The Ride of A Lifetime
A 2,800-Mile Father-and-Son Adventure From New Brunswick To Thief River Falls, Minnesota
By John T. Prusak; Submitted Photos
It started with a childhood dream.
Lorne Steeves grew up in a snowmobiling household. His father, Bob Steeves, was an early snowmobiling pioneer in New Brunswick who always managed to keep the family well stocked with Arctic Cat snowmobiles.
“We were as poor as church mice when I was a young boy, but dad always found a way to have a snowmobile in the garage or out back,” Lorne Steeves recalled. “For years as a kid, I always dreamt of snowmobiling to Thief River Falls – wherever that was! I had no idea where that was. My dad always said, ‘Oh you’re crazy, that’s a pipe dream. Nobody is ever going to do that, it’s impossible.’ That went on for years.”
Thief River Falls, of course, is a city in Minnesota where those Arctic Cat snowmobiles that filled the Steeves family’s winters with fun and adventure were built. It was truly a half-continent away, very far from a boy growing up within miles of the Atlantic Ocean in Canada’s Maritime Provinces.
“Well, my dad turned 80 last year in May, and he has had some health problems,” said Lorne, then 55. “I knew I wanted to do it with my dad, and he was getting older – if I had any hope, it had to be now.
“So I said to him, ‘Dad I’m planning the trip, and I’m going to call it Bucket List Tour 2020, and I’m going to snowmobile from here to Thief River Falls, Minnesota, to the world headquarters of Arctic Cat snowmobiles.’ He looked at me over his glasses and said, ‘There’s no way in hell you’re ever going to pull that off!’ And I said, ‘Well, OK. Would you like to come with?’ and he said, ‘You know I’d go with you if I could.’”
The dream became a reality when the Steeves father-son combination, plus father-and-son Trueman and Trevor Copp (then ages 74 and 48, respectively), crossed New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin and most of Minnesota in February of 2020 – traveling almost 2,800 miles on a one-way mission to prove it could be done. They battled sub-arctic temperatures, deep snow and a couple of mishaps along the way, but ultimately their adventure was actually smoother than even they thought it would be. They pulled up to the Arctic Cat headquarters to a hero’s welcome 15 days after they left their home.
Planning The Adventure
After his proclamation, Lorne began months of planning – collecting maps, plotting routes, trying to make connections along the path and contacting Arctic Cat’s marketing department. He got mixed results.
“My dad was one of the forefathers of snowmobiling in our part of the country, and as soon as I dropped his name it was pretty easy to get help in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, just because of the relationships he had developed over the years,” Lorne said. “I got a lot of ‘This is where you should go, Lorne,’ and ‘This is an area you should avoid,’ and it matched up with maps I had already generated.”
South of the border, though, was a different story. “In the United States, it was like pulling teeth” getting anybody to respond, he said. “This nice lady finally called me from some chamber of commerce in Minnesota somewhere. She said that she would send me trail maps of her area, and she would solicit her peers along my route to do the same thing.”
Within two weeks trail maps started filling his mailbox, though a lot of work lay ahead to make the maps match up in similar scales. After spending more than $1,000 in printing costs reproducing the documents, Lorne said, he finalized a complete map to show off on Christmas morning.
“It was 37 feet long, and I unrolled it in my dad’s living room and down the hallway to show him what it was,” Lorne said. “He couldn’t believe it.”
While Lorne was plotting the course and handling other logistics, Bob Steeves had personal prep work to do. He had a hip and a knee replaced months before the adventure, and then just nine days prior to their departure he had a 2-inch stint placed in his heart, Lorne told us.
This father-son crew needed counterparts, however. Bob recruited Trueman Copp, a longtime friend and also a local legend in snowmobiling. Asked after the ride why he participated in the huge adventure, Trueman said with a laugh, “Well, because we got invited! It’s something I always wanted to do, I never realized I would be able to do it or would have somebody that would want to do it, so I’m glad that Lorne organized it.”
Trueman’s son, Trevor Copp, was the last addition – though he worried about the time commitment.
