FREE PRESS reporter/outdoor columnist [BARTLEY KIVES]' new travel guide, A Daytripper's Guide to Manitoba: Exploring Canada's Undiscovered Province, is the province's first general-purpose guidebook. It hits the bookstores tomorrow.

"Unfortunately, the most fascinating attraction in Brandon is all but ignored by the local tourism authorities and all but impossible to visit. The decommissioned Brandon Mental Health Centre, originally known as the Asylum for the Insane, looms over the northeast portion of the city like a Gothic institution out of a Batman comic, surrounded by chains and No Trespassing signs. This is the place where an infamous psychiatrist named Ewan Cameron, later reviled for experimentally administering LSD to patients in Montreal, began to develop controversial ideas about "recreating" entire personalities from scratch..."

"Straddling lakes and climbing ridges in the eastern fringe of Whiteshell Provincial Park, the Mantario Trail is the prettiest, most pristine and most strenuous hiking route in Manitoba. Disturbingly fit trail runners complete the 63-km slog from Caddy Lake to Big Whiteshell Lake in less than two days. But they're insane..."