Ride Report: Trip to Canada's easternmost province

[ZimZima]

Back in early 2009, me and djez were planning a tour of the Alps and Dolomites in Europe (thread here). The flights and bikes were booked, vacation days booked at work; everything was ready to go when the airline called me and said that they cancelled our flight. That meant we had to change the booking dates for everything, which was a pain. Plus there were talks of recession looming on the horizon. So we decided to cut our budget and use our days off exploring the continent we live in instead of flying over the Atlantic.

It started off as a trip to Cape Breton, NS. However, after doing some research, I decided that we should set foot (or tyres) on Newfie soil since we're going all the way to the East coast (Thread here).

We planned our route using Google Maps, other ride reports and suggestions from GTAM members:



These were the highlights of the trip:
Mount Washington, Vermont: 6,288 ft (1,917 m)
Cabot Trail, NS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabot_Trail
Gros Morne Park: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ad...ros_morne.html

Total mileage: approx 6000kms

*NOTE: We skipped Gaspe Peninsula due to lack of time

I should've taken more pics of the bikes, but we were busy documenting everything else but the bike.

Day 1: Left from Toronto in the evening with djez after work.

Our Iron steeds all loaded up, ready to go. We were just loading up on some sugar at the local Timmies before we head out:


Rode thru the night to arrive at Prescott, ON around midnight. Unsuccessful in finding a campsite for the night, me and djez had to sleep on the road side by the truck stop. Woke up at 5.00am covered with dew. What a start...

Day 2: Crossed the border at Ogdensburg, NY via a metal grated bridge. Didn't realize how dew and cold can make the metal bridge so slippery, especially on a bike. Plus it is so unnerving to see the river 100 feet below thru the grates... just hoping we don't slip.
Rode into Adrinodack State Park, NY, stopped for a little hike near Lake Placid.

Due to lack of proper sleep, I was unable to concentrate. Djez had a solution for this. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out this:



His friggin porta-espresso maker. Who the hell makes espresso in the middle of nowhere on a motorcycle trip. Anyway, that shot of espresso woke me up.

We continued on thru the twisties towards Whiteface Mountain (4,867ft). Stopped by the roadside to take some pics:




Entrance to Whiteface mountain:



We had to leave our bikes at the top, walk thru a tunnel (where the temperature was 4C) and take the staircase to the peak.

Once we got up there the view was amazing:





Our next stop was Mount Washington in New Hampshire. We started heading into Vermont, hitting endless twisties along the way:


We continued into Vermont and then to New Hampshire, to stop at a campsite at the base of Mount Washington (6,228ft), the tallest peak in North-Eastern US*.
(*Source: http://www.mountwashington.com/)


Day 3: After my first proper sleep, I woke up and got out of my tent to stretch and hear something about 40-50 feet from me. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a big full grown Black Bear scurring away from me.



Darn thing was as big as my tent, damn where's my camera... I groped around in my tent for the camera and realized it had the small lens on it. Damn it, I wish I left my tele-photo lens on last night. By the time I got my camera ready, Mr. Bear was off into the woods, but I still managed to get a pic of him running away from me with his tail between his legs (didn't realize I could actually scare a bear). Djez peeked out of his tent, hearing all the commotion. When I told him about the bear, he ran out behind it into the woods with his camera, ummmm not a good idea if he decides to turn around. Mr. Bear got away this time.

Anyway, after the early morning episode, we headed out to ascend Mount Washington (6,288ft) thru a narrow windy road with large boulders for guard rails (wouldn't help much if we were to fly over the handle bars). Half way up and the road turned to gravel ... great, my 'sport' bike wasn't made for gravel roads.



It was cold and windy up there, with barren rocks and no trees. The scenery reminded me of pictures I'd seen of the Scottish Highlands, except we didn't see any sheep



They still had some leftover snow in June.
Apparently it is the windiest place in the world:


Glad it wasn't that windy when we rode up there, or else we'd be flying back down

At the summit:


Ok it's not that high compared to the Rockies, but it is the highest I've travelled with my bike. Bike needed a rest after all that climbing:



