Manitoba is a collage of unique experiences, relaxing day trips and interesting place to visit. Each week, we will post our most recent outing. We encourage you to explore, as well.
Week 1: April 11, 2026. East to Whitemouth and Beausejour
Our first road trip of the spring, 2026, takes us 100 km east of Winnipeg, toward the Whiteshell and Agassiz Forest areas. Travelling east from Lagimodiere Blvd, we drive along Route 115 through south Transcona, past the Floodway, along Highway 15. This route takes us through Dugald and Anola, two bedroom communities that are growing quickly with affordable homes and condos. The highway is undivided, one lane of pavement each direction and 100 kph speed limit along the sections not in the local communities.
After Anola, where Highway 12 crosses, we travel east through Vivian, a small hamlet. Along the way, we experience mostly small aspen, birch and some evergreens. There are marshy areas interspersed and we cross both Cooks Creek and Whitemouth River before reaching Elma, at the eastern point of Hwy 15. From here, we could continue travelling south and then east, toward the south Whiteshell area, but we opt to turn north, crossing the Whitemouth again in the hamlet of Elma.
A few kilometers north, we turn left onto Hwy 44 (right would take us to Rennie, in the Whiteshell Park area) toward Beausejour. A dozen or so kilometers along, we enter the town of Whitemouth.
We are dining at The Spicy Radish with our road trip friends. It is a small (roughly 50 seats) diner that serves both conventional café food and interesting dishes, including an excellent beet and spinach salad. Burgers are phenomenal and prices very reasonable. We have arrived just before noon, and by 12:30, the place is bustling, even though the town is small and quite a distance from larger centres.
Luckily, we found the place. If we had relied on my wife’s navigating, finding the Spicy Radish would have been impossible. At first, she called it The Smelly Onion. Then The Crispy Radish. Then, I think something about Turnips. This is her calling card. She manages to turn tiramisu into Terry Sunami, tofu into futo and the tiny two-seater car into a two-four instead of a ForTwo. She makes cucumber salads with only tomatoes and manages to find a butchered name for a variety of objects, quite innocently. Definitely, she is part of our road trip entertainment.
These rural diners often conceal great surprises, and the Spicy radish, with its Mennonite employees, provides a comfortable “Kitchen” ambiance. Our view is rather bland: the CPR railway line from the city of Winnipeg, carrying myriad containers of goods east and west.
Instead of enjoying their homemade desserts, we choose to continue west along Hwy 44 to Beausejour, passing through stands of evergreen forests, as ell as a few expansive gravel pits partially hidden in the bush.
Beausejour is a town and community of about 5,000-10,000, and every retail type you would want is here, including lumber & hardware, restaurant, bars, clothing, discount shops, grocers, butchers and car dealers. But we are here for one specific outlet: Pennyweight.
Pennyweight has been around here for a few decades but continues to grow. Its primary focus is on bulk foods, and it has a large selection. All price competitively.
We want the ice cream, though. It is a very rich, thick, soft ice cream, exceptionally creamy. With its selection of more than 30 flavours, Pennyweight brags that they can create more than 1,000 options. While we would love to try each one, the portions are so large and so reasonably priced (under $5.00 for a “medium” tub that is equal to most large containers), that we settled for one each. Absolutely delicious! We’ll be back here several times this summer.
Now, stuffed, we head home along 44, then south back to the city instead of going through Lockport and along the Red River on Henderson. We’ll save that route for another day.