LABRADOR

The ferry runs from St. Barbe NFLD to Blanc Salbon Quebec, you exit the ferry, turn right and within a few minutes you are in Labrador. Labrador is called the big land, everything here is big, the sky, the water, the size, the amount of snow and the size and number of mosquitoes and black flies. We will return home with scars.
It was quite foggy so unable to see much for a while, just stopped at a few villages before we got to Red Bay. Red Bay is the place where Basque whalers came during the 16th century for whale oil. Records in Spain tell of a ship that sunk in a storm in 1645, and archaeologist found it in 1992 in fairly good condition and they were able to built an exact replica .The site also revealed graves, buildings and equipment left behind.
Red Bay is also the end of the paved road in Labrador, we now face 1200 km(800miles) of gravel road in unknown condition. This road runs over mountains. through valleys, across rivers, and over bogs, muskeg, and swamp.
The first leg is from Red Bay to Port Hope-Simpson, road in pretty good condition, drove about 70kph (45mph). Along the way we see hundreds of lakes, streams and rivers, the countryside is dotted with black spruce and lots of short bush, lots of grass and rocks. As we go north we go closer to the Mealy mountains.
Port Hope-Simpson is at the edge of the frontier. Here you are given a satellite phone to carry the next 1000 kms in case of emergency, there are very few other as venturesome as we, you can go for a hour or so and see no one else. The next town(and gas station) is 542 kms (393mi) so you fill up with gas at $1.284 a litre, check the oil and the tires and off you go.
For about 250 kms the road was not too bad, there was more bog land and it got more hilly as we went along. We stopped for the night at one of the site that the road construction and maintenance crew used. They find a spot near a lake(not hard to do) put in a septic system, a generator for power and set up camp. The workers live in trailers on site and work on the roads 7 days a week. These site are about every 40-50 kms alone the road. This site was not in use now but will be used later for a maintenance crew. There was a travel trailer there and the guy was a Newfi who had lived in Ottawa for a number of years and was now back home.

A short lesson on road building in Labrador. They cut down the trees, blast the rock from the hills to fill the low spots, then they dig out gravel from wherever they can and dump in on top, level it out, all done.

Heading out again in the morning we soon got to a stretch that was still under construction. We were over two hours going the next 30 kms, there were boulders on the road nearly 2 feet in diameter, there was some of the rock they had blasted that the sharp edges were protruding up 3-4 inches, there were places that were not much more than a car width wide, there are no guard rails and in places the drop off was 50 feet. You also had to dodge all the heavy equipment and men at work.
Not our best day for sure, but we did finally make Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
We looked around town and went to the air force base, filled up our tanks and made the turn west towards Churchill Falls 288kms(178mi) in a heavy downpour.
This part the country in much more bog and the road is older with not as much rock, so when you have heavy rain on loose sandy gravel with soft bog underneath the sand tends to wash away into the bog and you are left with the biggest potholes we have every seen, I mean 5-6 ft big 6-8 inches deep or more and the rocks sticking up everywhere. Now add to that the transport trucks that are driving waaaaay to fast, wet brakes from all the rain filled holes and that was our Sunday afternoon drive.