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It's been a few years since I've been in Elphinstone which is located about 35 minutes from Riding Mountain National Park. I enjoy being there because it is located on a beautiful valley with the Little Saskatchewan River running through it. The town was founded by my ancestors and has a good size amount of historic buildings dating back to the mid 1800s. Besides the town you are very close to RMNP which is amazing with the valleys, super clear lakes and the bison enclosure. -
Today was the day we arrived and it felt good to be back after a few years. The cabin we stayed at before was completely renovated. The house upon arrival and exploration was 10x better then before with a nice sunroom. The yard was about the same, after unpacking we went for a bike ride around town to see what changed and to see my great grandmothers old house. The old house has been abandoned for a while but the window was open and all the items inside were still left where it last was. -
After the train station being a bust and only finding a few modern coins and an old roll of toothpaste, I then decided to try the old general store. We searched the property and had found a penny from the 1940's and a horseshoe but that was about it, knowing how old the town is I was a bit disappointed but that's just how it is sometimes. I wanted to detect my great grandparents house because there is stories that he would bury jars with items in it, that mission was unsuccessful.
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I had brought my metal detector along in order to try metal detecting some public sites in the town. I found one spot near the road that enters the town, and this spot is where the old train station was located. Knowing this makes me think lots of people used money to get on the trains. We had searched for about an hour and a half but never found anything super old, the oldest coins were from the 1960s. I suspected it has either been hunted, I hunted the wrong area of the station or I'm a goof. -
Today was the day we decided to tackle the Bald Hill via Reeves Ravine trail in Riding Mountain National Park. I've read online it's 12 km trail and should take 3 and a half hours. We get to the trail with our mountain bikes and notice there is a fork at the beginning of the trail. As someone who has never been to the trail we go right, boy was that the wrong choice. It was just a loop trail that added 2.7 km's to our total mileage. The separate trail was a wonderful trail with lots of hills. -
We only ever ran into one other group which was hiking back down, we regretted bringing the bikes since we were barely able to ride them. We only ever rode them when going down hill. We were going down one hill and I did not have my helmet on and the trail curved to the right and I locked my front breaks and slid/flipped off the edge of a cliff, I got caught on some branches and only fell down maybe 10 feet. After the incident were were climbing up the edge of a cliff dropping 250+ feet. -
We get through the trail and realised our mistake and would regret that mistake due to it causing unnecessary fatigue. Now that we are on the right trail we pick up the speed to make up for the lost time due to the other trail. The only disappointing issues was it rained overnight and the ground was a slip and slide of mud, not to mention the air was super humid and the fog was really bad. So majority of the trail we had to walk the bikes due to the steep inclines and slippery mud. -
After a few hours we finally got to the last leg of the journey to the top, we hiked a trail to the side that leads to the top. When we got to the top it was still foggy, the hills made you think how the hell does Manitoba go from flat landscapes to hills reaching 2376 ft. Pictures online don't do the justice of how high these hills are and how steep the cliffs are. After taking in the views we head back down and leave to get back to the cabin. That eveing we went to the town to check it out.