More Newfoundland

The next day was beautiful--sunny and hot. We stopped off at Arches National Park:

There was a large line up of tourists from a tour bus at the bathrooms, and they entertained me with their lively chatter about how uncomfortable they were with having to use an outhouse. It was a flush toilet, but no sink. Thank goodness it wasn't a pit toilet! It's always interesting to me to see people's levels of comfort/discomfort when out of their comfort zones. They were a nice group of ladies and I'm sure they enjoyed their trip despite the lack of amenities.

We pulled over at one point because Luke had spotted a couple of whales in the distance.

Whale Tail

My first time seeing whales! And then, behind us:

Moose

A family from Timmins pulled over as well, and we had a nice chat with them. They had taken the ferry to Labrador, since they heard that was the best place to see whales, but only spent a day because the bugs were so bad. It's not just us! They had a drone to take videos and were just about to launch it towards the whales when we drove off.

We did a few chores and I bought some beer at the gas station--the cashier referred to it as wobbly pop! I love the people in Newfoundland.

We then headed out east, towards St.John's.

Newfoundland

We didn't have a reservation for the ferry from Blanc Sablon QC to St.Barbe NL, but we luckily managed to get on and got one of the last spots. No motion sickness. Less than two hours. It was good.

I love Newfoundland. First off, the bugs are noticeably better than in Labrador. Not sure why the short distance across the sea makes a difference, but it does. We drove north to St.Anthony's and Luke took me for taters at Mary Brown's...a Newfoundland must! That are pretty fantastic. There was also a very friendly journalist that we met, who told us to go check out the icebergs. So we did. There was a particularly large, nice one right next to the look-out that was built to view the icebergs as they come into the harbour.

This particular iceberg made the CBC news, as a video of it breaking later on that evening:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/iceberg-video-stanthony-newfoundland-labrador-breakup-1.3672511

We then headed to L'Anse aux Meadow, where there is an ancient Viking settlement from about a thousand years ago. Technically it's a Norse settlement, since 'viking' is reserved for when they were pillaging and raping, and this was a peaceful settlement. Nothing is left (that hasn't been taken by archeologists) except the indentations of where the buildings were in the ground. The buildings were very, very small and the biggest building was for the most important resident, Leif Erickson.

Depressions in the land where the buildings stood

The settlement had about 60 people living there and they suspect they did ship repair there, as well as taking resources from the land back to Greenland. They did have a recreation of the village just beside where the actual village was. The building walls were made out of peat! It kept them cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Peat House

Inside, they had items they would have used on display. There were very few women at the settlement, and the ones that were there were the wives of the important men. They had sheep and spun wool and knit and did weaving. I would have fit right in!

Spindles and wool

A Loom

More wooly goodness

While we were getting the tour with the tour guide, a moose and her calf appeared in the distance. According to the guide, that moose has had several offspring in the area. It was an eventful first day in Newfoundland!

More Labrador

One thing that surprised me about traveling the trans-Labrador was how few animals we saw. Aside from one beautiful red fox, we only saw a handful of song birds and some ravens. Since there is so much unadulterated forest, I'm hoping that means that all the bears and moose and everyone else are frolicking happily somewhere besides close to the road. However, the same could be said for the most northern part of BC and we saw piles of wildlife there.

We stopped briefly in Churchill Falls in the morning. All the houses look the same, the only variation being the kind and colour of truck in the driveway. At 8:30am the town was practically dead. Except for the occasional pick-up truck and small handful of pedestrians there was no sign of anyone at all. There is a large school with play grounds, a park and lots of bikes and toys in people's yards, so I found it rather confusing. It was a sunny, warm morning--where was everyone??  It is obviously a town with lots of families. We made breakfast in a parking lot next to the park, while I felt a bit creeped out at the silence. Then we went to the gas station and were immediately swarmed by black flies. So, even though there are clearly pockets of bug-free areas like our breakfast spot, it seems likely that everyone (not working at the hydro station) hides in their homes from the bugs in the morning.

