That is some trailer you guys are hauling on page three. No wonder some machines had problems with it. Nice to hear the kawi did haul it with no problems too.

Looks like fun, congrats on your exploration and thanks for sharing, good viewing.

 

man,Id donate a kidney for the oportunity to camp that system for a week or two,,wow..what a ride

 

Great pictures Dan; we got home just before noon today. We did have a great time as weather was perfect with no rain during the day during the entire trip, the scenery was unbelievable. I didn't put as many miles (957km's) in six days as we stuck to rail line other than running from Deer Lake to Cornerbrook on logging road. I see you did the same thing by the pictures you took. We also ran gravel road for twelve miles to Eagle Haven Lodge which was near Badger. I wish I was younger would possibly do things a bit differently, but with the better half and myself this was a perfect way for us to do the trip. We had no problems with any ATV's, the other fellows had Artic Cats 400 manuals (ugh) which they constantly rocking to get them in gear. We did not have a escort through Stephenville as Dave had conversation with police some time ago, they have no problem if they don't get complaints. He said the Motel escorting you has no authority to do this they could get into trouble if anything should happen. Would I go again "YES" and I will the good lord willing. We meant so many nice people and with the two fellows from Maine were non stop story telling, the only thing hurts are my sides. Yes Dan, wish we could have hooked up sooner for a bit more conversation as I mentioned the Dynateck CDI worked perfectly the entire trip would lift the front end off the ground anytime if I touched it even with the load I had on the front end. I too will post pictures if I can figure out how being computer illerate doesn't help. I do have them downloaded into computer, just haven't figured out how to get to forum or send to anyone by e-mail yet.

 

I LOVE the pictures of the trailers!! The popup that has siding, the trailer that looks like it has half of another trailer welded to it...the van...LOL!! Newfies ROCK!!

 

Jason,

It's funny you mention the old pump picture LOL!!! I kept looking for that darn thing on the entire trip. I was thinking to myself, if I see that pump, I'm going to take the same picture as Jason did. On the last day of ridding before we got to Port-aux-Basque, I had just about lost hope on finding it, when suddenly something caught my eye on the left side of the trail beside a road. There it was the old rusty gas pump. I just couldn't resist. I had to take a picture of it. LOL!!! I figured you would get a good laugh about it. I took about 10 different angles with both my bike, and my GF bike. I posted the rest of the pictures in Part 3 of my Newfoundland trip. Check them out.


To be honest with you, the best part of the trip for me was from Doyles to Port-aux-Basque. The costal scenery that we saw was just incredible. It took us over 4 hours to travel about 25km's. We kept stopping to take pictures of everything.

Yes that poor trailer. It didn't fare to well. We left Argentia, and by the time we got to Placentia Junction, which as you know is just a small haul from the ferry, the axle was already bent. Dave our trip organizer who used to be in the Canadian Army, walked over to a little cottage knocked on the door, and the guy who answered the door was also a retired army guy called Len Eddison, who had done multiple exercises with Dave while he lived in Newfoundland in the late 80's. It just happened that Dave knocked on his door. Next thing you know, Len grabs a hammer from his small shed, starts tearing the side wooden skirting around his cottage, and comes out with a bed rail that we can use to re-enforce the axle. He then tells us follow him. He jumps on his atv, and we all drive to this other little cottage. Next thing you know the welder is out and we are reinforcing the axle. It just goes to show you the type of people Newfoundlanders are. They went out of there way to help us out.

We then continued on our way towards St-John which was a big mistake. The rail bed was really rough down that way, and our poor trailer with the bent axle really took a beating. When we finally got to Clarenville, one of the leaf spring was all busted up. So we pulled it to this small service station just down the road from the Clarenville Inn at 4:30 p.m. The local mechanic was just walking out the door with his lunch can. Dave walked over to the guy and asked him if there was a place in Clarenville to get a new axle, leaf springs and such. He said, no problem, I’ll hook you up. He made a few phone calls, confirmed that he could get all the hardware. Jumped in his truck, went to get all the hardware that we needed to repair the trailer, and worked until 10:30 that night to fix the trailer up. And man did he fix it up good. We never had anymore problems with the axles once it was repaired in Clarenville. I couldn’t believe it when the mechanic stayed back until 10:30 that night to get us back on the road after he had just finished working a long day. He also lent us his car so that I could drive up to the Clarenville Inn to bring all our gear to the hotel.



The police escort picture that you seen was actually in Gander. Here is another great Newfoundland hospitality story. As I mentioned a while ago, Dave our trip organizer used to live in Newfoundland. Well while we where planning the trip, he told us that when we got to Gander, one of his old friend insisted that we sleep at there house. We all figured these people have a big yard and will let us pitch our tent in there yard. Well when we arrived in Gander, they had the police escort waiting for us. The police escorted us through town to Harold and Buella’s house. We got to the house, and they lived in a small 2 storey bungalow with a carport. Our first though was where are we gonna setup all our tents? There wasn’t much room to park all our atvs and setup our tents. Little did we know that Harold and Buella would not let us setup our tents. No guess in there house would sleep in a tent. She accommodate all 13 of us in there house. Then she cooked up a huge supper for us, let all 13 of us take a nice warm shower, and the washer and dryer pretty much went all night. Next morning we woke up to a huge breakfast, we then packed up our bikes, and Buella had a big lunch ready for us before we hit the trail at dinner time. Buella was disappointed that we weren’t staying a second day like we had originally planned. The Gander police met us at the house again and then escorted us to the rail bed. Only in Newfoundland can you get this type of hospitality.

