Into Labrador!

(posted from Lake Melville Tourism Centre, Goose Bay, Labrador (NL))
(This post covers 17 - 19 September, 2010)

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Sunday, 19 September-

I saw the coldest temperature of the trip last night—31.2 degrees—but it had warmed up to 45 by the time we awoke. After breakfast we resumed our long drive to Happy Valley- Goose Bay. We don’t mind the drive at all given the road and the scenery is all new to us. Also, the road is an engineering marvel. I can’t believe how good the gravel road is. There is no washboard, there are no rocks or mud. There are hardly any pot-holes and what pot-holes we see are only an inch deep. I thought I’d be maxing out my speed at 35 miles per hour but can very comfortably do 45 and keep finding my speed creeping up to 55—a bit much if you get out of the main track and find yourself in ‘the marbles’ and drifting toward an edge. Posted speed limit, by the way is 70 kmph or 42 mph.
We did have one sobering reminder to pay close attention to what we’re doing. About an hour after leaving our overnight spot we came to the scene of a recent accident. A tow truck was in the road and I could see a white Ford pickup with obvious roll-over damage down in the ditch and its load of 2x4 lumber spread about. The wrecker guys were pulling out cable to winch the Ford back onto the road. I asked when the wreck happened and one of the guys said it was last night—and it had been a two-vehicle collision (apparently they had already towed the first car away).
It’s hard to envision how this accident could have happened. You can see a vehicle coming from either its lights (at night) or its lights and its massive dust plume (in daylight). The crash happened on a stretch of road that was straight and smooth for a mile in each direction. Weather was clear.
My theory is that these two drivers saw each other (perhaps only as oncoming headlights) but one or the other got in trouble when he/she turned out of the main track late and at too-high a speed, got into the loose gravel, lost it, and turned sideways into the path of the other vehicle. Then both left the road in the crash.
If the roll hadn’t been caused by the crash itself, leaving the road would definitely do it. The road surface is four to six feet higher than the surrounding roadside so once you leave the road, you’re most likely going to roll and it’s not going to be pretty.
As far as wildlife, we saw only one road-killed fox (red and gray mix), two partridges, a few ravens, one road-killed rabbit, and a few bluebird-size birds which appeared to have the red markings of a woodpecker on the head (are there woodpeckers in a black-spruce forest?). We saw no moose or caribou (though I did see moose tracks on my walk around our campsite last evening).
We made Happy Valley-Goose Bay shortly after 1400. I gassed up and saw my gas mileage on gravel had been just over 14 mpg—good info for the next legs of the journey.
I wanted a milkshake or sundae (to clear the dust, you understand…) but the lady at the gas station said there was no place open on a Sunday to get one. Say what? The only alternative was the A&W, where I could get a root-beer float. That wasn’t a bad alternative--- I’ve not had one in many years--- so Labashi and I had one.
We took a drive by the famous airport at Goose Bay. We couldn’t see much, just the base facilities. The military museum was closed today. But I did enjoy seeing the base. It looked so much like an American military base. The barracks buildings looked like they had been built from the same plans as the ones at Fort Indiantown Gap.
We then drove to the little town of North West in order to see the Labrador Interpretation Centre since it’s open today but not Monday or Tuesday. We had to rush but thought we had it made when we pulled in the parking lot at 1545 and our guide book said it was open until 1630. But the schedule has changed, we were told, and they now close at 1600. We had driven 25 miles to get only 15 minutes in the museum. We took advantage of it, though. As Labashi browsed I did a quick walk-through and found that all the good stuff was in the room she was in so we split up and tried to take in all we could in the short time. And since we’ve seen much of it in other centres, we did okay. The one new thing here (for me, anyway) was a ‘shaking tent’. This was a tent-like structure the Innu shaman would use to talk to the Master (Spirit) of the Fish, the Master of the Game, the Master of Health, and other deities. As the shaman communed with the various Masters, the three-foot-diameter, five-foot-high round tent-like structure would shake, sometimes violently.
The ‘shaking tent’ is held in high regard, even today. The one in the museum was constructed by a shaman. Signs warned us not to take pictures of the tent and a half-section wall tent had been erected to protect it from having its picture accidently taken and to give it the respect and protection it deserves.
After our short visit, we then drove back to Goose Bay and on through to Happy Valley. After our whirlwind tour we had supper at the El Greco Pizza shop, the returned to an overnight parking spot we had seen as we approached town. It’s a small-boat launch ramp beside the Churchill River and gives us a nice view of the bridge and river.
We blogged and read the evening away, interrupted only by a short jaunt up onto the bridge to take pictures of the firey sunset reflected in the river.