We continued on driving and eventually made it to Happy Valley-Goose Bay.  It was much more interesting--cute homes, a nice new info centre, some arts and culture. Something very nice that I noticed all through our trip was that people are generally not on their cell phones. In such rural, small town places there probably isn't much need for it...regardless it was so so nice to see people not having their heads buried in their phones, oblivious to the world. I think we actually stood out, since we would have our laptops out in the coffee shop to use the internet while everyone else around us was socializing.

boat on the water in Goose Bay

We eventually continued onto the last stretch of the highway--it is the newest part of the highway that was completed in 2002, connecting the entire route. It was the worst stretch of the route too, with many many potholes, and seemed to be the busiest.

We had another terrible night of mosquitoes, even though we blocked all the gaps and vents. Then we had to hide from the bugs in the van for breakfast...which turned the van into a sauna. At least we have the luxury of doing that now that we have room and a little kitchenette!

At this point, having been mostly in the middle of nowhere for about a week, Luke was starting to develop a beard and insisted on referring to the province as "La-beard-or".

The road was so bumpy, our new bike rack was starting to regularly come loose. Luke also had his pivot bolt on his bike almost completely unscrew itself and his dropper post was starting to rise.

Finally, we made it to the coast and Red Bay. Such a beautiful landscape!

Red Bay, Labrador, with iceberg in the background

Whaling Station, Red Bay

We ended the day in L'anse de Claire, QC, where we found a windy, bugless place to sleep at the top of a hill. We had iceberg neighbours!

the rest of Northern Quebec and Labrador

Our next mini-stop on the road was a place called Ancienne Ville de Gagnon, which no longer exists but used to be a mining town in the 1950s. The only indication there was anything there was the forest looking disturbed (trees and shrubs smaller than the surrounding forest), a couple of manholes, and some small piles of rubble.

It's amazing to think that there used to be 1500 people living here. There wasn't a road at the time, so train was the only way to get there. In 1985 the town closed and it was bull dosed and buried. Then two years later the road, highway 389, was completed and went right through the middle of the town that no longers exists.

There are actual towns along the highway, but there are no more than a handful of portable-looking buildings in a small clump. Some have a gas station, but most do not.

At one point there was a transport that had stopped to rest on the side of the road, by a pretty river. The truck was transporting timber for my home town of Thunder Bay, so I had to take a photo:

Next we passed Fire Lake QC, and there was a fairly big open-pit mine. The water in the lake and streams surrounding the mine was bright red/orange--it's an iron mine, but since I know little about such things I'm not sure if that's normal or healthy.

A bit further down the road is a much larger iron mine, Mont-Wright.

I recently read that there is a surplus of iron in the world right now, so they anticipate the mine will be slowing down. Just north of the mine is Fermont, the last town before Labrador. They have a huge work truck on display as you enter:

Standing next to it, I'm half the height of the wheel!

As you can see from the photos, the weather was beautiful the whole time--sunny and warm. It continued to be that way the whole rest of the way on the highway.

Just a few more minutes on the highway got us to Labrador and Labrador City.  It actually was a bit uninteresting. They did have a nice Tim Hortons with wifi though! (we didn't have any coffee there though, so rest assured our coffee-snobbery is still going strong)

So, before we left for our trip I bought a bug jacket since I had heard about how bad the bugs are in the summer.  All through Quebec though we didn't have any problems with bugs at all, so I was starting to think I bought it for nothing....then we entered Labrador.

I don't understand why the difference in bugs between northern Quebec and Labrador would be so profound, but was it ever. Even though we were closed up in the van to sleep, we swatted mosquitos non-stop, all night. We smushed hundreds of mosquitos. Of course they have to come buzzing around your head as you're trying to sleep, and as soon as you'd get it another one would be there almost instantly.
After two nights of this, we clued in that we had to be much fussier about where we stopped for the night. As long as we could find a breezy enough place we were fine, so we became pretty good at hunting those places down.

