Howick > Franklin Centre/Covey Hill annual autumn epic ride

The Pin Rigide is the Pitch Pine en anglais.



In November the maple forest have a beautiful carpet of leaves




Today's new backroad exploration discovers that the road isn't a road and is a Ski-Doo trail.




Near perfect Tamarack/Larch (Mélèze) coniferous tree in autumn gold color.



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The renovated part of Franklin Centre



Early in the ride we saw this sign, which helped us to survive a few challenges later in the day.




This can't be good, no sir not at all.




The road... it's gone!




We couldn't ride across, but we could walk across.


And what a relief to find this out!

That was the good news.

The bad news is that the sun has just set. The car is still 25 km away.

Oops.

Starting the ride at 2 pm in November has its risks.

But we had brought our lights, knew the best way home, and got down to business.

Our average speed for the next hour was 30 km/h, much faster than usual!





Finishing the ride after sunset: that light is from Montreal 40 km away



Sometimes a ride goes epic for reasons better not discussed, but today's ride went epic because 1) a back road turned into a dirt road turned into a ski-doo trail, so we had to walk a kilometre or two. Then a bridge turned out to have just collapsed into the creek underneath. We got across on foot but then the sunset occurred. There was still 25 km to go before the ride was finished. Oh boy, ain't November fun!

On the plus side, the temperatures were abnormally warm, as high as +14, which is great but also kind of scary since it is November.