“When we planned this trip, originally it was going to be Bob and Lorne and Trueman and a fourth guy, and they kept saying it was going to take a month,” Trevor said, “so I told Lorne, ‘There’s no way I can leave my family and my business for a month. And he said, ‘Trevor, ultimately we’re probably going to have two days sitting in a hotel waiting for a snow storm to go past, and at least one or two snowmobiles are going to break down on a Sunday and we’re going to be waiting for parts for two or three days. It’s going to be a month.’”
After further review, they whittled it down to a 20-day adventure, which would still be a stretch for Trevor. So he developed a side plan – he would leave three days after the other three and try to catch their moving caravan.
And So It Begins
Lorne, Bob and Trueman pulled out of Moncton on February 11, 2020, under perfect bluebird skies to begin what they thought would be a 3,500-mile adventure. Their sleds – each four-stroke Arctic Cat ZR 9000 Thundercats – were prepped and packed with gear. The group would be following Lorne’s bright orange jacket the rest of the way.
On that first day, four close friends and family members rode with the trio to the lunch break at Miramichi, New Brunswick, before turning back – after that, Lorne, Bob and Trueman were on their own until Trevor caught them days later. That first day they rode trails they knew well in perfect conditions and knocked out 176 rural miles over rolling hills and through tall-treed forests before shutting down well before sunset. It wasn’t an unusual day for the high-mile riders, but a lot lay ahead.
Already, one day into the ride, a social media following was building. Promoted on their own Facebook page called Bucket List Ride 2020 and also by Arctic Cat as the #UltimateACATJourney, the ride piqued the curiosity of thousands of sledheads across the Snowbelt. Either the riders or Lorne’s son, Logan, would post updates daily, and followers could also trace the route thanks to GPS tracking they used.
At 8:15 a.m. the next morning, the group was back on the trail, working their way through St. Quentin and to Edmundston, New Brunswick, passing the dramatic Mount Carlton – the highest point in New Brunswick – along the way 150 miles further up the trail above the tip of Maine. It was another easy and picturesque ride, with temperatures in the teens (Fahrenheit) and light snow falling at times. They encountered moose, deer and turkeys on the trail, but otherwise it was an uneventful ride in excellent conditions.
Day three was a longer run, as they crossed into Quebec and caught lunch in scenic Riviere-du-Loup as a part of a 240-mile adventure following the wide St. Lawrence River. That day ended in Sainte-Marie, Quebec, outside of Quebec City, and would be followed by a 215-mile run on day four to Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, where they’d need to catch a ferry the following morning to cross the Saint Lawrence north of Montreal.
Other than a chance meeting with the Quebec Provincial Police, the ride was business as usual for the trio – they’d ridden together often and were close enough to home where help could still reach them if anything went askew. The QPP stop, though, was a sign of things to come – one officer recognized their New Brunswick license plates and said, “Hey, you’re THOSE guys,” Lorne recalled. It’s a phrase they would hear often while their social media fame grew.
Trevor’s Catchup
While that group was putting accumulating miles, Trevor was biding his time at the family business before turning things over to his capable crew. At 6 a.m. on February 14, flanked with two longtime riding partners, he began the pursuit of his father and the Steeves father-son duo. On the first day the chase team planned to cover the same ground the lead group rode in two days, with an overnight stay at Edmundston.
But after arriving there earlier than expected they continued and crossed the border into Quebec, catching a room at Dégelis with about 400 miles on their odometers. Trevor was making up ground fast, but he was chasing a target that was moving away from him
“When we’d stop for gas, one guy would fill all three sleds while another guy would run in and grab food and snacks,” Trevor said. “It was a different way to travel but we had a goal in mind.”
After a quick night’s sleep, they left the next morning in sub-arctic temperatures. The goal was to reach Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, where the first group ended night four, but Trevor decided to extend the ride again. He bid adieu to his riding friends – who doubled back for home – then caught the ferry across the St. Lawrence River, with plans to spend that night in Laval near Montreal. Upon arriving in Laval, though, he couldn’t find any available lodging so he pressed on through the night, putting more ground behind him on the area’s famous super-highway trails and narrowing the gap on the others while they slept.
He finally stopped at 5:10 a.m. when he had reached the hunting lodge outside of Chatham, Quebec, where the others were staying, 580 miles after he started the day. He parked his 2020 Riot 8000 next to the others’ Thundercats in the pre-dawn light and talked the manager into letting him crash briefly in an unclaimed room.
