My last run for 2014...Drummond Island, MI and Shoe Lake Trail, Dorset,ON, Canada

It is a bit sad that this year's season has come to an end for me now. We are only a little more than half way through the calendar year and there are some great rides coming at the end of the summer. I'm not very much remiss though; they are being hosted in places that this magical steed has already taken me: Windrock, Rausch, The Cove (Gore, VA) etc. I will miss the company though, as they are well attended rides and some of my newer acquaintances will be going.

I've managed one ride each month, with 6 of the 7 months going to destinations where I had never been before.

I logged somewhere near 2,000 miles in this past weekend alone with the Drive to Michigan, up through Sault Ste Marie into Canada and then back east along King's Highway 17 towards Toronto before heading home. When I got here, there was plenty of deferred work to be done, which ate into my blog writing time.

I'll post a few photo highlights for now and will look to add the full trip synopsis next Sunday.

This week, all the preparations are focused on the baby shower and a test I have to take at the end of the week.

Then my work as it relates to the truck will be to prepare for an additional passenger on these trips. I'm thinking cargo management system, maybe a return to the rooftop carrier if I can make satisfactory improvements, etc.

In the meantime, here are a few pics.

 I was probably most excited about this trip because the route involved putting the truck on a ferry. Bucket List Item!

 No one else was excited about taking a ferry (or driving thousands of miles) to go offroading; so, that means there was liberal use of selfies, tripods, and other automatic photography means and methods.

 I'm a bit too lazy to hike, but driving myself to such nice scenery is a fair substitute. Looking out over Lake Huron. Well, it isn't quite that. I do a fair amount of walking back and forth to the truck to wade into ponds and pools. There's also scrambling up and down hillsides to setup the tripod for video shots. And if I get stuck (which is often), there's some exercise entailed there as well. I think I most enjoy the challenge of designing and implementing solutions to challenges in the natural environment. It is the closest thing I do utilizing my engineering brain.

 This wasn't just poser flexing; it was actually the best line to take to avoid putting one of these larger rocks in position to peel off my rear differential. I do have the rear diff skid, but I try not to make it work harder than it has to.

 Pre-marble head. The photo from the Drummond Chamber of Commerce is what made me want to come here to check Marble Head out. In the grand scheme of things, it is a small measure of the terrain that one can encounter with great frequency in Moab, but it was probably some of the best stair stepping I've found while keeping the trails mostly green. I can and should probably graduate to blue trails at this point. Kind of over the mud scene for now. There was a LOT of mud at Drummond, and so much at the Shoe Lake trail that I actually had to retreat. More on that in the full post.

 This is Maddy's safe spot. In this instance, someone was exercising their Constitutional right to dispense liberal amounts of ammunition into the woods. And she was having none of it. Normally, if she gets nervous, and I'm out of the truck, she's content to curl up in my seat. She might be smarter than me. Maybe I should have been ducking down somewhere too.

 This was the Shoe Lake Trail in Canada. It took quite a deal of hunting to find knowledgeable folks and then even more correspondence to come across directions to a viable trail. Ultimately I got three legit leads, and I had prepared to perhaps pursue all three. Honestly, I had barely survived Drummond as the terrain was a bit more challenging than what I'll comfortably take on during a solo ride. And this was promising to be more of the same with respect to marshy, mucky conditions. My front winch cable is bound up from not having properly respooled after recovering a comrade at Ivy Branch. Guess where I discovered that fact...

The rear is temperamental because of loose contacts at the connector port. I was fortunate to be able to link up to something in the rear and drag myself out of that muck. With the front winch compromised for now (user error) and the rear being how it pretty much always is, I decided to tuck tail and make an earlier return home. It allowed me time to finish repairs to the walls and get 3/4 of the painting done. So that was a good thing.

At a rest stop about 3 hours from home, there were some late fireworks displays. Maddy was insistent in crawling down here despite my protests...and my quite obviously already occupying the space. Somehow, she managed to wiggle her body down there. I had intended to only stop for soda and some gas. But seeing as how I couldn't really leave her in that frightened state and was a bit fatigued myself anyway, we ended up napping for about 3 hours. It extended my anticipated arrival from 1am Sunday morning to closer to 4am, but that was ok.

Back to the rat race.

Complete story on the trip should be ready by next Sunday. Maybe I can get to some video editing in the coming weeks.