TOWARDS HOME

Woke up this morning it was just 50F, most days we wore sweaters in the morning but it warms to the seventies in the afternoon.

We said goodbye to Lab City and out of Labrador and into Quebec, our first stop was Fremont, a iron ore mining town with about 2600 residents. It too is a company town owned by Quebec Cartier Mining and is completely french. The center of town features a huge building that has shops, school, gym, swimming pool, hotel, restaurants, supermarket and over 500 apartments all under one roof. The building is 1300 metres (1400 yards) long and 16 stories high. It is designed so that no one, except mine workers, needs go outside during the 7+ months of winter. At the edge of town is one of the trucks used to haul ore from the mine, it is nearly 20 feet high and the tires are about 8 feet and are fastened with 56 lug nuts. each truck can carry 170 tons of ore.

Continuing south on Hwy 389, Quebec Hydro has build 5 dams on the Manicouagan River and named them Manic 1-5. Manic 5 is the largest multi arch and buttress dam in the world. It is over 650 feet high and 4200 feet across the top. It is truly an impressive sight.
The road again is gravel and in pretty good shape but the terrain is mountainous with very steep grades as high as 18% with so many sharp curves you can almost see your own tail lights. The towns of Fremont and Lab city are served by trucks from Baie Comeau over this road, the trucks kick up a huge amount of dust on the gravel road so that it is impossible to see for about 8-10 seconds, it is a total dust out, very scary indeed.
Finally at 4:17 we left the gravel behind for good, it was sure nice to have pavement under the tires again, but still lots of twist, turns and hills. At Baie comeau we turned west towards home.