JAMES BOND 007: DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

Taking you back to 1971 with this British spy film, how can you not have a Sean Connery, James Bond ATV chase scene! While looking into the weird activities going on in the diamond market, James Bond discovers that his evil nemesis Blofeld is collecting diamonds for his deadly laser satellite. With the fate of the world hanging in the balance 007 sets out to stop Blofeld’s evil plan. During the Moon Buggy Chase seen, 007 cover’s blown while investigating at Willard Whyte Space Labs and escapes by stealing a moon buggy, not only to be chased by security on a Honda US90 three wheeler across the Las Vegas Dessert. Pull out that old dusty VHS and pop it in. …Or just check Netflix.

Jurassic World

It seems like just yesterday, but Jurassic World hit the big screens back in 2015. The sequel to the 1993 mega blockbuster Jurassic Park did not disappoint. Starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, the movie brought in a stunning 1.672 billion US dollars at the box office. During the height of the movie’s chaos where dinosaurs escaping their pens and killing humans at a wild rate. The go to guy, Chris Pratt, saves the day again and takes Howard on a ride to safety on a Suzuki ATV. With the enormous budget that the Jurassic franchise enjoyed, we are a little baffled why it wasn’t a jacked up custom bad ass looking ATV. Sadly, the only custom thing that we noticed was the unique Jurassic badge of the front of the ATV.

Vacation

The 2015 continuation on the 1983 comedy National Lampoon’s Vacation, where Rusty Griswold takes his own family on a cross-country excursion to Walley World for some family bonding. With mishaps and strange adventures on the way the Griswold’s are in for a few unfriendly encounters. While at Audrey Griswold’s Ranch, after a misunderstanding at a hot spring, Russ Griswold and Stone Crandall head out to herd the cattle on a pair of Honda Fourtrax Foremans, “Are their helmets?” “Yeah I keep them with the tampons!” With the engines roaring and excitement in the air, Russ gets easily distracted by his family, a butcher happens in a way you wouldn’t think of!

an the work week start off any better? Polaris gave us a call on a Monday morning, asking for input on one of their latest and greatest big-boy toys. Our task was to put a 2022 General Troy Lee Edition to a true enthusiast’s test. It didn’t take much for my rubber arm to twist, so we immediately obliged and were up for this so-called challenge!

How could anyone complain with a bunch of paid days, and be able to ride anywhere we wanted with the boss-man’s credit card in hand? The only question was, where to go?

The Yoop it is!

If you ask anyone living in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes Region (which stretches from Minnesota to New York in the U.S., and runs all along the southern border of Ontario), they know you can find some awesomely challenging ORV riding, in many different places. My group, which is from Wisconsin, passed around and argued numerous destinations over a cold one. Ranging from Moab, UT, to the Hatfield-McCoy trail systems in Tennessee, to even Whistler, BC as prime examples of epic destinations that riders seek out, or just dream of visiting one day.

But for us, like so many living in the Great Lakes Region, we have some trade secrets, and so our mind was easily set right in our own backyard, to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, affectionately known as the U.P. or the Yoop. Simply said, for my riding group, it is our honeymoon place.

Before we get too deep on the ride itself, it seems appropriate to dish out a short bio on this little-known, hidden gem. Nestled on the south side of Lake Superior in the far northern part of the Midwest, it shares the majority of its borders with three of the Great Lakes. Which makes The “Yoop” a popular place in the wintertime for snow seekers, with the endless Lake Effect snow that falls.

The Upper Penninsula is a somewhat odd place geographically. It’s legally part of the state of Michigan, but only shares a land border with the State of Wisconsin. The next closest land mass to its border is not the rest of its own state of Michigan, but rather Ontario, which is only separated