Going up was the easy part, 'going down' was difficult. I had to constantly shift between first and second gear on the gravel road and the bike hardly had traction on the curves. To make things worse, the road was sloping towards the edge in some places, to allow for water run off I guess... but it also felt like my bike wanted to run off the cliffs too. I started breathing when we reached the bottom of the mountain.
From there we rode thru small villages to a narrow twisty road called Hurricane Mountain Road. This was one of the most fun motorcycling roads (except for the bumps). One and a half track wide road thru deep forest with tons of tight turns and abrupt elevation changes. On one of the hill crests, my bike flew up in the air...a sign that I had too much luggage in the back and had to take it easy.
(Check out this youtube video of this road [not mine ]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwCnWK4PhFA

From there we headed into Maine (scary place with haunted looking houses, must've taken a wrong backroad). It was getting dark and we had to reach the Canada border. Can't imagine being stuck in the middle of nowhere... didn't want to camp in someone's field, only to get shot by the farmer. Plus the blackflies would bite us at every opportunity when we stopped. Worse, we had no cell phone signal... can't even call 911 if something was to happen. We kept hitting super-sonic speeds. I was running out of fuel, didn't realize that the bike uses twice as much fuel at those speeds. Found a campsite close to the border and decided to take that since we didn't know if any gas stations would be open at that time. (Lesson learnt, never wait to re-fuel till the last minute).

[ZimZima]

Day 4: Crossed into Canada thru a small border crossing that looked more like a toll booth. Canadian customs let djez go, but made me stop and checked my documents throughly. I'm guessing it was the fact that I had nothing to declare. In any case, the custom officials were quite impressed by how I managed to strategically pack so much on a bike. They didn't bother opening up the luggage and just peeked in to show that they were doing their job. We had to catch the 9am ferry at St. John, NB and were running late. Some more of high speed action and we barely made it in time. Took the ferry and crossed over to Digby, NS at lunch time.

From Digby, we headed south onto Long Island; this little peninsula which was connected to the mainland by small ferries. The ferry stops for literally three minutes to unload and then you hop on with your bike/car, pay the toll and hop off on the other side. Here's the ferry operator talking about his Harley and his trip to Cape Breton




We saw quite a few lighthouses along the way:



Had my first seafood chowder there while djez fondled a mother Blue Whale while it's baby looked on helplessly:



After lunch, we went to see this Balancing Rock...



... where djez tried to 'unbalance' it:



After giving up on it, we had to hike up the hill back to our bikes:



From there, we rode down to within one hour of Halifax and camped at Lunenburg. Had to pick up the wives flying into Halifax the next morning. Setup a nice warm campfire to get thru the cold night:



Day 5: Rode to Halifax Airport to pick up the wives. People were giving us wierd looks at the airport, I guess it's not too often that they see bikes packed like mules riding into the Arrival terminals. After adding some more luggage that the girls brought with them (that they were not supposed to), we rode off to Halifax downtown to have lunch by the wharf (sorry no pics).
After a quick tour of downtown, we made our way to Sydney, NS thru (bumpy but scenic and twisty) Route 7 - Marine Drive; stopping overnight at Spry Bay (a small coastal fishing village on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia).

Another light house on the eastern coast:




Day 6: Whole day of motorcycle riding along the marine/coastal waters of NS.






Were planned on going to Louisberg, but we were late, so we decided to see Marconi's museum at Glace Bay before boarding the ferry in North Sydney. Boarded the ferry at 11pm to newfoundland. The ferry was quite nice, spent some time walking around and fixing TVs (people thought I worked on the boat)
Here's the restaurant on board the ferry:



...and the lounge area:




...no cabins though, since they were too expensive to book (remember, we were on a budget), so we slept on the air lounger for 6 hours.

[ZimZima]

Day 7: Arrived early morning at Port Aux-Basques, Newfoundland. I was too busy stuffing my face at the breakfast buffet...my bike was the last vehicle to get off... amidst dirty looks from the ferry workers. Rode up to Corner Brook for a quick espresso stop and check out their visitor info center before we get lost. Rode all afternoon to Gros Morne national park exploring Route 431 till sundown (South part, Table Mountains).

Approaching the Table Mountains:


It was a long windy road and the scenery here was dramatically different from Nova Scotia:


Poser!!! (Where's the Timmies parking lot???):

Yup, that's snow in the background, brrrrr...

