2010: A shakedown cruise to North Bay, Ontario

A planned week long trip not far from home (just in case!) with no goal other than to visit some old friends, see some new places, and figure out what contingencies I had neglected to address.

Vermont to North Bay, Ontario

One of the goals of this trip was to see whether I liked following a carefully researched route that was uploaded into Captain Bligh, my Garmin GPS. The advantage is that using Google Earth and ride reports from other motorcyclists I can program particular roads into my Basecamp routing software, then simply follow the spoken directions Bluetoothed into my helmet speakers. No fumbling with a map, no struggle to read road signs that in Canada are often in French, and packing more fun and scenic variety into a route than I’d be likely to find on my own. The chief disadvantage would be the loss of some spontaneity, though I always had the option of cancelling the route.

GettingReady

We set off in the rain. It became heavier as the ferry docked on the New York side of Lake Champlain, and by the time we reached the town of Malone it was torrential! There was nothing for it but to zip closed the hatch in Barley’s new cockpit cover and press on with him in the dark.

The rain slacked off as we crossed the bridge at Ogdensburg, and by the time we pulled up at the Canadian Customs portal just a few scattered drops were falling. The Canadian agent was a pretty blonde woman with bright blue eyes. She peered at the sidecar as we approached, then broke into a positively radiant smile as she noticed Barley behind the windscreen. We had a great conversation about dogs. She had an elderly golden and was dealing with her decline; I had lost several good dogs in the past few years and the recent loss of Tadcaster, my five year old soul dog, was still very fresh. We chatted for a good ten minutes as the line backed up behind us. Not one driver honked impatiently, as they must have thought we were being put through the wringer. Finally, the young woman asked if I had any weapons then waved us on with her best wishes for a fun trip.

We retraced our route of the previous year as far as Smith Falls, found a hotel and then a dog-friendly restaurant, turned in early and slept all night.

Up early as was our custom, we took a different and very scenic route northwest to the Algonquin Provincial Park, headed west to Huntsville with a couple of breaks along the way, then north to North Bay to visit our friends.

Anouk_Pups

The entire family was happily exhausted. Anouk, their Bernese Mountain Dog, had given birth to a litter of pups that night, finishing up in the wee hours of the morning. The pups were beautiful, hardly as big as their mother’s paw, squirming and squeaking as they jockeyed for a nipple.

Bear and venison sausage was the entrée for the night. Some conversation followed, but my hosts were slurring their words and clearly crying out for bed. I feigned exhaustion and turned in early, freeing them to get much needed sleep.

OntarioHay

Being from the country we tend to rise early, so by six in the morning we were on our way again. By back roads we headed north, avoiding the city traffic of Ottawa, then turned west onto the Trans-Canada Highway. It was a fairly straight and largely level route with excellent pavement, fairly decent scenery and an almost total absence of billboards. That’s a plus in my book!

NorthBay

After a few hours my GPS (named Captain Bligh after that exceptional navigator) announced that we should leave the highway in favor of a secondary road, and then a series of dirt roads. These instructions were not anticipated, but I had plenty of time so blindly followed the route transmitted into my helmet speakers via the wonder of Bluetooth. I figured if we got lost it was at least a pleasant place to be; besides, we had camping gear and enough food for a week. But Captain Bligh knew where we were, and expertly guided us to our friends’ rural home without any drama.

We had a fun visit with Charles and Charlotte, their children, dogs, chickens and rabbits. Charles and sons were avid hunters, so dinner that night was goose baked to perfection, with dessert made with raspberries we had picked in forest clearings behind their home. Yum!

Road2Charlotte

Barley got along with their two dogs – Maia, the mother of one of our other goldens; and Anouk, a Bernese Mountain Dog with oodles of personality – but didn’t really interact with them. Instead, he was hunting garter snakes along their stone retaining wall. Hunting is Barley’s form of recreation. While I carry toys for him, he is good for only a couple of retrieves before his nose guides him to a scent trail and the ball is forgotten, the hunt on. Sure enough, within half an hour he had found and killed a snake.

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