My son’s arms are sore, his legs are throbbing and he doesn’t really ever want to ride his bicycle again, but I think he forgives me.
Living in the West Parry Sound District summer is extremely busy. Before we know it, September is here and, working in a community that caters to the tourist industry, our long lists of summer plans remains untouched.
All spring I promised Cade, my 10-year-old son, we would go on a bicycle trip, strapping tents, sleeping bags and supplies onto our bike frames and heading out along the Seguin Trail. July and August passed with no trip and the realization that if we didn’t do it now, it would become one of those lost promises that erodes a dad’s credibility.
So a guilty dad and celebratory son decided to forfeit some of the early days of school and planned to start our trek after the first day of class.
After a power outage at home and a misplaced sleeping bag delayed our planned early-morning start, we started pedaling down the Seguin Trail just south of Parry Sound in the early afternoon – Cade still making fun of me because I was carrying a fluffy, faded Pokemon sleeping bag instead of my lost lightweight one.
Within minutes, we’d forgotten the parking lot, school, work and the highway behind us and pedaled enthusiastically down the old railway bed which, shaped by overhanging trees, was our enticing tunnel getaway into the unknown.
Within minutes we were pointing out bright-coloured mushrooms and intriguing stone cliffs and speculating about whether we’d see a bear – and whether we really wanted to.
The Seguin Trail, part of the not-for-profit Park-To-Park trail network, offers a glimpse of our own backyards that many of us sometimes take for granted. Park-To-Park Trail will eventually connect Killbear Provincial Park to Algonquin Park, passing by Arrowhead Provincial Park, our destination, along the way. The Seguin Trail is a section of former rail bed cutting through rocks of the Canadian Shield, bordering several of the area’s small inland lakes, crossing streams and rivers, splitting marshes and fields and passing through both deciduous and coniferous forests.
In the winter, the trail is a snowmobile superhighway. In the summer, most users are on ATVs, but the trail offers a mix of fun and challenges for cyclists lugging several pounds of food, water, camping gear and other supplies.
Starting off near the information centre on Highway 400, the well-travelled trail is packed gravel, offering easy cycling. With beaver dams and small bodies of water the only things breaking the shade of a long line of trees, it doesn’t take long to feel like you’re alone. Later, the trail’s challenges start to show themselves with sand, lots and lots of sand. These stretches are like riding a bicycle on the beach – a big workout for avid cyclists who bike in the sand for an hour or two. Put two casual cyclists loaded down with supplies – one of them with young legs – and the challenge gets a little bigger.
Some of our trip’s biggest mishaps and best laughs happened on sandy stretches of the trail. We started off quickly bouncing back after a sandy wipeout, but as the second day wore on we complained bitterly every time we met a few feet of sand – biking on in the thick grass and bush alongside the trail or getting off and walking. Other stretches were littered with large rocks and emerging boulders, sending our carefully packed panniers bouncing off their moorings and dragging a few feet along the ground before we stopped and hooked them back into place. At one stretch just before Seguin Falls, we even cheated for a kilometer or two and cycled along a parallel road where the trail temporarily leaves the railroad bed and climbs rock cuts and sandy rises. Joking, singing and just generally acting strange and laughing at one another, we kept pedaling. At one point we both laughed as a small tree caught in Cade’s spokes and he tried to ignore it and keep biking while it covered his legs and dragged along beside him for several feet, before falling of.
Any hurdles along the way didn’t last long as scenery, animals and the drive to finish the trip took over.
Within an hour of starting our trip, we startled a young stag and a pair of quail. Chipmunks, blue jays and squirrels yelled at us when we interrupted their daily routines along the way.
The wildlife highlight was, by far, a pair of beavers neighbouring our campsite after the first day of biking. Campsites dot some sections of the trail, and when we spotted a fire pit on a small lake surrounded by forest we knew we had to stop early. While the sun set over the water, we snuck up to a nearby dam and watched two beavers work obliviously, ripping sticks out of a young bush and swimming slowly around the pond. Eventually we did get too close and the beavers smacked their tails on the water and swam in quick circles watching us warily – but we considered them our good friends for the night.
