Day 7 - The Extra at the End

Port aux Basques,
Newfoundland and Labrador

10 Miles

After a harrowing day the day before, we were excited to get off the ferry  and back on the bike and see what we could of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Which wasn't much at all.

We thought about the previous day's adventure, our lack of good sleep and the present weather conditions. We really could only come up with a few things we really wanted to do. Get some food, take a hot shower, and find a warm bed.

So we pulled into a small hotel right next to the docks, hoping beyond hope that they had a room we could stay in until the ferry went back to the mainland that night.

The people at the hotel were so nice, and gracious and kind. They did everything they could for us, short of going into the kitchen and making breakfast to feed us. We must have looked really pathetic, because they moved people who had reservations for that night around so we could be on the far side of the building, away from the traffic and construction.

We slept for a good six hours, and woke up refreshed and ready to go.

We weren't going too far obviously, but we did manage to get our Newfoundland and Labrador picture.

and celebrate visiting all the Canadian Provinces and Territories by finding a fantastic hole-in-the-wall bar to kill a couple hours.

The owner, Lukey, tried to convince us that it's always foggy on the coast, but once we got about 10 miles up the road it would be sunny and dry.

We considered it for a while, then pulled up the radar on our phone to see if the rest of the island was, indeed, sunny and clear.

We decided to just stay put, have a good dinner and head back to the mainland on the next ferry out of town.

As we headed back to the hotel, the sky started to lighten,

and we could see more than just a couple feet in front of us as we headed down the road.

We managed to get packed up, eat and get to the docks in plenty of time for the midnight ride back to Nova Scotia. We weren't frantically trying to strap the bike down as the ferry was pulling away, as we had the night before.

 We noticed a lot of people had the same idea we did. In fact, it looked like a mini-Sturgis with all the bikes lined up below deck.

Another trip to the lounge and another night's sleep in a tiny bed awaited us, but at this point we just wanted to be dry, rested and fed.

Day 6 - The Extra at the End

Woodstock, NB to North Sydney, Nova Scotia

555 Miles

We've been extremely lucky on our Great Motorcycle Adventure over the years. No accidents, no major (or really minor) breakdowns. We've always found a place to sleep at night. We usually run into rain, but we've always left ourselves enough time to sit out major rain storms, or throw on our rain gear if the rain isn't too bad.

Yeah... Well... It had to happen sometime, and why not on the last ride of our adventure?

Day 6 started out fine. We left Woodstock, NB with everything intact. Several towns down the highway, there was suddenly a void where one of our saddle bags used to be. We looked back just in time to see the hard-sided bag bouncing down the road behind us.

Luckily, it was very early, and there weren't a lot of vehicles that could have been hit, or could have run over the bag, which held our rain gear and tools.

Sean was able to run back and grab the bag from the median and found everything intact and in good shape. He spent the next several minutes figuring out how/why it fell off the first place.

Apparently, two nuts that were supposed to secure the bag to the side of the bike had vibrated off...and the bag went with them. Upon closer inspection, we found the nuts in the bottom of the bag, safe and sound, so we were able to get them back in their proper places and head on down the road.

We had a very lofty goal for the day. Buzz up to Prince Edward Island for a picture and lunch, then leisurely head across to the very tip of Nova Scotia where we would have dinner before taking an over-night ferry to Newfoundland and Labrador. The ferry didn't leave until midnight, so even though we'd lost some time with the saddle bag, we figured we had plenty of time to meander around.

We crossed the Prince Edward Island bridge just before noon and took our PEI provincial picture.

We then found a great little restaurant for a quick bite to eat...

and had more fresher-than-fresh fish and chips, which fast became our favorite.

Within an hour, we were crossing the PEI bridge the other way,

and warily eyeing the storm clouds gathering above us. We had one more stop to make, at the Nova Scotia provincial line, before making our way up to the ferry launch a couple hundred miles away.

So, we don't have any more pictures from that day because it started to rain, and pour, and flood the back roads that Google Maps was sending us on.
Finally, at about 10 pm we stopped. We were lost, soaked, cold, hungry, miserable and about to give up - but none of the little tiny towns we were traveling through had gas stations, let alone a motel where we could stay for the night. So we had to press on in the downpour. Then somehow, miraculously, we found ourselves pulling into the ferry landing, about 30 minutes before the ferry set sail.

Just to give you a visual, we pulled up to the ticket booth just outside the parking lot where you wait to get on the ferry and the wonderful attendant took one look at us and said,

"Oh my god, you poor things".

We had reserved a berth months ago for the over-night trip,

so we were able to quickly change into semi-dry clothes and find the lounge where we could warm our chilled blood before we exhaustedly called it a night.

Day 5 - The Extra at the End

Montreal, QC to Woodstock, New Brunswick

479 Miles

After two fun days in Montreal, we hit the road again and checked the provinces of Quebec

and New Brunswick

off our list.

We were headed to Nova Scotia to catch a ferry to Newfoundland and Labrador, and needed to get as many miles under the tires as possible.

So after a few Tim Horton's stops, we made it to Woodstock, NB for the evening and rested up for the next day's ride. Which, as it turned out, was a very good thing.

