Week #7 - Labrador or bust! (and maybe Quebec)

The journey continues and so do the photos!  If you wish to skip the banter and jump straight to the photos, please go here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/crisp_travels/albums/72157699489769351

This week we took the plunge and decided to drive through Labrador and begin our journey home.  One thread you can weave in this batch of photos is about the roads.  They are all over the map (so to speak ;-)  We’ve now covered all the roads in Labrador (meaning Routes 500 and 510), and most of the route through northern Quebec on our journey back to civilization (Rt 389), and I think we’ve seen it all.  You’ll see quite a few samples of the road conditions.  But the bottom line is that it is much better than the internet would lead one to believe:  we found no tire-eating pot holes; no need for a loaner satellite phone; and the washboard is reasonably infrequent and short.  Indeed much of it is newly paved and in great condition!  But I will note that there will be some rocking and rolling for an RV-sized vehicle.  In fact, this morning I found two of the screws that fastened our home-made pantry to the wall had sheared off.  Luckily noticed that before it completely separated from the wall or that would have been a real mess!  All secured now, but just a reminder of how strong the lateral and vertical forces can be, even though they are thankfully infrequent, in case you’re considering an excursion of your own.   

So we started this weeks adventure from Red Bay, Labrador, where we checked out their Whaling exhibit.  Quite informative, as were many of the places we visited this week.  So you will find more placards and background information in the photos, if you wish to learn more about the places we visited.  If not, feel free to skip through and just check out the scenery.  Next was a nice hike up Tracey Hill, and a new record — 689 stairs!  (We had to look up that number as we each counted and kept getting different answers - I considered that my day’s meditation ;-)  Then we were off to Mary’s Harbour, and made a “follow-our-nose” decision to take an overnight excursion to Battle Harbour. We did this because it had been recommended by a few people, the weather forecast looked good, and hey, we had the time ;-)  It’s a bit pricey, but we were happy to learn it really all goes back to the community to keep the facilities up and many locals employed.  We were also able to park in their lot for two nights, and did a short hike to White Water Falls while waiting for a parking spot to open up for us, where Carol made us some yummy veggie pizza!

The ferry ride is about 90 minutes one way, and a little bit “rocky” — we stayed outside in the back, and it was no problem.  Once we arrived and dropped our belongings in our room, we had a leisurely 3-hour tour led by Nelson Smith who grew up living between Battle Harbour and Mary’s Harbour as many locals did after Government resettlement in 1960.  As a former fisherman, he was able to share the old tools and techniques of his time, and that of his forebears, and the harbour buildings have been well preserved.  Again, you will see lots of information in these pictures, that will give you a good feeling for what it was like living here 100-150 years ago.  You’ll also see a small plane crash memorial, and it turns out Nelson and one other kid were the people who found the crash (which occurred due to heavy fog).  You may also notice his name in some of the historical photos.

After the tour, Carol headed back to the room, and I continued on the footpath that works its way around the island.  Quite a beautiful place.  If you look carefully, you’ll notice a name on a cemetery monument of Victor Croucher who died in 1918.  It turns out that is the same little boy pictured between two giant cod fish.  Definitely get the feeling for how small these fishing communities were, how everyone knew everybody (and in many cases were related).  And very often families stayed in the same village their whole lives.  This has been true with many people we have spoken to throughout our trip.  I think it only really started changing since the cod fishing moratorium in 1992. 

On our ferry ride back to Mary’s Harbour we spoke to a woman that lives in Goose Bay so she was able to give us some good tips (as that is our next destination).  As we chatted further, I asked where her male friend was from - Scotland.  That seemed unusual, so I asked how they had met.  He mentioned they were in a race together.  OK.  A sailing boat race.  Oh my.  An around-the-world yacht race for the past 10 months!  Say what?  They were each on different boats — his came in first out of 12!  Well, technically 11, since one boat sank during the race!  Excuse me?  It turns out she's a doctor, and when she wasn’t sailing, she was busy patching up people for various injuries.  That’s nice.  But then there was the one crew member who died!  Died?  How?  Tether broke when he was washed overboard by a large wave and drowned!  These people seemed like the most mild-mannered and quiet couple.  But wow — now that is one challenging adventure!  Here’s a link to the website for their crazy accomplishment:  https://clipperroundtheworld.com  (and you can find a short video in the lower left-hand corner of that page to give you a taste).  As you might have noticed, I was awe-struck. ;-)  

Back on the mainland, as we headed out toward Happy Valley-Goose Bay, we see exactly why Labrador is known as The Big Land.  It’s pretty easy to feel you are in the middle of not just anywhere, but absolutely nowhere!  And we got a good taste of a variety of road conditions on the way to Goose Bay.  Once we got there, we counted our blessings for Tim Horton’s and Subway, and made our way to Birch Island, a local park we would never had found if not for the tip by the yacht-racing couple.  We spent two nights here, because Labor Day closed up most of the shops we needed to visit for re-provisioning.  We took a number of walks along their boardwalk, and saw some beautiful skies, sunsets, and sunrises.  Even noticed a beautiful red fox hanging out on the boardwalk before I spooked him.  

