Parks
In central Portage la Prairie, there is a peninsula known as Island Park, bounded by an oxbow lake called Crescent Lake (however, an extensive marsh located at the south ends of the lake connects the two halves of Crescent Lake, as a creek runs from one end to the other, but since two land bridges cross the oxbow, the island is no longer an official "island"). Every winter, the "island" has a festival of lights consisting of Christmas lights decorating a driving path around the perimeter. In addition, a highly popular winter lights parade is held. The island has a beautiful 18 hole golf course, Portage Industrial Exhibition grounds which hosts various agricultural competitions and midway, an outdoor water park, a large pen enclosure for deer, a birdcage area featuring peacocks, playgrounds, walking trails, tennis courts, a duck pond, various monuments, and an extensive arboretum. It is also the site of the new Portage Credit Union Centre; the new home of the Portage Terriers Hockey Club and an indoor water park. As well, Crescent Lake is home to flocks of migrating and nesting Canada Geese.
Just south of the Portage la Prairie by-pass is the Portage Spillway, where the Assiniboine River empties into a diversion which in recent years has protected the city from flooding. Not only does this area mark the importance of the river in Portage's history, but it is home to Portage Spillway-Wayside Provincial Park, a park that is especially popular with fishermen in the summer months. Also not far southwest lies Spruce Woods Provincial Park and not far north lies St. Ambroise Beach Provincial Park. The city is also home to a network of multi-use recreational trails running through the parks and forested areas, which provide an oasis for sightseers to view wildlife.Geocaching has become popular in these areas, as people are finding more innovative ways to get out hiking in this scenic urban forest.
Aside from parks, the Portage la Prairie/Central Plains Region features many fine campgrounds located within a 15-30 minute drive of the city, and offers a few public beaches including Delta Beach, home to the Delta Marsh Field Station/Wildlife Reserve (part of this beach/area has been destroyed due to recent flooding in the spring of 2011), Jackson Lake (located 2 miles southeast of Sidney, Manitoba, about a 35 minute drive west of Portage la Prairie) and Twin Lakes Beach, located an hour northeast of Portage, also on Lake Manitoba.
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Famous quotes containing the word parks:
“Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)