“I laid my head down at 5:30 a.m., and then at about 7:20 a.m. Lorne texted me – he was thinking I was in Laval and he says, ‘When you get 100 miles in call us and we’ll come up with a plan to meet.’ And I replied, ‘There’s no need to call, I’m in room No. 6.’” After a shower and energy bar, Trevor was ready to roll with the rest of the group.
The Perfect Crossing
The timing of their meet up worked out expertly, because it correlated with an unplanned and oh-so-fortunate short cut.
Best as Lorne could tell when plotting his route, their biggest challenge would be the two days past Chatham. They were headed into a depopulated area in Quebec where both lodging and fuel options were scarce – they thought they’d have to venture far north to cross the Ottawa River. They had planned for several eventualities, Lorne said, including possibly spending a couple of nights winter camping in the woods. Trevor’s sled was also carrying a big auxiliary fuel tank on the tunnel, just in case.
But a conversation with a local groomer operator and the spotting of a remote trail sign that merely said “Ontario” with a directional arrow led them to an informal crossing of the broad river. It was a mile across, Lorne says, but there were snowmobile track marks to follow from previous travelers.
They were still nervous as they pulled up to the river bank in a spot where the mighty river’s waters slowed enough for the surface to freeze. Lorne planted his Thundercat’s throttle, and the others were fast in his tracks until they reached the other side – and an unexpected surprise.
“There was this brand new snowmobile club that was having its first-ever family day,” Lorne said. “They had balloons out, stringers and banners, with great big crockpots of chili, and corn on the cob boiling, sausages… My dad says, ‘Geez, you really know where you’re going – they did this all for us?!’ And I said [sarcastically], ‘Yes, Dad, it’s all for us!’”
The riders hung out with the club members for a while on an above-freezing day, sharing their love of the sport, but then plodded on together – now a foursome moving across Ontario. They put in 185 miles that day – taking a different route than was originally planned to stay away from some incoming freezing rain before bedding down in Carleton Place, Ontario.
Big Snow, Big Adventures
Other than being rather chilly, the group so far had perfect weather to pile on miles, but that was about to change. Thanks to Lorne’s crafty adaptations to their route that took them up to North Bay, they had avoided the rain, but when the weather front finally caught them it started dumping snow.
Being avid riders, these guys aren’t the sort to complain about fresh snow, but breaking trail and pushing powder can definitely slow a group’s progress and that’s exactly what they rode in for the next two days. They put on 135 miles pushing 12 inches of powder en route to the Sudbury area for an overnight in Azilda, Ontario, and then another snow-filled day largely on ungroomed trails and powerline routes, traveling 175 miles to Blind River outside of Elliot Lake, Ontario.
These days brought the ride’s only real misadventures.
First, while pushing powder on a forest road and riding one-handed as he was adjusting his GPS unit, Trueman missed a turn and drove into a deep ditch; his son Trevor was hot on his tail and followed him in.
“That ditch was at least six feet deep and there was about four feet of snow in the bottom,” Trueman recalled afterward, “and the big old Thundercat, it doesn’t like that much snow until you turn the power on. So as soon as I hit the bottom of the ditch I had ’er wide open to give it a shot to get up the other side. She didn’t go up the first time so I had to drop her back down into the ditch in the heavy snow and gave it a second shot and made it out the second time. It gets the adrenaline going.”
Little did he know that Trevor never left his tail through the whole folly.
“Afterward he said, ‘Did you see that?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I was right behind you, I was following you all through there!” Trevor said.
In the rugged Ontario outback on a gas-line cut – which included huge whoops – Trevor also had a tail landing after busting through a drift that bent the tunnel on his Riot, Lorne said. It wasn’t enough to seriously affect the sled or damage the heat exchangers, though, so the group soldiered on.
They wrapped up the 10th day with a 178-mile run on logging roads and trails to the border town of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where they’d cross into Michigan the next day.
Saved By Fame?
The only time the sleds were on a trailer would be when crossing the international border at Sault Ste. Marie. Help had been pre-arranged with Rivercity Motorsports – the Arctic Cat dealership on the Ontario side of the split border town – which was to haul the sleds across the border while Lorne and the crew turned in a stack of pre-filled-out paperwork that would allow their sleds to be shipped back into Canada separate from them after the ride.
