Manitoba, in case you didn't know, struggles with a bit of an image problem. Unless you happen to be a prairie expat--and, granted, every third person you meet in Vancouver seems to have family ties to Winnipeg--you're unlikely to heed the call of canola when it comes to planning your two weeks of annual vacation. It's a safer bet that you think of Manitoba as a province to get through, a convenient geographic straightaway where you can pick up speed on your way to someplace--anyplace--else.

Certainly that was the case 20 years ago when my pal Anita and I made a memorable dash across Canada. Clutching our newly minted journalism degrees, we hightailed it out of Ottawa: we had to get back to Vancouver before the insurance expired on Anita's B.C.-insured car. We hit the Trans-Canada and drove for five long days, blowing through Manitoba on that ugly ribbon of asphalt without sentiment. We drove mile after mile (after mile after mile) past golden fields and sapphire skies, with only one thought between us: are we there yet?

It was on a return road trip last summer that I came to realize the Manitoba landscape would never grab you by the throat and insist that you take a good long look. Unlike our mountains and ocean, which scream like spoiled children for attention, the prairie just sits there quietly like Cinderella at the ball, hoping someone will notice its particular charms. It dawned on me that if I wanted Manitoba to reveal herself, I had to make a bit of a commitment. I had to slow down and pay closer attention. I had to get off the highway.

My first encounter with the unanticipated prairie was at Spruce Woods Provincial Park, a half-hour drive east and south of Brandon. There I discovered the Spirit Sands, a vast and unexpected natural sandbox in the middle of an equally unexpected spruce forest, in the middle of an entirely familiar mixed-grass prairie.

An aboriginal sacred site for centuries, the area constitutes "one great big geology lesson", according to park interpreter Madelyne Robinson. Thousands of years ago, the old Assiniboine River, much larger than it is today, created an enormous delta as it poured glacial melt waters into the ancient (and now disappeared) Lake Agassiz. Of the original 6,500 square kilometres of delta sands, only four square kilometres remain; the rest is covered with vegetation. Because the sands receive almost twice as much rain as a true desert region, plants colonize easily on the dunes. "In the long battle between grass and sand," Robinson observes, "the grass won."

In the high heat of August, with black storm clouds threatening in the distance, the sands were eerie, alive with the buzz of mostly unseen insects. My husband, Brad, and I walked in slow and silent single file on the 1.5-kilometre trail ringing the dunes, hushed by the primeval views and the undeniable feeling that we were walking on spiritually charged ground. Every now and again, Brad would crouch like a child to inspect unfamiliar life forms: tiger beetles, wolf spiders, northern prairie skinks. We saw no human footprints. The only evidence that others had passed that way were four cigarette butts and a message written in the sand, which we interpreted as a sort of mini-travelogue: WOW HEE HEE = COSTA RICA.

We cursed ourselves for arriving after lunch; by late afternoon it was simply too hot and humid to make the seven-kilometre trek to the southwest to see the vivid blue-green waters of the Devil's Punch Bowl, a dramatic bowl-shaped depression fed by underground streams. "The colour of the water is caused by the minerals in the clay at the bottom of the bowl," Robinson says. "It's being constantly fed; even on a minus-40 January day, it never freezes." Not that you'd actually want to be there in January; the best time to visit the atmospheric site is early in the morning during the summer months, or anytime in the early fall when the surrounding grasses turn a rich rusty-maroon.

THE SECOND SECRET landscape I discovered in Manitoba turned out not to be such a big secret after all. In fact, Oak Hammock Marsh, along with its interpretive centre, was declared by Attractions Canada in 2000 to be Canada's best outdoor site, and British Airways in 2002 named it the best environmental experience in the world. Still, this pretty wetland sanctuary, a half-hour drive north of Winnipeg and surrounded on all sides by cultivated prairie fields, is not widely known beyond Manitoba's borders.

Today it challenges the imagination to think that much of southern Manitoba was once this sort of marshland. In the mid-1800s, the Oak Hammock site, then called St. Andrews Bog by the settlers, covered 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres); by 1926, the swamp had been drained for farmland, except for 60 hectares. It didn't take long for the loss of habitat to deplete the province's duck population; by the late 1960s, Ducks Unlimited began restoring the area with support from the federal and provincial governments. The Oak Hammock Marsh Wildlife Management Area opened in 1973 and covers almost 3,600 hectares--the last eight percent of Manitoba's original wetlands.

Oak Hammock is a birder's paradise. The marsh seasonally supports almost 300 species of birds and hundreds of species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects. Especially in the early spring and early fall, the wetlands serve as a kind of avian Hilton, providing first-class room and board for hundreds of thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds. "It's the perfect all-you-can-eat buffet," Oak Hammock biologist Jacques Bourgeois observes. "They can plump up on lots and lots of bugs before they head north or south."

Dramatic skies and the very real risk of becoming human lightning rods kept us from wandering too far along the 30 kilometres of scenic boardwalks that criss-cross the verdant marsh, but we had an ample view of blue-billed ruddy ducks, yellow-headed blackbirds, and pelicans from strategically located viewing platforms. If the weather had been on our side, we would have opted for a literal bird's-eye view of the wetlands with an escorted one-hour canoe ride (just $3) through milkweed, cattails, and sweet yellow clover. "It's the best way to see the birds," Bourgeois says. "They accept you as family; they don't try to hide."

Seven years ago this past September, when he first arrived at Oak Hammock, Bourgeois was standing on the roof of the interpretive centre, looking at an ominous western sky. "I thought I saw a big fire on the horizon," he recalls. "I watched the smoke getting thicker and blacker, and then I suddenly realized: it wasn't smoke; it was a cloud of birds flying toward the marsh. They flew so low overhead, I felt like I could tickle their bellies. I had never seen anything like it." It was a memorable experience, an unanticipated thrill--not unlike a visit to the unexpected prairie.

ACCESS: For Manitoba travel information, accommodation bookings, and maps, call 1-800-665-0040 or visit www.travelmanitoba.com/.

To get to Oak Hammock Marsh from Winnipeg: from the perimeter highway at either the junction of Highway 7 (Route 90) or Highway 8 (McPhillips Street), drive 10 minutes north to Highway 67. Follow the signs. Travel five minutes on Highway 67 until Highway 220. Turn north and travel five minutes to the conservation centre. Admission is $4 for adults, $3 for youth under 17 and seniors over 55, $14 for a family. For information, call 1-800-665-3825, extension 299, or visit www.ducks.ca/ohmic/.

To get to Spruce Woods Provincial Park from the Trans-Canada Highway, turn south on Highway 5 at Carberry. Drive approximately 30 kilometres to the park entrance. Admission is free. For information, call 1-800-214-6497 or visit www.manitobaparks.com/.