A Near North Experience

Story by Glenn Roberts// Photos by Alexe Sawicki and Glenn Roberts
April 1 2013

I had borrowed a K1600GT sport tourer from BMW for only a week, and needed a direction to aim it. I was itching to get some kilometres on it, but work wasn’t allowing me time off without a good reason. Logging into my email one morning, I found my escape route. I had an offer from Mike Jacobs to tag along for a few days on a ride he was undertaking. That’s all I needed; as long as I had a formal invitation, getting away from work should be easy. After all, it was a work-related trip now. His timing was impeccable.

Mike and his crew were in North Bay on one of their Northern Ontario road trips, and while I have never met Mike or his crew, I understood that their sense of humour and crazy antics should make for an interesting few days. But in my books, as long as I was out on the Beemer, it didn’t really matter.

Mike and his squad were spending their whole summer in Northern Ontario on what he called the Ultimate Northern Ontario Road Trip, or UNORT for short. He would be riding his yellow BMW F650GS, while Jessie would act as road trip co-ordinator and the main driver of a red Chevy 4×4 pickup with tent trailer in tow. Alexe was the gang’s photographer and Bogdan the videographer. Bogdan would occasionally ride a 1977 Yamaha 750, when he could get it running. The gang’s plan was to spend the whole summer driving aimlessly throughout the northern reaches of the province and enjoying everything that it had to offer, while recording it all in a blog with video and photos (ontarioroadtrip.ca).

With Gwen testing out the passenger seat of the 1600 cc Beemer road rocket, we pointed the GT north on Hwy 11 with North Bay in our sights. Meeting at Churchill’s Prime Rib House for 6:30 p.m. made for an easy three-hour stretch from Barrie. If this restaurant and our initial introduction to the UNORT crew were any indication of what the next few days would bring, I had no doubt we’d have a great time.

Not really knowing what the next day’s plan was, or really caring as long as it involved riding, we left early morning for a Lake Nipissing loop tour. We headed out of North Bay on Hwy 11 south to County Road 654 west, just south of Callander. If you are picky about the grade of fuel you burn, now is the time to be aware that not all gas stations in rural Northern Ontario carry premium, so you may want to top up the tank in major centres.

big nickle Passing billboards proclaiming the area as “Vacationland” surprised me a bit, as I always considered Ontario’s vacation area to be the Muskoka or Kawartha areas. I would later be corrected, as we would pass by dozens of lakes of all sizes and many hundred cottages, all with their own docks jutting out into the water. As with much of Ontario’s near north, glancing at a map of the area reveals thousands of small lakes, and where you find water, you’ll find vacationers.

Wending our way down Roads 654 and 534 toward Restoule, we stopped at Board’s Honey Farm. It’s an interesting place, and I gained a lot of knowledge about honeybees that I would never have learned otherwise. This is just one of many reasons it’s nice to ride with other people, because I would not have stopped at a honey farm on my own. They have approximately 275 bee colonies throughout the area, and after learning this, I was spotting them throughout farmers’ fields and small openings in the bush along the roadside.

Backtracking from Restoule, we took 522, still heading west, and eventually met up with Hwy 69. The ride along 522 is quite rugged, with granite canyons from the Canadian Shield forming thousands of lakes, many with fjord-like walls of rock plummeting into the water to create the lake’s inlets or outlets. Of course, so many lakes also means many entertaining curves, as the road followed one shoreline to the next.

There were parts of 522, however, that were pretty desolate, with wide-open spaces and stunted trees from what I would think must be very harsh winters. We were on this trip before school was out for summer holidays, so the vacationers were non-existent, and upon stopping on one particular stretch of 522, we found it completely silent except for a chirping redwing blackbird watching us from his perch on a rusting piece of broken, barbed-wire fence.

lake sideThe parking lot at the French River Trading Post was full of bikes. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and apparently others had the same idea that we did. The French River is the main outlet for Lake Nipissing as the water makes its way to Georgian Bay. After a quick lunch, we turned onto Hwy 64 through Alban, Ouellette and Monetville, and before meeting up with Hwy 17, we crossed over the far west end of Lake Nipissing at Mashkinonje Provincial Park.