With rain threatening us,the rush to find a campsite was on. We found one at Rocky Harbor. Djez and his wife got 5 lbs of mussel ($1.30/lb) and cod-all fresh before fish market closed, hurriedly set up our tents and voila- the heavens opened up, while cooking our dinner...so we were eating and cooking in the rain.

Day 8: Woke up and it's still raining. Stayed at camp that day, doing laundry, planning ahead etc. They had a covered kitchen shelter at the site, so we spent the rest of the day there playing cards and eating. Wanted to go to the Meadows via the Vikings Trail to see old Viking settlements (5000 yr old... and you thought Columbus was the first person to discover North America...???). Couldn't go there coz of the rain, plus it was 500 kms away. Also wanted to go to St. Anthony's to see Icebergs in the ocean, but that got cancelled as well. Went to sleep in the rain again, after adding some reinforcements to prevent water leakage in our tent. This day was a write-off. Well atleast we got some rest.


Day 9: Woke up late and packed up our tents. Had brunch at Rocky Harbour, admiring this view:


After brunch,we headed out to Western Brook lake for a boat tour in the fjord (land locked glacier lake). after a 3km / 40 min hike, got on the ferry.






15 mins into the tour they said they had to cancel it because of fog up ahead... great, nothing is going right. But they said they'd give us a full refund if we rode back to Rocky Harbour to refund the tickets. Barely made it in time. From there we headed to Norris Point for another pic session...


...and then the long ride back to Port aux-Basques to catch the ferry back. Nice scenery along the way:


It was cold and we hit some dense fog along the way...


...combined with swarms of mosquitoes:


We finally made it to the ferry on time



and loaded up the bikes:


Glad we had booked dorms for the ferry ride back, slept better this time.

[ZimZima]

Day 10: Arrived at Sydney at the crack of dawn, rode to Fort Louisberg to see reenactment of the 18th century French culture at the fortress.

The guard at the gate called me a British spy since I came from Ontario and was wearing a Red jacket (colours of the British army at that time).

You feel like you've gone back in time:



From there we headed up to Cabot Trail to experience one of the most spectacular and scenic roads in Canada.
Missed the whale watching tour at 5pm so we checked into a motel closeby (Pleasant Bay I believe). Will try again next morning.
Sunset in the backyard:


For dinner, I had a Lobster for that first time.


Oops, I think it wasn't cooked properly, LOL:


Day 11: After breakfast, we walked down to the harbour to board one of the rafts for the Whale watching tours. They took us a few miles off-shore where we were surrounded by pods of upto 50 Pilot Whales, Dolphins and some elusive Minke Whales. We were so close to the whales/dolphins that we could almost touch them.


Also saw a Bald Eagle nearby. After that amazing experience, we proceeded to Skyline trail to hike 9 kms up the mountain.


I found this van parked at Skyline Trail. Apparently the couple shipped it from Europe and were doing a tour of North America:


Met Mrs. Moose halfway up there, grazing less than 100 feet from us.


At the end of the hike, we saw some gorgeous scenery.




From there we proceeded to Chèticamp for lunch where djez and his wife split, to head back Toronto. Me and my wifey rode back thru the Cabot Trail once again to camp at St. Ann's Bay on the other side (170kms).

Saw more moose (mooses, meese???) grazing by the highway on the way back, and djez saw this male moose:


Camped at St. Ann's Bay right by the ocean, fell asleep to the soothing sound of waves. I highly recommend this campsite if you're in the area:


Day 12: Woke up to the crowing of an obnoxious Raven over our tent. Turns out I forgot to close my saddlebag properly and he found a way to get into it. He pulled out all the citronella candles from my bag. After spending some time at the beach, we headed to the town of Baddeck for lunch and gave the bike a much needed oil change. From there we rode to Amherst at the border of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Checked out 300 million years old fossil cliffs at Joggins Park. Camped overnight at Amherst. (Nothing exciting, so no pics)

Day 13: Spent the day riding thru backroads of New Brunswick. Got stopped by RCMP (about 25 cars hiding in the bushes). I'm guessing a drug bust or something. Saw two bear cubs, a fox, few eagles and a partridge along the way. At Miramichi, we got stuck in some major traffic. Arrrgh, back to 'civilization':


By evening, we reached a small town in Quebec called Rivère-du-Loop, on the southern shores of the great St. Lawrence river. Camped near the river since we had a ferry to catch the next morning.

