Category Archives: Fun Roads

Long weekend

The May long weekend is always nice, weather is finally decent and everything is starting to bloom.  I was off on Friday so i went to get a trailer hitch installed on my Lexus RX, then went to pick up a trailer hitch cargo carrier.  We like road trips and previously we found the space in the car a bit tight (though we had smaller cars) so this can be useful.  I also needed a trailer hitch installed so I could use my bike carrier.

Saturday we did a bit of yard work but took the day light, Sunday we did a day trip up North.  I look on Google maps for fun roads to drive, so we went to Sundridge then drove West on highway 124.  From there we went to Parry Sound for lunch then took highway 518 East to highway 11 then back home.  All in all it was about 7 hours of driving, highway 124 is ok quite scenic and pretty but highway 518 is so much fun with its twists and turns.

Today Brandon and I took the cover off the pool and performed a bunch of pool maintenance.  We’ll need a new cover in the fall as ours tore in multiple spots which allowed pollen and other plant materials to get into the pool unfortunately.  Frankly the water looks like diarrhea right now but that’s how it goes and in about a week and a half, it’ll look great.  I need to call a few places tomorrow to get quotes on replacing the sand in my sand filter so I’ll do that in the morning.

Sad my weekend is over but I mean I WFH and enjoy my job so I’m lucky there. 🙂

May long weekend!

Well we certainly had a busy long weekend.  Mine started on Friday, I went up North to find Highway 518 as I heard it’s an amazing highway and was not disappointed.  I took advantage because Maggie had to work while Brandon also had school so I was free lol.  Highway 518 is amazing, so many twists and turns very pleasurable road to drive on but just don’t get stuck behind a slow vehicle because there aren’t many passing opportunities.

The video is 49 minutes long and the fun starts at around 12:25.  Mmm the Lexus IS 350 AWD handles so well (compared to my old NX & Prius which to be fair doesn’t say much lol), almost no body roll when I’m cornering and with the Michelin Pilot Sport AS4 tires, I have so much grip!  Too bad the car sucks so bad with gas mileage though, that’s really its Achilles heel.

Saturday we went as a family for dim sum and that was good, the wind storm passed through Toronto and knocked down a lot of trees and power to our house for 11 hours.  That was a bit of a pain but lol I was prepared and ready for that situation so no harm.  Brandon spent most of the afternoon away too at his friend’s house to celebrate a birthday which make it easy for us.

Just some of the carnage from a walk in the afternoon with Maggie in our neighborhood.  Overall we were pretty lucky, I read that there were 10 deaths related to the storm in Ontario & Quebec which is sad.

Sunday Maggie & Brandon went to play badminton while I watched the F1 race, in the early afternoon Maggie on a whim wanted to go see the fireworks in Niagara Falls so we booked a hotel and stayed the night.

Needless to say the place was so busy on a long weekend, we got into town around 6, Brandon went for a swim for a bit and we went out for dinner around 730.  After dinner we walked around then parked ourselves close to the American falls at 9:20pm as that’s where the fireworks show is and starts at 10pm.

Sigh I wish I had my tripod so I could do some longer exposure shots but these were all hand held I think at a 1/10s shutter speed.  In the morning we decided to visit the butterfly conservatory before heading back and that place is alwasy fun.

They’re so cool and very difficult to shoot when flying!  It’s nice how close you can get to the various butterflies and even touch them (gently of course).  After that we decided to drive home slowly, there are some fun roads in the Niagara region so I took local back for half the trip then hopped on the QEW when it got pretty urban.

Slinky really missed us and it’s nice to be home, sigh too bad the weekend is over already and it’s after tiring ones like this that I wish I were retired.

Not from this weekend

I forgot to post this earlier, this was from the weekend before when I went up North and it’s a drive from Gravenhurst up Highway 169 to Lake Joseph Road.

Man there are some nice roads and scenic drives up North, I can’t wait to redo these in the spring or summer when everything is alive. 🙂

Full drive

So here’s the full Highway 141 video from it’s start till end going Westward.

Mmm what a great drive, I wish I were out there right now!  The frozen water on the rocks at near 3:41 is also very pretty, yes up North you see frozen water on rocks all the time but not like that.  Fun times, as you can see I really enjoyed myself on this one. 🙂

A fun little ride!