The problem was the distance riders arrived in town earlier than expected – and on the same day that Arctic Cat was hosting demo rides for its 2021 Blast snowmobiles, which tied up the dealerships’ primary trailer. So, as Lorne tells the story, the dealership arranged for two separate trucks and trailers to haul the sleds across, while Lorne, Bob, Trevor and Trueman rode in a cab that was to lead all three vehicles through the customs process.
The cab driver claimed he knew the way, Lorne said, but instead he led the other two vehicles the wrong way into the border station, taking them between barricades where busses were supposed to be exiting customs into Canada, and up to the back door of the customs building.
“I was sitting beside Trevor and said, ‘How long until somebody’s going to come out that back door, because you know we’re on camera and in the wrong place.’ It wasn’t three seconds before two customs officers came out and were yelling at the taxi driver!” Through the chaos, Lorne said when he and his co-riders started getting out of the van, one customs agent figured out who they were. It was a saving grace.
“The one customs guy says, ‘Hey, you’re THOSE guys!’ He couldn’t believe it,” Lorne said. “He escorted us through the back door and started introducing us around, ‘These are those guys we’ve been watching online.”
Soon paperwork was filed, passports were stamped and the group and their sleds were dropped off at the Yamaha dealership on the U.S. side.
The U.S. Leg
Because of the difficulty in getting information from the U.S. portion of the trip, Lorne said they were a bit nervous about what lay ahead, but found themselves pleasantly surprised. The wide and fast rail trails and forest roads of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula were exactly what they needed to click off miles efficiently.
“Michigan, I would say for me, was the best snowmobiling,” Trueman said. “The trails were hard, flat and really nice and well groomed. And, they ride hard there, and that’s what we wanted to do. We were going down the trail and I was looking at my speedometer and thinking, ‘We’re making good time’ going along at 70-71 mph. All of a sudden in the mirror I see a group of snowmobilers coming up beside us, and I think, ‘What in the heck is this? I think they want to go by?’ Sure enough, they all went by!”
A quick 140 miles later they found themselves on the south shore of Lake Superior in the snowmobiling Mecca of Grand Marais, Michigan, for the first night, then clicked off a fast 250 miles on day 12 before shutting down in Bergland, Michigan, on the shores of the Lake Gogebic. A visit to the regionally famous snowmobiling pitstop the Hoop ‘N Holler was mandatory, and Trevor even participated in a makeshift/impromptu drag race with strangers on the lake.
The next day they crossed into Wisconsin at Hurley and, 175 trail miles later, called it a night in Ashland at the base of the Bayfield Peninsula. Along the way in Wisconsin they came across a snowmobile accident where a rider had a broken leg, but after the injured rider and his friends assured the New Brunswick foursome that help was on the way they continued on.
Their final full day of riding would be a doozy: 250 miles from Ashland, across the border into Minnesota on Trail 66 south of the Duluth/Superior area and then across that broad state from east to west on the northern Soo Line trail. They’d cross the Iron Range, drive through lake country and then into the flatlands – ending at the Candlewood Inn in Bemidji, less than 100 miles from their destination of Thief River Falls.
Bringing It Home
Bob Steeves had been to the Arctic Cat factory in 2011 when he attended the brand’s huge 50th Anniversary Celebration & Reunion. The other three had never been anywhere close to the town where their favorite snowmobiles are built but, due to their brand loyalty plus the warm welcome that was waiting for them, the 15th day of their trip truly felt like a homecoming.
After Lorne called the factory the morning of February 25 to inform the folks there of the foursome’s impending arrival, Cat dispatched two test riders to escort the travelers to the factory.
However, even though they were in a part of Minnesota that is so flat that “you can probably watch your dog run away for four days” to use Lorne’s words, the meet-up never happened. Apparently on a different route than the factory riders had expected, the self-guided tour stayed self-guided. “I had always heard about ‘ditch banging’ and all of that stuff,” Trueman said. “Well now I can say I truly experienced it right where it happens. It’s a different kind of sledding, for sure.”
