Road Trip, April 24: Grand Marais

This week’s road trip takes us from Winnipeg, north along Highway 59 to Libau, east to Sandhill Pines Campground and Mars Sandhill Golf Course, back to Hwy 59 to South Beach Casino, past a few of the east shore Lake Winnipeg beaches to the community of Grand Marais, then back south again to Selkirk and Lockport, before returning to Winnipeg. It is a quiet trip, because we are a few weeks early for the Manitoba summer cottage country exodus.

Manitoba, like northern Ontario, definitely is a cottage and camping province in the summer, with innumerable lakes and dozens of high-quality beaches, along with an array of great campgrounds and golf courses. We pack the majority of our outdoor fun (not all: we have a great fall and winter outdoor season, too, for the brave) into four or five months.  The first of the mainstream campers and cottage owners arrive at their summer destinations on the May long weekend, and the bulk pack up camping on the Labour Day weekend in September, but many of us enjoy (and sometimes endure) the shoulder seasons.

We opted to take an early drive, to see how well winter has been beaten back. The ice is still on the lake, there is lots of snow in the headlands and along the north face of wooded areas and everything is still quite brown, but, in a week or two, all that will change!

Highway 59 is a divided highway until you almost reach the First Nations Brokenhead Reservation and the village of Scantebury. More correctly, it becomes a two-way single lane each way highway just as you approach South Beach Casino, but we are turning east, after heading north for about 55 kilometers. While Highway 317 would take us all the way to Lac du Bonnet, we are only travelling 10 kilometers along this paved road.

At the 9K mark, we turn south to the Mars Sandhill Golf Course. Along the east side of the golf course, the virgin forest has been subdivided into large lots and almost two dozen new homes have sprouted here in the past five to eight years. It is pastoral, almost secluded, with winter feeling isolated but summer feeling gloriously connected to nature. It is not uncommon to see deer, bear, coyotes, fox, wolf, and even lynx in the area, along with a wealth of birds.

Part of the Millenium (TransCanada) Trail runs past here, and it is a great opportunity to spend a day hiking in the wilderness.

Just a half kilometer east of the golf course, on Hwy 317, is Sandhill Pines Campground. It is a 65-site nicely hidden campground with a substantial clubhouse, pool and large RV sites. It also has seen a few iterations. For decades, it was home to the Crocus Nudist (sorry, naturist) Colony. When the club began to experience financial problems (possibly because the campers had no place to carry their money), it became a 55 Plus campground. Perfect for older campers who wanted to banish both loud ATVs and equally loud children. Then, this year, it opened up to families, while keeping the campground free from ATVs and dirt bikes. But the plethora of golf carts attests to the age of the current campers.

Now, we retreat along 317, heading back to 59 and then about 15 km north to South Beach Casino, owned by the local First Nations people. It is a great place to lose (or occasionally win) some money, to dine at the two restaurants, to enjoy weekend entertainment, or to stay and play in the indoor pool that is a part of the hotel attached to the casino. We opt to gamble a bit, because it is our birthday month and we get a gift of $10 each to gamble.

Now, we head north past Patricia Beach and Beaconia (one of them has a nudist area, but I’m not sure which one). Traverse Bay and Balsam Bay also have beach areas along the route, but Highway 59 divides into the extension of Highway 12, and we turn west on 12 to head to Grand Marais.

This is a small, mostly seasonal community right on Lake Winnipeg, with lots of shops and food places open in the summer. Now, only a few are open. L’il Lucy’s Gift Shop and Sand Bar Restaurant are two of them. Both are open on weekends year round, and both are worth the visit.

Grand Marais is the retail side of Grand Beach, a provincial park on the lake with what many consider to be a world class beach. There are more swimming spots along the east side of the lake, including Victoria Beach, but Grand Beach easily is the most popular day trip beach in the province. Others, like West Hawk and Falcon Lakes in the Whiteshell, Gimli on the west side of Lake Winnipeg and Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park may dispute Grand Beach’s #1 status, but, being only an hour or so from Winnipeg and having massive amounts of sandy shore and shallow water, it definitely is a favourite among young people during the weekend and families during the week.

Around 2 pm, we head back to Winnipeg, but we stop for an early dinner at South Beach. Too early for the buffet, we enjoy pizza and salad in Mangos.

Selkirk is next on our route. At Highway 4, we turn west over a bridge that rises like a small mountain over the Red River, north of Selkirk, before turning south into town. For years, this was known as the bridge to nowhere, as it seemingly had no destination point or start. Instead, it has become a vital link for lakeside residents to shop in the largest shopping centre in Selkirk or connect to the rest of the Interlake.

While we are not visiting the Selkirk Marine Museum today, it is an ideal tourist spot.

Just south of Selkirk, Lower Fort Garry is a rejuvenated replica of the old fort and community essential to Canada’s early fur trade in western Canada.

Further down Highway 9, we turn left to Lockport. This once was the site of waterway locks that enabled freighters to move up and down the Red River. Now, it is a tourist point of interest. Lockport, however, has weekly summer events, the world-famous Skinners and Half Moon Hot Dog Drive Ins, and now, the point where scores of fishermen and hundreds of white pelicans vie for the abundant fish in the river at the locks. Of note is our stock of huge catfish, rivalling the world’s largest. The huge catfish statue in Selkirk may actually be smaller than the biggest catfish caught in the area. (That’s a typical fisherman’s exaggeration.)

Now, we head home, following old Henderson Highway along the Red River into the city. It may be too early for flowers, but the abundance of reds and whites is just as pretty. Since the Americans voted Trump into office, Canadians have found national pride and fervour, and nowhere is this more evident than the hundreds of red and white Maple Leaf flags that adorn a majority of homes from Lockport to Winnipeg along Henderson.

We left at 10:30 in the morning, arrived home at 4:30 in the afternoon. It was perfect weather, perfect road conditions and a perfect day.