We didn’t go into Stephenville. We left Corner Brook in the morning, and camped just before St-Fintans in a field just beside the Barachois Brook. We stopped in Stephenville Crossing for gas.

We had 3 Honda racks that gave out on us. We had to get them repaired at one time or the other. The one in the picture was the worst of them all. LOL!!!!

We went to see the place crash in Gander, but I forgot my camera at Harold and Buella’s house, so I never got any pictures of it. I couldn’t find the newfie network because I had no clue where it was.

We didn’t get a chance to do the Trinity Loop because we lost too much time going to St-John. If I would of know how bad the trail to St-John, we wouldn’t of had gone to St-John, and did the Trinity Loop instead. Next time I will do the Trinity Trail. I did see the road on the right next to the Snowmobile Support sign in Clarenville for the Trinity trail, and I wish we could have gone.

I posted more pictures of the lodge in Part 3 of my pictures. What a nice lodge. It was definitely worth the 3 night stay. Yes it was a real small moose in Howler. I also posted more pictures of it in Part 3.

That was me on the scooter LOL!! I seen it laying on the side of the trail, so I jumped on it and started ridding down the trail. We had a good laugh. This couple came out of there house to see what was so funny and when they seen me ridding the scooter, they said I could take it home cause someone had abandoned it in there yard about a month ago. If I would have had the room I would have it here with me LOL!!!!

What is the fish latter’s? I don’t think we went to that place since it doesn’t ring a bell. Is the second mountain in Port aux Basque the one in the picture that I posted in Part 3? You can see a big road going up this mountain, but it was quite far away, and I didn’t know how to get there, and it was getting late in the day.

We didn’t go to the cabin in Millertown Junction cause we only got there around 7:30 at night, and we setup camp on top of the hill just up from the sandy beach. We had a good laugh that evening when a gentleman called Sir Wilbur came over and entertained us for a good hour or so. I also posted a picture of him with his black and blue hat in part 3.

No we didn’t go to the logging camp either. Where was it?

Yes 1300km’s is low, but like I mentioned those trailers slowed us down a lot. If we would have had 2 weeks without trailers, we would have been over 2000 km’s for sure.

When we camped we usually got up at 6:30, and we usually where on the trail between 9:00 and 10:00. It was a long process to pack up because we had the big army modular tent to take down.




Part 3 of Pictures

 

Bill it was nice meeting you. I'm glad that you had a nice trip also. Like you mentioned, the weather was also great for us. When we pulled in to Badger for gas, the owner of Eagle Haven Lodge drove up in his S-10 Truck and informed us about his lodge. He told us that for $60 per person, he and his wife would cook us up a big Newfoundland supper, provide us with snacks in the evening, a nice bed to sleep in, a big breakfast in the morning, and a trail lunch for the days ride. We where quite tempted to go, but we didn't feel like driving 12 miles off trail to get there since that would mean that we would have to do that extra 12 miles in the morning to come back out to the rail bed. Plus we didn't know how the trail was going to be for the trailers, so we passed and ended up camping in Millertown Junction. And meeting Sir Wilbur was worth it. I kept his brochure for next year so that I can stop cause it looked like an awesome place.

It's funny you mention the Arctic Cat having problems shifting. When you guys got to St-Fintans to gas up, you just missed me cause I had just left to go scouting for the route around the washout that was coming up ahead, but some of the guys from our group noticed that one of the guys was having a hard time shifting his bike. He mentioned that to me when I got back LOL!!!!

Bill if you go to www.photobucket.com, you can sign up for a free account. Once you sign up, you can create an album and upload your pictures to the web like I did.

Also email me your mailing address, I will send you a CD picture of all 4000 pictures.

 

RancherS01

Some of the creations we say in Newfoundland where just to hard to beleive. You had to see them to beleive them. I have plenty more, I just have to finish going through the 4000 pictures that I have on my computer.

 

Dan, The Eagle Haven Lodge was the best place we stayed as normal they couldn't do enough. After a meal of roast beef and all of the trimmings they came out with all kinds of desserts. Then Ed Powers came in with his guitar and Nish with his accordian entertained us until midnight. They then came out with fresh crab legs and a bunch of other goodies. Again, breakfast was eggs, ham, moose saugages I wouldn't go to Newfoundland again without returning to their lodge. By the way Ed has a great CD which we all bought, it helped us on our long journey home. The twelve miles was a gravel road and we opened them up as it was really smooth, we were there probably less than twenty minutes. Of course we didn't have a trailer. I believe Ed possibly cost Dave some money as he is a proffesional entertainer, whatever; we really enjoyed the evening the next day was long we all hit the sack a lot earlier.

 

Bill

I plan on stopping at the lodge the next time I do the trip. Hopefully it will be next year LOL!!!!

How did your communicators work on the trip? I noticed that both you and your wife had them.

While ridding down the rail bed everyday, I kept thinking to myself, the Prairie is the perfect bike to tour Newfoundland with. It's so smooth, it soaks up the bumps real well, has plenty of power, and his comfortable on an all day ride. I really enjoyed the Prairie during this trip, and I kept thinking to myself, this is what Kawasaki was thinking of when they designed the Prairie. This is the type of ridding that the bike just loves. It really handled everything that was thrown at it during the trip, and everyone who rode it didn't want to give it back.

 

Those were some nice pictures. I guess the big orange train was set up for deep snow wasnt it? Whats the price of gas there?