WOW what a trip we had, one for the memory books for sure. We had some great riding, and I put 414 miles on the new 2025 Sidewinder. The weather was the big event over the time we spent UP North. Arrived on Saturday evening with light snow/freezing rain mix which turned to all snow by Sunday morning. Heavy snow fall Sunday morning made riding a challenge but by noon it cleared out for the remainder of the day. Sunday night though was different story we had over a foot of new snow when we woke up Monday morning. I would say GM/Seney area received easily 18"+ Saturday/Sunday. The big story though was the extreme ice storm, I have never seen anything like it. We were headed home yesterday morning when we got the alert the Mackinaw bridge was closed due to falling ice. They finally opened the bridge around 7:30 PM so we were able to cross. Let me say it was very scary as ice chunks as big as softballs were crashing down, but we made it to the other side safely. First time crossing I have ever seen the cables swaying from all the ice still attached and wind 15-25 mph out of the ESE. As we traveled towards St. Ignace on the Southern shore of the UP we started to see the ice getting heavier on the trees without much stress but as we got closer to the bridge you could tell things were defiantly getting worse. Once we got to the lower peninsula it became very apparent the stress on the stress was devastating as trees were down everywhere, many where cut to clear the highway. We got to see just how destructive this ice can be as we got to Gaylord (ground zero), just wow, unbelievable scene. Complete destruction of the towns power grid, the ice was so thick small 3'-4' pine trees were fully encased with ice, they looked like globes. One really cool effect was the tall trees in the median would light up like Hugh Christmas trees from vehicles lights coming the opposite direction. I will never forget this trip, in total it took us over 24 hours to get home on a normal 8 hour trip.
