Riding mountain National Park.

Clough91 · Jun 23, 2024

I spent part of my weekend camping in the national park i live close to (riding mountain, Manitoba), until a complete downpour for most of Saturday resulted in us coming home a day early unfortunately! The mosquitoes were vicious, but a good sign we have lots of water around the last couple years have been extremely dry. Riding mountain has a history of forestry prior to becoming a national park so the main trail system is actually old logging and fire roads, with trails that branch off to different parts of the park. One area actually used to have a POW camp from WW2, and there is a downed bomber that crashed on a training mission that you used to be able to hike to, but the park has closed down almost all the trails in that area. It is a heavily forested park so finding big mammals (the ones i prefer to see) can be a challenge, bear viewing can be done in spring time on the main highway that cuts through the park when the dandelions bloom and cover the road sides. I was not able to get any time off work during prime time bear rut/dandelion bloom but that's the way it goes. There was still a few patches and we were able to see a few bears moving around. The first morning we watched a bull elk swimming across a lake with his horns in velvet held above the water. I was able to get a few photos, mostly of bugs, wildflowers, the small things and i completely messed up the exposure on a otter encounter part of learning as I'm fairly new to this hobby. I am pretty sure they are regulars to the area so ill go back in a couple weeks and see if i can redeem myself!