Day 4 - The Extra at the End

Old Montreal

0 Miles

We had a full day of sight-seeing planned, but the weather really didn't lend itself to walking to the top of Mont Royal, or really anything outside, so we headed to the Basilica of Montreal to get a look inside.

"Wow" was about all we could get out of our mouths before we were swept along with a group for a tour. We managed to break away after a while and checked out the church on our own.

Historically significant, incredible architecture, wonderful stained glass everywhere, but the thing that stuck out most...

...were the radiators in front of the front pew. Apparently, they had discovered a great way to get people to sit up front on those cold Canadian Sundays!

After church was a visit to a local fish and chips place.

and then more wandering and dashing in and out between showers.
Along one of the side streets, we discovered how Montrealians really roll.

We topped the evening off with the most French food we could find - fondue and crepes,

and ended the night with another walk past the Basilica and back to our hotel. We agreed that Montreal was another place to add to our "have to come back to someday" list.





Day 3 - The Extra at the End

Pembroke, Ontario to Montreal, Quebec

221 miles

Let's be honest, we were kind of intimidated by the thought of riding through and staying in the province of Quebec. We knew that here everything was written or spoken in French. Sean has a pretty good grasp of the tourists' version of the language. Anne has none. At all.

The road signs were our first big issue- They were all in French, and when the motorcycle's navigation speaks no French at all, we assumed it was going to be incredibly confusing getting to wherever we needed to go.

Luckily, the navigator discovered an untapped ability to guess at what the road signs were trying to tell us...

And other than getting "Ouest" and "Est" confuse a few (many) times, we did surprisingly OK, and made it to Montreal without getting lost.

We assumed that staff at the restaurants, hotels and bars spoke English, at least in Montreal, but frankly, we didn't want to look like dumb tourists expecting everyone in the world to speak our language. So we tried, 95% unsuccessfully, to communicate in French (and at times accidently Spanish because, darn it, a lot of the words are similar). Usually, whomever we were trying to speak to just smiled and answered with, "It's OK, we can speak in English." Seriously. We tried.

We arrived in Old Montreal early in the day, dropped our bag off at the hotel and started exploring. The first thing we needed was lunch, so we stopped at a local eating and drinking establishment where we met Jono the bartender,

who talked with us about living in Montreal and what we needed to see while we were there and what it was like living in a country where you are required to know two languages.
We ordered authentic Montreal poutine -

potatoes, meat, gravy and a fried egg on top. It was really good.

After lunch we headed down the street, past the Montreal Basilica, to St. Paul street which was lined with outdoor cafes, with any kind of food and drink imaginable.

It was a beautiful, hot summer's day and it seemed like everyone was outside enjoy the sights and sounds.

It was dark when we headed back to the hotel, and the Basilica and everything around it was lit to show off the amazing architecture.

Our hotel was amazing - it was built in 1870 and had artwork from all over the world. It even had the original LOVE sculpture from the early 1970s out front.

We visited a little more with people in the lobby, then called it a night. Excited to go out and explore more of the Old City tomorrow.

Day 2 - The Extra at the End

Munising, MI to Pembroke, Ontario, Canada

535 miles

We passed into Canada early in the morning of Day 2 at Sault Ste Marie, along with a whole bunch of bicyclists and a bag pipe band.

Apparently, there was an annual friendship ride/walk across the bridge going on, though we missed the reported massive amounts of people walking over the bridge. We did see the volunteers standing along the bridge railing waiting for the walkers to show up.

Side note: if you've read enough of these posts, you know how much Anne squirms at the thought of riding over a bridge, never mind the thought of walking over one, or having to stop on a bridge and wait for the walkers to get done.

We stopped before we went through custom to fill up the gas tank...at $2.72 per gallon. The next 10 days we'd be doing math in our heads to convert US Dollars to Canadian Dollars and gallons into liters (not to mention miles per hour into kilometers per hour).

As we've noted before, getting into Canada is usually pretty easy.

One of the rules we have on these trips is that we don't eat at restaurants we have at home, and usually we manage to find all kinds of new and different places to eat. In Canada though, there is always one place we stop as soon as we cross the border...Tim Horton's.

Sean loves Tim Horton's. The fast food place has a long Canadian history involving a legendary hockey player (named...Tim Horton), a vast selection of donuts and some very, very good coffee.

The road took us to Pembroke, Ontario, outside of Ottawa where we stopped for the night. Another long day. We were starting to discover that going 60 miles (or 100 kilometers) an hour on what is equivalent to our interstates, is very, very grueling.

Day 1 - The Extra at the End

If you want to read this blog from the beginning, start here. You can catch up on past adventures using the navigation at the right.

HOME to Munising, MI

435 Miles

When we started this quest five years ago, we were concentrating on visiting the 50 United States by motorcycle. What came after that wasn't even on our radar, or in our imaginations.


In 2014, though, we managed to visit 8 of the 13 Canadian Provinces and Territories on our way back from Alaska, so this summer we just figured we needed to visit the rest of our neighbor to the north.


So we left, bright, sunny, warm Minnesota and began our trek across Michigan's Beautiful Upper Peninsula.

Our first day's long ride gave us both a chance to breathe deeply, get reacquainted with our motorcycle riding zen space and just let the stresses of real life go. But the first day of a trip is always long and grueling, so we stopped early for the night - sore, sunburned and tired, and ready for a nice cold drink and some food.