Sometimes in life, you forget how wonderful the things you have really are.
Case in point: the Great Legends Tour.
(And Northeastern Ontario as a whole, I might add.)
I’ve been riding in this area for the past five years. My cottage is just south of Temiskaming Shores, (home of the North’s baddest and raddest motorcycle event, the Bikers Reunion).
I know its roads intimately – Highway 144, 66, 65, 64, 560, 624…I could go on. These roads regularly make our lists of top roads in the province.
In fact, I vividly recall how utterly in awe I was of the tall windswept pines the first time I passed through Temagami on Highway 11. I fumbled with my iPhone just to try and capture one or two of these magnificently tall specimens, with a few blurry shots as my reward.
All too often these days, we’re in a rush to get where we’re going and we find ourselves using these incredible roads as just a means to get from point A to point B.
This past summer I had the chance to ride them all again, but this time I had no set timetable – I could go as fast or slow as I wanted, stop and take pictures, and, well, rediscover the familiar.
From Sudbury to Timmins
The Great Legends Tour is 1350kms (roughly 800 miles) of unadulterated Northern riding. What sets Northeastern Ontario apart from other destinations in North America is the solitude you’ll experience here and the regenerative effects of that solitude.
This isn’t some mad dash to the Tail of the Dragon to squeeze in a day or two of riding before heading home – this is a route that is meant to be savoured.
On this particular journey I started in the city of Sudbury; a great place for a last hurrah of urban delights before heading into the cleansing wilderness.
I had an amazing porchetta sandwich at Barolos for lunch, toured the city and took in a couple of attractions including some of the street art that’s taking over the city this summer, grabbed some photo ops at the Big Nickel and Bridge of Nations, all before heading to dinner at the Towne House, the place where Stompin’ Tom Connors got his start.
The next morning I left my very motorcycle-friendly accommodations at Travelway Inn (central to pretty much everything in town) and headed north on Highway 144 – and what a great way to start this legendary road trip.
Recently, major sections of 144 have been repaved—as have many highways in the Northeast—and the result, for a motorcyclist, is a kind of reckless joy. What I love about this highway is the high perch the road has over seemingly limitless lakes rivers and streams. Now that the road was properly paved, I felt like a bird swooping through rockcuts all the way to Timmins.