Sleeping in our near-perfect campsite that first night, our only worry was whether a bear might smell our packs of food. Being on bikes, there’s no cooler or car trunk to secure food in, so we hung bags away from the tent and hoped for the best. The next morning, there was a small inch-wide circle cut into the bottom of one bag with some of our honey-roasted peanuts pouring out. Somebody found us.
Our only bear story came the second day after a break for a lazy ice cream in Sprucedale, one of the few villages the trail passes through. After our stop in the village’s variety store – a half-empty shop/restaurant where the owner/cook/cashier made us some poutine in a small alcove off to the side – we headed out on one of the sandiest stretches of trail and saw three of the very few people we met along the way.
Three heavily built young guys in a pickup pulled up alongside us and, after saying hello, told us there was a bear-baiting area on the trail ahead.
“Just thought I’d let you know. There’s quite a few of them out there,” said the driver pointing a thumb at his passenger. “One chased after him, chased him right into the truck.”
For the next 30 minutes we pedaled hard, passing right by the bear-baiting site. When we did stop, it was on a dyke surrounded by water where no bear would be catching us by surprise.
The second day of our trip proved the toughest for Cade. We planned a leisurely three-day journey, but because we were making better time than we anticipated, both agreed to try and finish the 100-kilometre trek in two days. It seemed like a good idea when we ate our breakfast of carrots and beef jerky.
“I can’t believe you said this would be fun,” Cade said later, midway through the day after his tire caught between two rocks and tipped, sending him sprawling headlong into a patch of tall grass and mud. “We talked about this for years like it would be fun. You tricked me.”
In the middle of nowhere, there was, much to Cade’s disgust, no turning back.
“This is horrible,” he said a few minutes later.
After a dip in a marshy lake and a couple more hours of cycling, we saw our first sign that we were near the end of the trail. Coming through the trees was an elderly couple on a golf cart.
When we finally emerged on a road about 14 kilometres north of the village of Novar late in the afternoon, we felt like we were already at Arrowhead Park. At the end of the Seguin Trail, the Park-To-Park Trail follows some rural roads to first Arrowhead, then Algonquin Park. Trying to find out which roads those were, we asked two women enjoying a backyard tea in Novar for directions. They pointed us towards an overgrown stretch of the old two-lane Highway 11, cast aside when the four-lane highway was built. Tired, we were singing and joking as we biked along the paved asphalt, raving at how easy the last leg of our journey would be – until the pavement abruptly ended.
The last few kilometers of our trip were the toughest. Unable to ride on Highway 11 because it’s illegal, not to mention scary, we rode along a vague ATV trail and along a small furrow on a grassy cliff overlooking the highway. Vehicles honked and waived, either making fun of us or cheering on the two silly cyclists with bags of stuff labouring high above the road. At one point, Cade fell and rolled about 10 feet down a grassy hill. He got up, obviously seething in anger. I fought back some chuckles as he stomped up the hill and angrily yanked his bicycle upright. I didn’t laugh for long as our grassy path turned to bush and trees and – my legs also starting to hurt – we both complained bitterly while pushing through blackberry bushes and trees.
“I’m never trusting those ladies again,” Cade shouted.
When we finally emerged from the bushes and crept up the long, cruel hill that leads to Arrowhead Park, I wasn’t sure Cade would remember the cool critters, perfect campsite and Parry Sound-Muskoka scenery. I wasn’t sure he would ever forgive me as he told me over and over again we had to stop and I pointed out over and over again that we were only a few minutes away from home base.
Hours later, our tent set up at Arrowhead, it was my turn to feel exhausted and I tried to sleep on a picnic table. Cade, on the other hand, dashed around taking pictures of chipmunks and squirrels and urged his tired father to please, get up and do something, anything fun.
Finally I reluctantly got up, stretching sore legs, and looked for a pack of cards. Cade, still running around looking nothing like a kid who just biked for two days, suddenly paused.
“You know, that’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” he said, and took off to break up a fight between a chipmunk and a squirrel.
Park-To-Park Pedal
Jack Tynan and son Cade biked from Parry Sound to Huntsville along the Park-To-Park trail.
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