Windsor-Detroit to Winnipeg - Sept. 10-11/2019 - suggestions...?

[MaxPete]

Great info Jim - and that jog is what GoogleMaps has also suggested for the route.

Great to know you’re nearby - I may need to stop in for a whiz (old guy ya know ).

Cheers,

Pete

 

[junglejim]

Great to know you’re nearby - I may need to stop in for a whiz (old guy ya know ).

Cheers,

Pete

No worries, you won't break down. But I do have a pickup, tilt trailer, shop, and tools if you need such. I think I'm on the "Rider Assistance" list for the NT forum and Concours forum. I had a connecting rod come through my crankcase about 15 miles south of Shingleton so I know what it is like.

I'm leaving for the UP tomorrow AM to ride with a friend from Port Huron MI. Going again over Labor Day weekend. But I'll be home by the time you are traveling through.

 

[MaxPete]

Thanks again Jim - safe travels!

Pete

 

[MaxPete]

Okey dokey - so tomorrow is the day and via the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the way!

Say YA to da UP EH?

Anyhow, I’m just about packed, tires and oil checked and my rain gear is readily accessible. If I don’t get held up, I may ride into North Dakota a ways and do some sight seeing. Suggestions welcome!

Thanks for all the advice folks - it has been very helpful indeed!

Pete

 

[MaxPete]

Hi All:

On my trip to Winnipeg MB from Windsor, ON I rose at 5:15 AM and crossed the Canada-US border at 6:00 AM. covered about 325 km before taking a break in a nice little diner in Roscommon MI. Then I crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (always called “da UP” hereabouts) on schedule at about 11:30 AM and turned west on US-2 (note the bridge in the background)

That was before I discovered that the Hwy 2 is closed due to construction just west of the scenic lookout point where I took the photo). Sooo...a little detour, and I was back on the road. The road across the UP is mostly a 2-lamer and the terrain rolling and heavily forested but there isn’t too much traffic and so passing slower vehicles is easy.

I have certainly discovered one thing so far: riding in MI north of Saginaw may be a bit boring, but boy, do people go fast! I was “keepin’ up with the Jones” and that ST saw speeds that she’s never seen before - at least not with me.

I had hoped to get past Duluth, Minnesota tonight - but only made it to Superior, Wisconsin before the rain started and spoiled my fun so I jumped into a nice clean hotel and had a good dinner in a bar nearby. Superior is only half a dozen miles from Duluth so its OK.

Tomorrow is supposed to be dry - so all good. This is my first really long distance solo bike trip since I gave up riding in 1990 so I guess 1200.9 km isn’t bad for the first day.

Cheers,

Pete

 

[kiltman]

You did well, that was a nice run for the day. It sure is nice to be able to do that trip on a bike eh?

 

[Jeff F]

Good day Pete.

The UP ... home of the pastie, the kind you eat.

 

[CYYJ]

If you are passing through Duluth, visiting the Aerostitch factory and store is a "must see". They are not too far off the main road, it's perhaps a 15 minute detour to get there if you plan on following Highway 2 out of Duluth, and a 30 second detour if you plan to follow Highway 53 north and cross back into Canada at Fort Frances. If you plan to continue out of Duluth on Highway 2, and you do visit Aerostitch, take highway 53 north to the local road 194, then go west on 194 a short distance until it joins up with Highway 2 - that's the fastest way to get back on the Highway 2 track.

Plan on spending about half an hour in the store to look around, they have a lot of really neat stuff. They are located in a rather seedy part of town, but you can park your bike right out front and not worry about it. Here's a link to their web page that provides directions to the store: Aerostitch Visitor Information

Below is a map showing where they are located relative to the major highways in and out of Duluth.

Michael

Aerostitch in Duluth

 

[etalors]

Hi All:

On my trip to Winnipeg MB from Windsor, ON I rose at 5:15 AM and crossed the Canada-US border at 6:00 AM. covered about 325 km before taking a break in a nice little diner in Roscommon MI. Then I crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (always called “da UP” hereabouts) on schedule at about 11:30 AM and turned west on US-2 (note the bridge in the background)

That was before I discovered that the Hwy 2 is closed due to construction just west of the scenic lookout point where I took the photo). Sooo...a little detour, and I was back on the road. The road across the UP is mostly a 2-lamer and the terrain rolling and heavily forested but there isn’t too much traffic and so passing slower vehicles is easy.

I have certainly discovered one thing so far: riding in MI north of Saginaw may be a bit boring, but boy, do people go fast! I was “keepin’ up with the Jones” and that ST saw speeds that she’s never seen before - at least not with me.

I had hoped to get past Duluth, Minnesota tonight - but only made it to Superior, Wisconsin before the rain started and spoiled my fun so I jumped into a nice clean hotel and had a good dinner in a bar nearby. Superior is only half a dozen miles from Duluth so its OK.

Tomorrow is supposed to be dry - so all good. This is my first really long distance solo bike trip since I gave up riding in 1990 so I guess 1200.9 km isn’t bad for the first day.

