Part Eleven | Motorcycle Guide to Percé Rock

Ultimate Ride Episode 11

So this season during our annual fall ride .. we’ve been in the province of Quebec exploring the scenic Gaspe Peninsula.. After 4 days in the saddle of a pair of K1600GTs.. we spent the final evening in the town of Gaspe proper. Then on the final morning of our adventure .. with only a couple of hours left before catching a flight back towards home…we squeezed out one last  photo op at the famous Percé Rock. It required a spirited early morning ride that will never be forgotten…but alas no matter how hard we tried to stretch out the experience.. our journey was coming to a close…

Dave

Well Norm, here we are mid way through day four in this year’s Ultimate Ride  to Gaspé and we’re at the Gaspé airport.  Man, it’s a tiny airport.  No tower and our de-icing… not that we need it, but our De-icing vehicle is actually a pick-up truck.  It’s small.

Norm

That’s right.  And only a one-way runway too, so that’s going to be interesting with all the wind when we leave here.

Dave

It’s going to be extremely windy today.  But you know when we pull out the map and you look back to where we have been and how far we’ve come from flying into Quebec City, we’v covered a lot of ground.

Norm

Twelve hundred and fifty kilometers the way that we did the route.

Dave

Nice.

Norm

It’s perfect.

Dave

Quickly recapping the first part of the ride was a little straight forward,  and pedestrian out from Quebec City to Rimouski.  We spent the night there and then the journey really began for us the next day riding down the one thirty-two east to your sister’s place in Matapedia.

Norm

Yes, a nice little surprise lunch there and enjoyed that very much and then after that we continued on to Baie des Chaleurs and made our way to the two ninety-nine which is at New Richmond and up to Ste. Anne des Monts and that was a really spectacular road for me, I really enjoyed that, the two roads.  The valley for seventy kilometers and then the mountains for the next seventy kilometers.

Dave

Yeah. That was a fantastic ride and we had a gorgeous day that whole day.  It was all about following rivers.  Woke up at Ste. Anne des Monts, a nasty day.  It was cold, it was raining, but the ride to Gaspe, it did not disappoint.  I mean we were smiling the whole way.  The scenery was spectacular.

Norm

Just the way the mountains came right down to the ocean and the road just snaked along is fantastic and then every now and then the opportunity to go inland a little bit and get some roller coaster rides.

Dave

Yeah. It was beautiful and called it a short day yesterday.  Four o’clock we were in Gaspé we checked into our hotel… this morning it was like icing on the cake. Percé Rock, we blasted out there this morning and what a gorgeous scene.

Norm

Beautiful.

Dave

Beautiful. And some nice roads too.

Norm

Beautiful roads and as you said before, when you ride it the opposite way you get a whole different perspective so I enjoyed coming from Percé back to here visually more than the ride out.

Dave

Well I think  if you’re going to come out and do this ultimate ride the toughest decision will be should I keep the St. Lawrence on my left or on my right.  Which way should we circle this thing.

Norm

Exactly.

Dave

‘Cause the scenery changes both ways but over all, when you’re thinking about an ultimate ride in Canada, I mentioned this earlier in one of the previous segments; the rockies, definitely, Cape Breton Cabot Trail, definitely, and I’ve got to put Gaspé right up there.  This has been spectacular, fun, great riding.  Thanks for bringin us this one.

Norm

No problem.