Based on another tip, we headed to North West River to check out what everyone described as a rather small museum, but “really worth visiting”.  We agree!  The building was a former Hudson Bay Company store that is set up similarly to how it would have been in the 1930s.  You can see a few pictures of memorabilia, and yes, cruises to Labrador in 1938-39 were a real thing (I had to look that up, before I believed it).  But the most remarkable part of this museum is an adjoining room with a number of small electric-powered dioramas.  At first I only noticed a couple of them, and thought they might be toys for kids back in the day.  But the lady on staff informed me that a former resident, Elmer Lakata, who married a local girl he met while stationed with USAF here in the 1950s, and is now 82 years old, has been making six of these per year, and delivering them every July, to memorialize the Labrador heritage.  What an amazing feat, each of these so detailed with so many moving parts, and can stand up to kids playing with them all the time.  Truly amazing.  Finally, we visited the Labrador interpretation center, and learned about the different races that have come to live together, inter-marry, and are still all present in the communities today.

Next stop was Churchill Falls, and a tour of what was, until recently, the largest underground hydro-electric generating station in the world.  Alas, for security reasons they would not let me take pictures “underground”, but we got a great overview by our tour guide.  You can see a cut-away of one of the 11 turbine generators, each of which can produce 475 Megawatts, for a grand total of up to 5.5 Gigawatts of energy!  Each rotor is 30 feet in diameter, weighs 600 tons, and spins at 200 RPM!  Can you picture that?  We were lucky on our tour since they were replacing (for the first time ever) one of the (largest ever, single cast) stainless-steel turbines with a new and improved version to reduce cavitation.  As such, the turbine and the rotor were out on the floor and could be seen life-size.  Pretty cool.  The other interesting thing about this hydro-plant is there is no accompanying massive dam; instead, a series of smaller dikes have been built in the reservoir system itself that control the volume of water that is sent to the 11 turbines.  Otherwise, all you really see from above ground are the transmission lines delivering the energy.  As we departed Churchill Falls the next day, we stopped so I could take a hike, and luckily, it turned out to be the hike to the falls.  This used to have a massive flow of water, but now you can see the basin and the falls, and it is still beautiful, but it is a mere trickle of what it used to be.  That said, the water is delivered back into the Churchill River after the falls.  BTW, the glass jar you see in the memento case was the one mentioned in the plaque at Hamilton Falls.  Pretty cool they have notes from visitors dating back to 1891!

 

Last stop in Labrador is a mining town known as Labrador City.  The good news is you really don’t see the mine while driving in the area.  The bad news is there didn’t seem to be much else to see either ;-)  So we stayed in the adjoining town of Wabush and had a somewhat rainy walk around Jean Lake.  Still enjoyable.  Then we headed into Quebec and tried to go to the visitor center in Fermont, but either caught them on their lunch break, or they had closed for the season.  We were wondering why we were seeing a giant dump truck in Quebec rather than Lab-City, until we continued the drive and saw two of the most massive mines we have ever seen.  The tailings go on and on.  That’s what the giant dump truck represents.  Worryingly, I photographed the downstream river and that color is true to what we saw — looked just like the color of sand.  Holy smokes!  What do they mine?  Well, it’s all in the name.  Fermont is a contraction of the French ‘Le Fer' and ‘Mont', for Iron Mountain.  So we had a long stretch of dirt road (in pretty good condition), but heavily travelled by large, fast trucks!  We were happy when we got past a second mine (Fire Lake) which seemed to end the mining activity.  Our final destination was Manic 5, another hydro project (this time via dam), that we were told would be a good tour.  But alas, their season closed for tours at the end of August.

So there you have it, our Newfoundland and Labrador adventure is complete!  But we are still not home, and are not sure how much of Quebec will be worth seeing.  Since none of the signage is in English, and even the Visitor Information people don’t really speak English, it may be a challenge.  So what’s an American to do (who clearly didn’t pay attention in his High School french classes)?  We’ll just follow our noses, and if there are enough photos to share next week, we’ll be sure to send out another e-mail!  Oh, and for the record ... those moose they keep warning us about running into on the road?  Don’t worry about them!  They never showed up ;-)  

Again, here is the link to our Week #7 photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/crisp_travels/albums/72157699489769351

If you ever want to see previous albums, you can go to my album page here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/crisp_travels/albums