Issue #266 Two Lane Blacktop : Toronto to Cape Breton Via Maine
I have to stop looking at Google maps. It has a tendency to lead me astray. Not so much in the wrong direction but more along the lines of scale. When the invitation came from Honda Canada to join a group ride around Cape Breton, a choice was given of picking up a bike in Toronto or flying directly to Halifax. A quick look at the map—sure that isn’t far, a calculation of the time I had available and a ride aboard the new VFR sounded like a great idea. The fact that there is no straight line from Toronto to the Maritimes was even better. But getting back to the map. If you zoom out far enough everything looks close together. And Vermont and New Hampshire seem ... tiny.
Crossing into the US at the Thousand Islands Bridge, the idea was to head east on any secondary road that made itself available. Casual route finding. If the road went east I would take it even though east often involved north and south and occasional back west. Oddly, considering the interstate highway system that makes travel across the country so effortless, no one had ever been in a hurry to get across this portion of the country. My route across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and back into New Brunswick would not take me through any large city and after leaving Kingston the largest cities I would pass through on the way to Cape Breton were Moncton and St. John.
IF YOU MISTAKE NEW YORK STATE for the city of New York, you could be forgiven for thinking that riding through the state would be a crowded proposal. But ride across the northern part of the state and you will spend many miles alone. What makes upper New York state so unique is Adirondack Park which, at over six million acres, is the largest park in the US.
As a park it is unusual and entering it requires no fees as over half the land within the park is private and there are many towns and villages within its boundaries, including the home of the 1980 Olympics, Lake Placid. It seems now to have been incredible foresight that prior to 1900 the public land was mandated to remain wild forever. Today, that would be all but impossible. What remains now as seen from a satellite photo is a marked island of green surrounded by areas of development. The roads through the park are well-maintained and wind through hills and valleys, returned to their original state amid the streams and lakes. Amazing considering that more than 80 million people live within a day’s ride.
My entire journey through the northeast corner of the US was accomplished on all but a few hundred kilometres of two-lane blacktop. The roads were empty. It was summer, the supposed height of tourist season, but with the exception of boutique towns like Lake Placid, or Gorham, New Hampshire which is the jumping off point to reach Mt. Washington—famous for a steep toll road to the top of the mountain—the country was quiet. This is partly a reflection on the economy perhaps, but it may be more than that: a lost connection to rural. Few of the small villages I passed through were prosperous and some looked as though the last person leaving town was required to roll up the sidewalk. It is the fate of rural communities everywhere but for some reason it seemed more dramatic here.
Far and away the most frequent tourists on the roads were other motorcyclists. Sure the interstate highway system may be the quickest route between destinations—be it outlet malls or amusement parks—but it is along two-lane blacktop that you will come across special places like the blueberry museum in northeastern Maine, or the giant Santa’s Village just outside Jefferson, New Hampshire that appears like some kind of red and white apparition. Or, the Ticonderoga Ferry where you pay the attendant $5 as you are crossing Lake Champlain from New York state to Vermont at the same spot people have been crossing since 1755—most of the other passengers on the ferry are motorcyclists.
There are signs that the lost byways of the US are a piece of heritage that may soon be forgotten. We are talking about places from the heyday of roadtrip vacations. The closed roadside motels and hotels, gas stations and restaurants. With a faster route nearby and with easy access to a chain location the chances for survival are often slim. It was one of these hotels I checked into. They had just reopened explained the man at the desk while he put on his shirt to check me in. The phones don’t work yet, he cautioned me. The only other people to check in after me and park in front of the individual cabins were motorcyclists. It is on a motorcycle that you will find these places because it is the lack of straight lines that is the appeal.
IT IS AN ODD FEELING AS YOU near the Canadian border to cross into St. Stephen, New Brunswick from Calais, Maine. Towns are smaller and farther apart. It really feels as you approach that you are nearing an outpost. While Canada stands to the north with our cities and vibrancy it seems like the end of the road. While it may be the end of the road in Maine, it is the beginning for us. It goes from a winding piece of patched blacktop to a divided highway that runs toward St. John and Fredericton.
The roads across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were the fastest and busiest of the trip with speeds in Nova Scotia reaching the NASCAR-like levels experienced in the Carolinas. Odd this, considering we were warned several times of the licence suspending consequences of speeding tickets in this province.
The roads immediately got interesting crossing onto Cape Breton and taking the northern coastal to Margarhee Harbour which would serve as the base for the Honda Canada ride.
THE CABOT TRAIL IS A 300-KM LOOP and for many Canadian motorcyclists it is one of the rides to be checked off the Big List. The Trail mostly follows the coast but cuts inland at the top below the famously named Meat Cove. As with Adirondack Park, it is the Cape Breton Highlands National Park which occupies a swath across the Cape and keeps the land in its natural state. Rising dramatically out of the Atlantic it is the Cape Breton Highlands that are striking.
Stunted trees bear witness to the harsh extremes that this outpost of civilization experiences and reflect the hardships that faced and often defeated European settlers to this region. I had to stop and include a picture of the Cape Smokey ski area, which must be the only remaining ski hill in Canada with the beach across the street from the chairlift loading area.
Cape Breton is remote and the middle of it more remote yet. The road to Meat Cove was washed out only a few weeks after our visit to the area. People in town had to be brought out by boat and a tourist couple watched as their van washed away to the ocean. It is a place were you need to be prepared to hold out for a while if the conditions are poor. The story of the washed out road and the trapped tourists is only one of many you will hear of residents on the Cape looking after those in difficulty. Even in the summer this was a place, as it has been for hundreds of years, that you realized community is a crucial aspect of survival.
While the Trail can be done in a few hours it pays to slow down so that it is not a series of twisty bits connected by rocks, trees and ocean. From leatherwork artisans, to music, to food (lobster)—the scenery is only part of what makes the trip to this part of the country unique.
The land encircled by the Cabot Trail is criss-crossed with a series of logging roads and narrow snowmobile trails. We were given the opportunity to ride these trails on Honda ATVs. Disappearing into the remote and fog shrouded beauty where the dense canopy of deciduous forests was occasionally broken by a view of further distant hills. Without a map but with the assurance that you would eventually hit water, the snowmobile trails provided challenging riding with the bonus of deep mud puddles.
I am not ready to convert to ATVs but I have to admit the terrain they can cover with apparent ease would challenge most motorcyclists. The opportunity to get yourself into serious difficulty on an ATV must come from the fact that you can take them to such extremes. If you come to a place your ATV can’t climb or cross, very likely it isn’t a good place to be. I was just happy hitting 12-inch deep mud holes at speed. Crude but effective.
ATV RIDING IN THE WOODS ASIDE, there is a lot of unspoiled country left both in Canada and the US. The challenge and the enjoyment of it is connected to finding the road less traveled. There is a huge variety of out-of-the-way places in this part of the continent alone. Unfortunately some of them need to be seen before they are gone. The internet was supposed to make working from anywhere possible. With a good internet connection the world is your oyster. I don’t see it happening. Toronto and Vancouver keep getting bigger while a thousand rural communities keep getting smaller. Not every village or town in the middle of nowhere can redefine itself as a tourist attraction.
Lake Placid, while set amid the grandeur of a giant wilderness, can hardly be considered rural with its traffic jams and designer clothes stores feeling more like a high end mall with a spectacular view from the parking lot. It is small villages in between that provide a glimpse of what life used to be like, not what it is now. Seek them out.
