Getting lost can be scary, adventurous and fun, all oddly enough at the same time. Many people do not enjoy getting lost, however, others out for an adventure quite like the thrill of finding new places and seeing new things due to being navigationally-challenged. Which is exactly what happened on a recent ride that I took with a group of my family and family friends here in Ontario. Initially the plan was to ride to the Moon River—however, that did not really go as planned.
I love sleeping in, I really do, but when I know we are going on a ride somewhere neat I find it hard to contain my excitement, so thus I am typically up early before a ride! Saturday morning was wonderful; waking up to the sun beaming into your bedroom and blue skies always puts me in a fantastic mood. Everyone in the house was up around 8:30-9:00am, making for a classic bacon and egg breakfast to start our day off right.
We suited up and hit the trails around 10:00am, leaving McKellar and eventually hooking up to my favourite trail (the C Trail) south. We took the C for what seemed like forever, but was actually about an hour and a half. Like mentioned earlier, we had planned to head to the Moon River Falls, however none of us had actually been there by snowmobile before—we'd just seen pictures and heard it was an awesome snowmobile destination from word of mouth. I only had an idea of where to go and what trail to go on, while two other people had two other ideas of where to go. After entering the South Seguin Snowmobile Club’s area down by Humphrey, we continued south down into the Six Star Snow Riders Club area. Now with no idea how to get to the Moon River Falls, we ended up turning left onto trail 15, which turns into 14 and took us to the C102D, which follows beside Highway 169.
Not really knowing where this trail would take us, we had just planned to get onto Lake Joe and take that north up to Gordon Bay Marina and get onto the C trail north again. As we were heading down the C102D—at one point you need to ride along the side of the road—we came up to this place where the parking lot was literally FILLED with snowmobiles. There were more snowmobiles than cars! It was the coolest thing I had seen that day by far. As we were all hungry and mildly cold, we chose to head in and park the sleds for a bite to eat.
We ended up at the Bass Lake Roadhouse, which is a neat roadhouse style restaurant nestled behind a massive pine tree! As we walked into the restaurant it smelled like amazing food and 2-stroke from all the riders inside! It looked like everyone from families with children, groups of men and women, were in to warm up and eat some great food! The service was great even with how busy it was… the staff was very efficient and helpful and the food was fantastic as well!
As none of us had actually been to the Bass Lake House by snowmobile before, we were all unsure whether or not to take Lake Joe up to Gordon Bay Marine. We paid our bills and asked other riders around the restaurant how the ice was on Lake Joe. Everyone was very kind and assured us that the big part of Lake Joe was completely safe and was a quick way back up to the McKellar area.
As we were heading out of the restaurant we continued to ask other riders as they were coming in, and while doing so, we made new friends! We met a group of guys who rode up to the Bass Lake House from Innisfil who actually had a cottage in McKellar and were going to the same place as us pretty much! We finally got correct directions from a very nice gentleman who had just arrived off Lake Joe and we all decided that since we were heading to the same area we might as well just ride together.
After blowing a belt on Lake Joe, and finding our way, we were all back on track headed home back on the C Trail north. Off the C Trail we got on to the 201 and took that up to the C103D (The Seguin Trail) then up to the C101. We invited our new friends to our house for soup and pizza for dinner!
Although I was disappointed we did not make it to the Moon River Falls, with exploring new OFSC trails that none of us had been on, finding a new unique restaurant, and meeting new friends… It turns out that getting lost wasn’t so bad after all, and I quite enjoyed the ride and the weather was great too!
It was a great day riding the OFSC Trails!