Cheers,

Pete

That was a great run

 

[MaxPete]

Hi All:
My Manitoba adventure continues....
I woke up in my little hotel room in Superior Wisconsin this morning and it was piddling down rain <dang!> so I bedded down for a little extra sleep. The funny thing is that the weather forecast was for mainly clear skies all day and all the way to Winnipeg (which was about 400 miles / 700 km away). Anyhow, by about 10 AM the skies were cloudy but the rain had stopped, so I loaded up Sylvia and set off for the day. Note that beaded mat thingy on the seat - I installed it just before I left Windsor and by gosh, it’s pretty good! The ST community is always griping about the stock seat. I don’t find it that bad, but I must admit that 8-10 hours is a bit much. That beaded mat ($16 at an auto supply store) did actually help a bit.

I had a choice of heading west from Duluth and going through Grand Forks ND and then straight north to the ‘Peg or heading due north to International Falls and then west along the south shore of Lake of the Woods which forms the border with Canada. I looked carefully at the weather along both routes....and chose the northern route. Well, that didn’t work out so well as the piddling from the sky started again about 20 miles north of Duluth and it basically kept on and off all day. The terrain across northern Wisconsin and Minnesota is like the UP of Michigan: rolling but heavily wooded and not very populated.

Once I was past the greater Duluth area, I don’t think I saw more than 50 other vehicles until I got to the Canadian border. The formalities there took literally seconds and then more straight roads, lots of trees and few people until I arrived in the little town of Steinbach Manitoba at 7:00 PM (around 50 km south of Winnipeg). I’ll ride into the city tomorrow as my meeting starts on Thursday morning.

In Steinbach I am staying at a tidy little motel called the Sleep Suite Inn. The folks there kindly allowed me to park under the awning between the columns which keeps my bike away from the large construction company trucks and trailers that dot the parking lot.

In my experience, parking in amongst those types of vehicles often ends unhappily for the bike. There is a good deal of construction around this area including summer telephone and hydro pole maintenance which is a messy-muddy business as evidenced by the sign on the door of the hotel.

I doubt I will see a sign like that tomorrow at the elegant downtown Fort Garry Hotel - but it’s OK by me.

Cheers,

Pete

 

[MaxPete]

If you are passing through Duluth, visiting the Aerostitch factory and store is a "must see". They are not too far off the main road, it's perhaps a 15 minute detour to get there if you plan on following Highway 2 out of Duluth, and a 30 second detour if you plan to follow Highway 53 north and cross back into Canada at Fort Frances. If you plan to continue out of Duluth on Highway 2, and you do visit Aerostitch, take highway 53 north to the local road 194, then go west on 194 a short distance until it joins up with Highway 2 - that's the fastest way to get back on the Highway 2 track.

Plan on spending about half an hour in the store to look around, they have a lot of really neat stuff. They are located in a rather seedy part of town, but you can park your bike right out front and not worry about it. Here's a link to their web page that provides directions to the store: Aerostitch Visitor Information

Below is a map showing where they are located relative to the major highways in and out of Duluth.

Michael

Aerostitch in Duluth

DANG IT!!!

I didn’t see your message until tonight and I missed it. Perhaps I can drop in there on my way back...

Thanks Michael.

Pete

 

[CYYJ]

I looked carefully at the weather along both routes....and chose the northern route. Well, that didn’t work out so well as the piddling from the sky started again about 20 miles north of Duluth and it basically kept on and off all day.

Hi Pete:

I'm not sure what kind of GPS you use on your bike (can't see it in the picture). I use a Garmin 590, and the most important information that this GPS provides to me on long trips is not navigation guidance, but real-time weather information - exactly the same weather data that I used to get when I was flying aircraft for a living.

To get live weather radar on the Zumo 590 (or 595), you need to download the free Garmin SmartLink application for Android or iPhone and pay a one-time fee of $4.99 (five bucks!) for lifetime weather. For another five bucks you can get lifetime traffic, which will also display on the GPS and alert you automatically to traffic problems if you have a route active. You then pair your smartphone with the GPS, and the phone downloads the live data over the cellular network. My experience has been that it is not too data-intensive - perhaps a megabyte a day for long trips of 10 hours riding a day.

If you are concerned about data usage and want to minimize data usage, just close the application on your phone and it will no longer poll for data - you can then launch the application when you want to do a weather check, see what things look like up ahead, and close the application when you have finished looking.

What you get is the ability to look in any direction, up to about 500 miles away, and see in real time where the precipitation is. You can animate the radar returns to enable you to see which way thunderstorms, rain, or cold fronts are moving. This has proven invaluable to me for allowing me to either avoid rain entirely, or at least get appropriately dressed for the rain long before it becomes visible on the horizon.

Michael

Garmin Weather Radar on Zumo 590

 

[MaxPete]

That would be slick Michael but I’ve got an older Zumo 660 and it doesn’t have that capability.

P

 

[kiltman]

After your meeting at the Fort Gary hotel, cross the street to the train station and spend a couple of minutes under the dome. Have a quick walk around the Forks as well. If you have time to visit the Museum of civilization, I would strongly advise taking that in. Hope the ride home is dryer

 

[MaxPete]

Good afternoon all!
I got up to more piddling from the sky this morning so I lazed around until it stopped at about 9:30 AM and then rode the 50-odd km into Winnipeg.