Yesterday I went for a joyride up north, Brandon had a Scouting activity and Maggie took him so I was flying solo and boy did I have fun. 😉  I first drove up to Gravenhurst (~1 1/2 hours) then took highway 169 to Lake Joseph Road which is the old highway 69 and it was great because it reminded me of when I was a kid going up to my parents cottage back in the day.  After I drove on highway 141 and it was great, a very scenic road with a lot of twists and turns.

I was recording most of the drive with my DJI Osmo Action however half way going East it fell off the windshield so I took another recording with me going Westward and this was the prettiest part.

I’m currently uploading the whole drive however it’s just under 70GB (it’s in 4K 60p so lots of data) and taking its sweet time so I’ll share that when it’s ready.  The highway was great and I loved the tight twistys, in the summer I’ll go back and go a bit faster and push the Lexus IS 350 AWD a bit harder lol.  I have a brand new set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4 AS tires so let’s take advantage of some of that grip right.

Today was the opposite of yesterday, did absolutely nothing but clean a few things at home and relax.  Took a nap in the afternoon and now my weekend is gone… 🙁  Easy come, easy go and I’m pretty lucky as I like my job so I do look forward to Mondays. 🙂

Car videos are fun

I don’t know if people like this type of thing but I’m certainly having a ton of fun doing car videos in cool areas.  As I’ve said before, we’re looking at cottages and this private road was really cool so I decided to take a video of the path out with all the bumps, holes in the dirt road and hills.  Shot with the Go Pro Hero 5 this time in 2.7K 60p to try and get less shaky footage and frankly it kind of sucks so I think for hte next one I’m going back to 4K.

Man now I really want to try off-roading though in a proper vehicle as I don’t think my Lexus NX would do too well on a really rough course.

Other then that Saturday we didn’t do anything which was a nice change and I rather enjoyed just lounging around at home relaxing. With the cold weather coming, I suspect we’ll be doing that more often and I’m totally ok with that.

Driving weekend

So we put on a ton of kilometers on the Lexus NX this weekend and you know what, that’s alright with me.  It’s such a comfy car, great on road trips only thing that sucks is it guzzles the gasoline but then again it’s a SUV and not really fair to compare to my old Toyota Prius which was one of the most efficient cars lol.  Anyway with the fall colours coming in, Sunday we decided to drive Northumberland Best Loved Fall Colours route and lol it was mainly green unfortunately.  Not a surprise we headed mainly East and it hasn’t been as cold.  I stuck the Go Pro Hero 5 on my roof and this was what I saw…

I forgot to remove the audio for this video so all you hear is wind noise but yeah it was a fun drive.

Yesterday we resumed our search for cottages and this really rustic had the coolest drive so on the way out I recorded that as well.

Maggie hated the cottage, it uses an outhouse, outdoor shower and well yeah way too rustic for her.  I don’t think I’d mind too much as I’ve done those types of cottages before and it was a lot of fun.  We did find one that we really liked and will bid on it tonight.

It’s a 3 bedroom, all season cottage with direct lake access.  Mmm it’ll be sweet there’s another we like as well but they’re taking offers on Thursday but hopefully we can land this one.

That wraps up my Thanksgiving long weekend, put on like 1,500 km onto my car and it was totally worth it. 🙂

Fun!

So I was off on Friday and decided to go for a drive, I ended up in Algonquin and had a bit of fun with my DJI Mini 2 & old Go Pro Hero 2.

Mmm those beautiful fall colours are in full effect!  I also took two videos…

Unfortunately I forgot to record the take off but the drone got about 4km out before it lost connection and returned to home, I got the connection back probably 30 seconds afterwards and just let it return.

Next I put the Go Pro on the roof of my car and drove across Highway 60.  Unfortunately about 2/3 way in condensation from inside the protective casing started to accumulate right in front of the camera lens which is super annoying grr.

I’m not very good at editing videos yet, I had to stitch together a bunch of clips from the Go Pro and while the transition is seamless, I think the video got outputted at 720p even though YouTube sensed it’s 1080.  Well anyway the old Go Pro Hero 2 video is quite poor so I went out last night to get a used Go Pro Hero 5 which can do 4K, still old but since I’m just playing I didn’t want to spend too much money yet.  We went for an autumn drive today through a recommended route and the footage there looks so much better but will talk about that later.

Yesterday we didn’t do too much it was rainy so a slower day is just what the doctor ordered.  Today well I’ll talk about today with tomorrow’s post.