Day 14: Crossed over the St. Lawrence on a ferry.

Met another old rider who had been riding for 45 years, took some tips for good riding roads in the area. From there we proceeded thru small coastal villages in Charlevoix to Quebec City. Stopped at a church to check out the architecture. In Quebec City, we visited the Old part of town within the fort walls.



After much walking, we camped outside the city.

Day 15: Rode to Montreal, only to be stuck in rush hour traffic in Montreal. We changed our mind about stopping in Montreal, especially since it was supposed to rain the next day... so we just kept on riding towards Toronto, only to make it back home at 11pm at night. Ahhh, home sweet home, finally...

Gosh, what a trip. I was pooped out...

[ZimZima]

Couple of things I regret:
I wish we spent more time in Newfoundland as I really wanted to go to the Northern and Eastern most tips of the island. I really wanted to take a pic with my bike with icebergs in the background. I'm guessing in a few more years, they wont be as large anymore. (global warming?)
Missed out on PEI, not many twisties there but that is not the only reason I ride for.
Gaspe Peninsula is apparently beautiful, but we didn't have time to check it out. Maybe next time I'll have to do a tour of the Northern shores of St. Lawrence river in Quebec and take a ferry across to Gaspe. Hmmm, Summer 2010? Maybe...


Here is the route we took, if anyone is interested:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=d&sourc...86&ie=UTF8&z=4

[gashton]

Wow!!!!what a journey. I have been thinking about making the trip to Cape Breton this sumer on my bike. You just made my decision easier. great pics. just curious, what do you think you spent in fuel.

[chinto]

Nice writeup. That's crazy about the bear.

[Skurj]

Thanks for the write up, I have to see the east coast some time.

[gcrouse]

Excellent write up!!! Thoroughly enjoyed it....... good work on getting the bear shot too .

[ZimZima]

great pics. just curious, what do you think you spent in fuel.

Thanks.
Cost of fuel really depends on your mileage and your bike's consumption.

You can figure out the approx distance by google maps. I use this formula to calculate approx cost:

Total distance travelled (kms)/ mileage of your bike on a tank of gas = Number of tanks of gas needed.

You multiply this by the average cost of fill up for your bike. I took an average price of $25 per fill up per tank (20L tank)

6000 kms/250kms (tank range)= 24 Tanks
24 tanks x $25 (for fill up) = $600 (approx cost of fuel)

Keep in mind that the faster you ride, the less fuel efficient your bike becomes. Also fuel tends to be more expensive in the Eastern provinces. Newfoundland was the highest at nearly $1.48.

Hope that helps

[Royson]

Fun trip! It's got me looking forward to my own summer vacation.

I'm headed for Halifax tomorrow, albeit in the car.

[Rotten_Ronnie]

Awesome ride report!

You shared some beautiful pictures. Thanks!

[CruisnGrrl]

**** Yeah. NFLD is one of 2 provinces I haven't been to. Once I get everything sorted with QC I'm gonnna have to make it out there..... A revisit to NS is definitely in order too.

[djez]

Addition to the Report:

While being rained in in NF ma and my partner braved the rain went to a marine science center and saw this, Two face lobster

[RichinOville]

Great writeup. Thanks. I did a similar trip in July. But the weather sucked so much we never camped at all. The day we road by, you couldn'teven see Mt Washington at all, the cload cover was at about 200ft. We didn't make it to Newfoundland but did ride around Gaspe. It was very beautiful.

[BlueBeV]

Where is our pictures?

[DR.ZED]

Guys a fantastic post. Thanks very much for showing your journey.

A buddy of mine and I are looking at doing a 3 or 4 day tour on our cruisers. I think we're going to do the motel thing. Possibly head to atlanticade. I think the drive there would be the best part (St. Andrews, NB).

[ZimZima]

Where is our pictures?

Wasn't sure if you wanted me to post them. Go ahead and add to the report...

[JiuJitsu]

Wonderful report guys... I am from, born and raised, in Sydney Nova Scotia... My buddy Jon and I are doing this trip in a few months.... I'm planning on packing a 1 man tent and just tenting it along the way...

PS... In one photo you called a moose "Mrs Moose"... During that time moose don't have antlers so it could have been a Mr...

Thanks for giving me a taste of home....

[Barneycanoe]

How much is the NFLD ferry?