Our destination for the night would be the Radisson Hotel Sudbury and dinner at the Respect is Burning Supperclub. This is kind of a funky Italian setting with B-movie posters on the walls and female mannequins placed throughout the restaurant, some wearing leather masks and beads. Odd but neat, and the food was fantastic.

The day’s ride neared 300 km, which was only about three-quarters of a tank on the GT. I calculated that the bike should easily get over 400 km per tank, and I figured this might improve if I had the option of filling up earlier with premium. Regardless, the bike ran great on regular.

No trip to Sudbury would be complete without visiting the city’s more famous attractions. If you are travelling with kids, it would be easy to spend a day at Science North. We didn’t have that much time, and since I had been there many years prior, we decided to head underground at the Big Nickel and Dynamic Earth for a nickel mine tour.

Upon seeing daylight again and backtracking on Hwy 69, we took County Road 637 to the town of Killarney. One road in and the same road out, 637 is lined with rock outcroppings and mature trees for about 70 km with rarely a straight section, although it was a little rough in spots. The big Beemer is an ideal bike for a trip like this. It is comfortable for the long haul in every aspect, but the ESA II is most noteworthy. With BMW’s ingenious jog wheel on the left switchgear, suspension settings can be dynamically adjusted for Sport, Comfort or Normal riding, and can be fine-tuned for one- or two-up riding, with or without luggage. It’s a nice feature, especially when you are riding aggressively and your better half is throwing kidney punches telling you to slow down because it’s too rough. It’s an easy trick to adjust the suspension accordingly if you prefer to keep up the same pace. There is nothing quite like a feed of freshly caught fish, and the signs coming into Killarney claim that Herbert’s Fisheries Fish and Chips is world famous. Looking out over the harbour, we tested their claim as we sat on our room’s balcony at the Sportsman’s Inn. The following day was cold but sunny, and also signalled the moment when Gwen and I would part from the UNORT crew.

Our destination for our last night on the road was Batman’s Cottages and Campground, one of many motorcycle-friendly campgrounds on Manitoulin Island. Heading west again on Hwy 17 though Sudbury, we met up with Hwy 6 in Espanola. This was one of the most entertaining roads we were on during this trip, as it wound its way beside many lakes and through the La Cloche Mountains; don’t expect the Rockies here, but the La Cloche range, with an estimated age of 3.5 billion years, is one of the oldest in the world. Highway 6 wasn’t technical, but the fast sweepers, nice scenery and good pavement made for a very enjoyable afternoon ride. Before getting to Manitoulin, we noticed a little squiggle on the map near Whitefish Falls that intrigued us. Willisville Road was carved into the side of a mountain; it wasn’t overly twisty, but offered many blind, roller coaster–like elevation changes and some spectacular scenic lookouts. It got windy and cooled off quickly once we landed on Manitoulin, but that didn’t prevent us from exploring the island a bit. Once we dropped our gear off at our reserved waterfront cottage at Batman’s Cottages, just south of Sheguiandah, we took a few paved back roads west to Kagawong on Manitoulin’s north shore.

Rumour of a chocolate factory in the small town was reason enough for me to brave the chilly, afternoon temperatures. It also helps that the GT has excellent weather protection, hand grip and seat heaters. Luckily for us, and for my chocolate addiction, we just missed a tour bus that was being reloaded with sheeple; I hate line-ups. Taking a southern route back through Providence Bay, we returned to the cottage in time to watch an outstanding sunset over Sheguiandah Bay. A thick layer of dew on the GT’s seat signalled a cold, damp ride to the early morning ferry at South Baymouth. We lined up with 11 other bikes for the two-hour Chi-Cheemaun sailing to Tobermory at the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula, to continue the final leg of our ride home. I thoroughly enjoyed this five-day, northeastern escape from my desk. The region is easily accessible from anywhere in the southern reaches of the province or western Quebec, with hundreds of motorcycle-friendly accommodations throughout the area. For a number of motorcycle routes, accommodation, maps and general information about the area, go to ridethenorth.com.

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