The New Brunswick crew said folks on roads adjacent to the trail who had been following the details of the tour pointed them in the right direction and/or waved them toward their finish line. The route they followed took them partway through Thief River Falls and then out to the west side of town, where the huge Arctic Cat factory awaited.
Lorne led the group right onto the snow-covered front lawn of the Cat factory, and then the riders shut down their sleds and shared a moment before being greeted by an Arctic Cat official who – after a few photos – escorted them inside. Beyond the doors, a huge contingent of Cat employees gathered in the lobby and gave them a hero’s welcome with thunderous applause.
For Lorne, it was important seeing how his father in particular was greeted. “It was unreal how they greeted him and made us all feel so welcome,” Lorne said, becoming choked up as he relived the moment. “Everybody called us their heroes because they knew our story.”
“The best part of the trip was when they opened those doors and all of those people were standing there with a welcome banner,” Trevor added. “It was crossing the finish line, for sure.”
Special Guests
The New Brunswick crew was treated like special guests, but they were equally impressed with the special people who greeted them – most notably the legendary Cat designer Roger Skime.
Then Arctic Cat VP “Craig Kennedy called and told me they were coming in, and I said, ‘Well I’d like to meet them and shake their hands,’” Roger explained afterward. “So I jumped in the truck and went down there. They were already at the plant, outside taking photos, when I got there. I walked over and congratulated them and told them how we were all so proud of them and what they accomplished.”
“It was pretty amazing to meet Roger Skime,” Trueman added. “I had never met him face-to-face before, but Bob Steeves had met him in the past. He’s definitely the Godfather of snowmobiling. I mean, he had all kinds of other things to do, but he spent the whole afternoon with us, and went out for supper with us and back to the hotel and all kinds of laughs. What a great guy.”
Roger Skime’s son, Troy Skime, led the visitors on a formal tour of the Cat factory, but after dinner Roger Skime took them for another, more personal tour, including going back into testing and engineering.
“It’s heartwarming to know the passion that people have for snowmobiling,” Roger said. “It was two fathers and sons and it was just awesome how they were enjoying life together, and enjoying snowmobiling while doing it.”
Lorne was almost equally impressed with the greeting he received from Russell Miller – a longtime snowmobiler from Warren, Minnesota, who became so inspired following the ride online that he decided to be in TRF when the riders arrived.
“I think the thing I saw said, ‘two fathers, two sons, the ride of a lifetime,’ and I thought, ‘I’ve got to check this out because it’s kind of right up my alley!” Russell said later. His own father got him involved in snowmobiling, and Russell had recently retired early to help out on his parents’ farm after seeing his father’s health start to slip.
“That’s what interested me – for them to do this ride with their dads that had been big in the snowmobile industry in their area,” Miller said. “It was the ride, but it was also that connection between fathers and sons…. Someday we all need rocking chair stories to tell, and boy do they have one!”
Miller arrived at the Arctic Cat factory an hour before the New Brunswick crew rolled up and was invited to join the many excited Cat employees who were eagerly awaiting the big arrival.
What’s Next
The most shocking element of the adventure was the fact that everything went like clockwork. The sleds never had so much as a hiccup for the entire 2,800-mile adventure – Trevor changed his drive belt midway through the ride, but otherwise “we didn’t even get our hands dirty the entire way,” Trueman said.
They also lucked out on weather, with enough snow and cold before the ride to provide a snow-covered path, and then only a couple of snowy days during the ride.
After spending a few days in Thief River Falls, Cat officials organized a limo to take crew to Winnipeg, Manitoba, so they could catch a series of flights home. Cat mechanics went through the group’s snowmobiles to get them ready for a fresh season, and then shipped them back to the guys’ Cat dealership in Moncton over the summer.
Luckily, though, each guy had a spare snowmobiles at home.
“We put 150 miles on sleds on that Saturday after we got back,” Trueman said. “People asked, ‘After that long ride, why are you going snowmobiling after you just got back?’ Well, it’s what we like to do.”
Trip planner Lorne, meanwhile, is plotting even bigger adventures. He says he has a route planned from New Brunswick to California. The Covid-19 situation nixed plans to do the trip in 2021 season, but don’t count them out in the future, he said.