The day started off great. I woke up at 8am to go to work, realized that I didn’t have to go to work, then promptly fell back asleep.

We woke up at around 10:30am and started panicking because we had to check out at 11am and obviously, we had packed/cleaned nothing. Thankfully, Dorothy was able to accommodate a late check-out, giving us time to shower, pack, and clean. She even left us a note with things that she recommended for us to do on our drive which really made my heart warm. 

The weather was really nice that day (sunny with blue skies), which was a stark comparison to the day before. We quickly went back to all the places we went to the day before just to take better pictures. Since the weather was so nice, many people were outside having picnics and spending time with their loved ones. Even the geese were out! (insert the new pictures)

On our way out, we went to Assiniboine Park, which was one of the main things to see in Winnipeg. We didn’t really have much time there since there were other things to see and wanted to make it to Brandon before dark. There were so many people there and it was a bit difficult to find parking. We walked through the main part of the park, which was massive. We passed by a big building in the front, a miniature garden, a large open space, a pond, a snack stand, and a fountain. Hohyun took us to this really nice sculpture garden (Leo Mol Sculpture Garden) and it was really interesting to me since they were all statues of people. It reminded me of a really huge garden maze.

The reason why we had to leave so promptly was that I really wanted to go to Riding Mountain National Park to see bison in real life. This is what our drive looked like.

The whole drive was pretty flat- that whole prairie joke about “if you lose your dog, you could watch it run for 3 days” definitely rang true. Rural Manitoba was literally just fields, flatness, and the occasional small town.

There were huge signs denoting Riding Mountain National Park. We got to the gate, paid admission, and got the park map. We did not realize that Riding Mountain was that big and given our schedule, we didn’t have any time to waste. We first needed to use the washrooms, but that in itself took us a while to find since we had to use a paper map (no signal). We read the map incorrectly, turned into a compost yard, and realized we had to drive 15 more minutes to get to the washroom. As this was happening, Hohyun was getting more and more impatient since he really needed to go. We eventually made it to the main part of Riding Mountain for the washrooms, where a lot of the cabins were situated. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought it was a small town.

While Hohyun was in the washroom, I found a few Parks Canada employees to ask them where the bison were. They gave me another map and told me that the bison enclosure was a 45 min (one way) drive from where we were. They also warned us that the road there had no signal and was not paved, but had great opportunities for wildlife viewing. I really wanted to see the bison enclosure, but that meant it would add another 2-hour drive (45 min there + 45 min back + approximately 30 min seeing bison) for Hohyun and a possibility that we would make it to Brandon after dark. I didn’t know if he would be able to do another 2 hours of driving, but he was like “screw it” and we went for the enclosure.

We saw a black bear on the way there, which was nice. The bison enclosure that they suggested we go to was a gazebo/viewing platform where you could see the bison roam around in their habitat. I really enjoyed the viewing platform itself, since it taught me all about bison and how to spot them. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any bison, which was a bit disappointing, but at least we had tried. We didn’t really know what to do after besides leave (go back the way we came) but decided to venture further into the park and keep going. At one point, we saw this sign saying that you could turn and drive through the bison enclosure (one way) and we immediately did that.

The bison were MASSIVE. It was such a surreal experience being able to see bison less than a metre away from the car and I couldn’t get enough of it. Since there was no one behind us, we parked the car and took plenty of pictures from the safety of the car. At one point, I decided to open my sunroof and stand up through the sunroof to see bison like I was on a safari and it literally took my breath away. I couldn’t believe this was real.

We left the enclosure and decided to drive through it again and saw a huge herd gallop across the plains. We wanted to stay for longer but had to keep moving since there were 3 cars behind us. I was really happy to have seen the bison in their natural habitat and it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip thus far.  

It was actually getting late, so we had to leave Riding Mountain. Hohyun booked it to Brandon and we quickly stopped at the Commonwealth Air Training Museum to see it. We expected it to be closed just like everything else, but the exhibits outside were really cool. I learned that this used to be an important WW2 air force training base, and they even had a memorial commemorating everyone that had died in WW2 from the air force in the line of service.

We stayed at the Travelodge Brandon, which was pretty large. At the check-in, we asked the lady for dinner recommendations and she suggested going to Pizza Express with her testimonial of “I won’t order lasagna from anywhere else”. Our room thankfully had an outdoor entrance, which made moving things in a lot easier.

We picked up the food, then ate and watched Superstore. Before we slept, we had to plan out the drive to Regina carefully since there’d be a time change. Hohyun immediately went to bed after since he was exhausted, and I showered, did a bit of work, and wrote my postcards before I eventually passed out from exhaustion.