The Fort Garry is a beautiful old building in mint condition - plus they are shooting a Hallmark Christmas Special movie here right now so there are lights, cameras and action all over the danged place.

The hotel was built in 1911-13 as one of the series of CPR (Can Pacific RR) hotels in key cities sprinkled across the country. They are all magnificent structures and have the sort of presence that invites historical movie productions and romantic weekend getaways. However, the rooms are rather small and are wired like summer cottages with nowhere near enough receptacles for array of rechargeable electronics that most people tote around these days. There are definitely no signs admonishing guests to remove their muddy work boots before entering.
Sylvia is parked nicely out of the way in the underground parking garage and you can see the sort of ornate style of the Fort Garry visible even in the stairwell which you can see through the window behind the bike.

As you can see, she is secure with a disc lock in recognition of the fact that until a decade ago, Winnipeg had more vehicle thefts per capita than any other city in North America.

And so, the outward bound stage of my trip has ended with a final mileage of 1857.5 km from home to here. I haven’t worked it out but I think that I averaged about 50-54 mpig which is pretty good considering the rapid pace I was making.

After a bite of lunch in the Fort Garry’s very nice bar (see below), I went for a walk up the street to look around the provincial legislature building which is famously topped with a larger than life-size gilded statue of a boy brandishing a torch.

The statue has quite a history - here is a linky to an article on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Boy_(Manitoba)

The statue is imaginatively known as “The Golden Boy”....

As per Kiltman’s suggestion, I continued my walk to the beautiful Winnipeg Union Station building which is just a few meters from the Fort Garry. The station is the passenger terminal for VIA Rail Canada and is surmounted by a magnificent dome - well worth a look.

Here is a view from inside Union Station.

Anyhow, tomorrow, it’s on with my meetings - so I’ll wrap this up until Friday when I set off for more adventures on the way home.

Pete

 

[etalors]

Thanks for sharing the pictures and your trip. What is your route coming back. 50-54 mpg is pretty darn good.

 

[MaxPete]

Thanks for sharing the pictures and your trip. What is your route coming back. 50-54 mpg is pretty darn good.

The mileage quoted is per Imperial gallon (mpig) so US mileage would be about 25% less I guess.

As for the return route....haven’t quite sorted that out yet. I am very active on the Yamaha XS650 forum as well and one of my XS650 buddies lives in Barbados WI and he invited me to drop in so I will go via his place. I would also like to avoid the metro-mess of Chicago and so I would like to take the ferry from Manitowak across Lake Michigan but I have to work out the timing - and keep an eye on the weather forecast.

Pete

 

[etalors]

The mileage quoted is per Imperial gallon (mpig) so US mileage would be about 25% less I guess.

As for the return route....haven’t quite sorted that out yet. I am very active on the Yamaha XS650 forum as well and one of my XS650 buddies lives in Barbados WI and he invited me to drop in so I will go via his place. I would also like to avoid the metro-mess of Chicago and so I would like to take the ferry from Manitowak across Lake Michigan but I have to work out the timing - and keep an eye on the weather forecast.

Pete

Barbados, WI, does not ring a bell. Ferry would be a good experience. The Chicago area is not as bad as most people think as long as you take the bypass 294 to I-80. Coming back from PA last week at around 6 pm, I did not experience any congestion taking this route.

 

[MaxPete]

Barbados - GOOD GRIEF!!!

That should have been Baraboo. Sorry about that.

Bloody iPhone spell-checkers.

Thanks for the tips on Chicago - much appreciated!

Pete

 

[MaxPete]

I set off from Winnipeg after my meetings ended at about 12:30 pm on Friday and I just arrived home in Windsor Ontario at about 11:45 PM. I rode as far as Baraboo, Wisconsin on Friday afternoon/evening and stayed with a friend from the XS650.com forum. It was a long day from Baraboo to home today but it was fun. Here is a photo of the tripmeter for the return leg from Winnipeg...it shows 1779 km or just about 1105 miles ridden since 12:30 PM on Friday.

As suggested by a forum reader here on ST Owners, instead of riding through the whole YUK of big city Chicago, I took the historic SS Badger from Manitowok WI to Ludington MI. Both are very nice little towns but unfortunately, I did not have time to explore them.

The Badger is the largest car ferry (410 ft in length) and the largest steamship (hence the “SS” designator) that still operates on the Great Lakes. Interestingly, she is coal-fired not oil like most steamships built after WW-I. There were a lot of bikes on-board but loading was pretty efficient and strapping down the ST was no big deal. I just removed the tip-over wing covers and used the tubular engine guards which are very sturdy.
The trip across Lake Michigan takes 4 hours and it was such beautiful warm early fall day that all thoughts of riding through Chicago vanished.

Thanks again to all for your best wishes along the way and to my buddy Gary for his kind hospitality.
I’ll say one thing: riding long distance quickly is sure easy on the ST1300. It really can go bloody fast for hours with no effort at all and the fuel range means that I run out @ss before I run out of gas.

Cheers,

Pete