 nights at the Honeycomb Bed & Breakfast and left the city very early on Monday morning. It is a 3 hour drive and I was in the park well before 10 am.

The drive there was not too exciting until I reached the turnoff to the park. The green (where the sky meets the trees is where I am heading to the east entrance gate on #11 – so I am almost there. Then – the entrance gate!

First stop was the lookout. Of course it looks different during different seasons and weather.

I hadn’t been back in my car for more than a couple of minutes when I found this very hungry Black Bear eating the fresh growth beside the road. He was so busy eating that he wasn’t worried about me watching him, so I snapped a few photos. A lot of my bear photos this trip are quite a bit the same (even though different bears) because they are very hungry after the long winter nap. The next Black Bear wasn’t as accommodating, but I took his photo anyway.

The first one has some almost bald spots and my theory (not sure if I’m even close though) is that he picked up a lot of burrs and scratched or bit them off – taking some hair off. I did see some bears that were so covered in burrs that I’m sure there will be hair loss when they figure out how to get them off.

This Robin has a beak full of grubs for some hungry nestlings.

When I reached the #10 highway, I decided to head into Wasagaming, the town at Clear Lake where the main dock is.

  • Beautiful sandy beach with the dock and boats plus a couple of sailboats
  • zoomed in on the boats at the dock

I walked over to the dock to walk out on it, but was distracted by this adorable Loon – I think he was bathing and was sure fun to watch.

He didn’t fly away as I was expecting after raising his wings, but just settled back down to being a normal Loon!

I then walked out to the end of the dock to take a photo of the large boat that you can see from the dock photos above. It is the Martese, which is a sight seeing boat. You can just see the sights and/or have dinner while cruising the sights. I was on it years ago just for sightseeing, but I heard the dinner was fabulous.

This Ring-billed Gull was waiting for me when I walked back to the beach.

It is not even noon on my first day yet, but this day will be continued tomorrow.

Published by mavimet

Hi - I'm Mavis. I love to travel, I love to take pictures and I love to write about whatever comes into my head. Follow my blog at mavimet.com