A Day Trip with Chrlie (BRM) June 26, 2019 - videos

[PaulG]

I finally get a chance for my first real ride of the year so far.  It's been a horribly wet and cold spring.  There were a few nice days in between, but with the work schedule, and life in general nothing seemed to synch up.  I saw an opportunity approaching so I contacted fellow FJ owner/site member Charlie (BRM).  He had recently moved to Hastings, Ontario, which is one of those idyllic little towns along the Trent/Severn Canal system, about 90 min north east from where I live.  I got my cameras ready (so I thought), but I couldn't find my foot peg mount so I was limited to my helmet and nose cam.

The initial plan was just to cruise by and check out his new digs, (a groovy bachelor pad if there ever was one.    )





During a late breakfast at a local diner, we came up with a rough plan of doing a northerly loop lasting about three hours.





The two videos are from roads I have never been on so it was a treat.  The weather forecast was calling for a plague of frogs, etc.  It's getting pretty bad over the last few years with these forecasts.  They want you to think we are being invaded by the Mongol hordes or worse.  Apparently there was severe/dangerous thunderstorm activity due in the region later in the afternoon, exactly when we would be at the most northern point of our tour.  What we got was a pithy little sun shower that we rode through without changing into rain gear.

The first video was taken of Northeys Bay Road,  which follows the north shore of Upper Stoney Lake.  We first approach it from the north - cuz I missed the sign - and head west.  The first and last bits were straight, but the middle bit was nice and curvey.  The camera doesn't do it justice as the 170deg lense stretches things out.

Northeys Bay Road



Shortly after that we continue north up Hwy 28 for the next section which is in the Loop Road video.  There was a short trip onto McGillivary Road to connect to Hwy 118 then west to The Loop Road.  As luck would have it, the first bit was marred by a guy in a pick-up with no signal lights, who was in no particular hurry, even to move over and let us by.     He eventually turned off Hwy 118 and we continued the short stretch to the Loop Road.  Almost immediately it started to rain, but it was sunny with patches of cloud around.  I couldn't figure out from which direction it was coming from, and since it wasn't too severe, we continued on without a problem.

McGillivary Rd-Hwy 118-Loop Road



Now the route back was down the "The 507" which I have chronicled before.  We stopped in Buckhorn for a late 4 o'clock-ish lunch, then headed down to Bridgenorth for a gas stop, where we parted company.  Charlie went east back to Hastings, and I went south-west back to Scarborough.

All-in-all a great day.    Nil traffic being mid-week, good riding and good conversation.  Even the rush-hour traffic heading home didn't bother me.  I hardly even swore at anybody.    Later on is where I learned about my hasty camera preparations.  I forgot to delete the files that were on them so I ran out of memory, otherwise I may have been able to compile a third video.  My helmet cam was misaligned so all I got was a good view of the gas tank and dash of the bike.     I'm sure that disappoints many of you.   

Can't wait for the rest of the summer and what it awaits.   

[Tuned forks]

Sure are a lot of lakes in your area.

Joe

[PaulG]

In case you tried to watch it and got a blank screen, here's a new version with an "approved" soundtrack.     The first one was blocked after about a week.


Loop Road V2

Sure are a lot of lakes in your area.

Joe

As per Wikipedia...

There are approximately 250,000 lakes and over 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi) of rivers in the province. Almost 94% of the population is concentrated within Southern Ontario, where the population was over 12,100,000 in the 2006 census...About one-fifth of the world's fresh water can be found in Ontario.

So if you like doing outdoorsy stuff, this is the place to go - the northern part is virtually empty.