During the day, it was the black flies that were swarming. However, for some strange reason they weren't really biting very much...so I didn't have to resort to killing them mercilessly. There were some monstrously big horseflies though.

Trans-Labrador Highway

Before I forget (again), Luke has is own blog now too:
blog.photonstudio.net
If you're looking for more photos, less chit-chat, that's the place to go!

The trans-Labrador was generally much better than I expected. The roads were pretty decent, except for a couple of stretches that had lots of potholes and loose gravel. There was much more traffic too. There was at least a dozen vehicles a day, sometimes quite a bit more...I was prepared to not see anyone at all. We didn't bother picking up one of the complimentary SAT phones to take for the ride and I don't think we would have needed it if we had problems. I'm sure it's different when it isn't summer though.

The Quebec portion was very nice. Beautiful forests and not too many bugs. We stopped briefly at Manic-2, the smaller of the Manic hydro stations. Twice the amount of water of Niagara Falls comes out of its spillway!

There is also Manic-5, which is enormous! We sadly just missed the last tour of the day, but it was worth just driving past it.

It's hard to appreciate how large it is from this picture, but it's 700 feet tall.
View from the top:

Manic-5 is at the southern tip of the river that comes down from Lac Manicouagan, where a 5km asteroid hit over 200 million years ago. Here's an overhead image of it, from wikipedia:

There's a hike at Mt.Groulx, where you can get a view the crater. We learned about it too late to do the hike, but next time!
I did take a photo of the edge of it though:

There are some beautiful rocks in the area--maybe formed from the impact of the asteroid? Anyway, here's a shiny example:

And here the sunset from our first night:

That was the first day on the highway. More to come!

Finally, back in the travel saddle!

It was a long hiatus from traveling--about 9 months. It was good in that it recharged our OHIP requirements, and we were around for some family medical issues (which all turned out well in the end, thank goodness).
But now we're back on the road, this time traveling east. I've never been east of Quebec City (in Canada anyways), so I'm particularly excited to see this part of Canada!

We started out by going to Collingwood for a couple of days. We did a bike ride at Three Stage and had a very successful first night in the new traveling van! It is very comfortable and we're really appreciating the extra room. Plus, we camped in a field full of fire flies--so pretty!

The big highlight of Collingwood was seeing a WOLF! At first we thought it was a coy wolf, but it was awfully big and wolf-like...and after searching on the internets we figured out it was an actual wolf. It was fast and lithe, and ran through someone's back yard (in the mountains, in a forested area...but still). I wish we could of caught it and kept it as our trail dog/wolf ;)

We then headed to Toronto for a visit with friends. Friends who make us Eggs Florentine. Aww yeah.

Next we went to Ottawa to visit family. Ottawa was surprisingly warm and I finally got to swim in my brother's new pool. We discovered that someone else enjoys their pool as well--we witnessed a chipmunk diving into the pool and doing a partial lap before my brother scooped it out. They have a pad that floats at the side of the pool so that animals that fall in can get back out, and it was clear this chipmunk had done this before.

There is a horse stable close to their house, so we went to see the horses and saw three foxes in the field as well! A mom with two cubs. The cubs tumbled around, playing, while the mom came a bit closer to check us out before deciding we were harmless...or boring.

We also saw a terrible house fire, with dark smoke billowing into the sky. It was the second fire in that neighbourhood this month. With the first house, the fire razed the house to the ground. Crazy.

We went to Stella Luna for gelato as a treat too. They recently won third place in some important gelato competition for their "rick chocolate, KOVAL single-barrel organic bourbon, ganache swirl and maple-candied pecans" flavour. It was delicious! It was a great visit to Ottawa overall.

We then started making our way out east. The drive along the north shore of Quebec and the St.Lawrence was particularly beautiful and I loved the fjords at the mouth of the Saguenay river.

We finally made it to Baie Comeau (it smelled *amazing*, like sweet pine) and the start of the trans-Labrador highway!