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Saturday, 18 September-

This morning the first order of business was showers. Though the Provincial Park’s washroom and showers had been closed down, when I asked about them last evening, the ranger said we could shower in the ranger’s house. Nice!
We then drove to the end of the hard road at Red Bay, where we slowly savored the Red Bay Historical Site. It was at Red Bay where a Basque sailing vessel from the mid-1500’s had been discovered. A researcher had found references to a lost ship--- the San Juan-- in the Spanish archives and this information led a team of Canadian underwater archeologists to search for and locate the vessel, then organize an extensive archeological ‘dig’ on it.
We learned the history of the project from an excellent film at the first of two interpretive centers. That one also has a rebuilt whaling shallop.
The second interpretive center has the artifacts from the project, an excellent model of the oil-rendering facility, a life-size rendering of the below-decks area where the 200-liter barrels were stacked for transport back to Europe, and a perfect 20-to-1 model of the San Juan.
The story on the Basques and whaling is that thousands of men would sail from the Basque homeland (on the border between France and Spain) to Newfoundland and Labrador each Spring, starting in the 1540’s and lasting about 50 years. The men would sail over on ships like the San Juan, which would be anchored in Red Bay. Men would go into the Strait of Belle Isle in the small shallops, from which they’d harpoon a whale and tow it back to the ship. There the work would begin to flense the whale carcass, i.e., to remove the whale blubber. The blubber pieces would then be transported ashore to boiling kettles, massive copper kettles which would reduce the blubber to an oil. Ladles of the oil would be dipped from the kettles into cold fresh water, where the impurities would sink and the purest of the pure whale oil would float on top. That oil would then be ladled into barrels for transport home. Each barrel would be worth something like $6000 in today’s money and a shipload between 3 and 4 million dollars (equivalent).
After our wonderful visit to the whaling centre, we walked next door to the Whaler’s Inn and had fish-and-chips, a bakeapple milkshake, and a piece of partridge-berry pie—all very, very good.
We then turned off the hard road and headed north for Port Hope Simpson. We had been warned that this is the worst section of the Trans-Labrador Highway so we were pleasantly surprised to find it very good road. Apparently the road crew has been working on the road’s problems but the word has not been getting back to the visitor-information people.
We made Port Hope Simpson by 1730 or so and gassed up at the last gas station for 250 miles (gas was $5.08 a gallon). We drove for another hour or so until we found a little dirt road leading off to a small quarry… our home for the night.
As Labashi was making supper I took a walk around and found a lovely view from the hilltop beside us. Shortly after returning to the van, I saw a pickup coming in. I stepped out to talk with the two men and learned they are locals from Charlottetown—about a half-hour’s drive away. One of the men’s father-in-law owns the nearby cabin hidden in the woods we passed on the way into the quarry. They had been passing by on a little evening drive to look for geese (goose season just came in) and noticed us parked back in the quarry and came in to check us out. We had a nice long conversation about hunting and weather (last winter was terrible for snowmobiling—way too much rain, way too little snow).
One of the guys also told me there are wolves in the area. He says a group of berry pickers had been ‘surrounded by wolves’. When I asked for more info he said they had been picking and noticed a wolf on a rise above them. Then they noticed a wolf on another side, and another. When I asked what happened next, he said the wolves backed down.
After supper we watched a bit of the third episode of ‘Random Passage’ but we had had a long day and fell asleep part-way through. We’ll save that for another day…

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Friday, 17 September-

Our parking spot for the night wasn’t very far off the road and we would occasionally hear a car or truck go by, despite how remote the area seemed to us. Nevertheless, we slept quite well.
We woke around 0700 and though we didn’t need to be at the ferry until 0930, we had a quick breakfast and drove to the ferry terminal, hoping our lack of reservations wouldn’t be a problem.
We had no problem getting a ticket and went ahead and though we were still two hours from departure, we went on down to the waiting lanes and parked in line.
After we had waited a while I saw a motorcycle come down to line up and I recognized it as the one I had seen in the parking lot with a Pennsylvania license plate.
I went over and struck up a conversation with the guy and it turned out he was from Pittsburgh. He was riding a BMW 1200 LT, a luxury tourer, and had left home just a week ago. He was going to Labrador to ride to the end of the paved road (at Red Bay), take a picture, then turn for home. We had an interesting conversation and I gave him a brief tour of the van while we waited. That made the time fly by.
After loading Mocha Joe onto the ferry, we went up to the cafeteria and had a hot dog (for some reason Labashi likes a hot dog to start a ferry voyage!), then settled in for our hour-and-a-half crossing from St. Barbe, Newfoundland to Blanc Sablon, Quebec (just south of the Labrador border).
I thought I had heard the winds were supposed to be high today but our crossing was very smooth.
After departing the ferry we started hitting the tourist sites of the Labrador Coastal Drive. We stopped at the pulloff above the ferry area to take pictures of the ferry departing for Newfoundland.
We then visited the earliest known grave-site memorial in North America at L’Anse Amour. The site was the burial place of an aboriginal boy about 12 years old and it’s dated to 7500 years ago (!!!). He was buried face-down with a flat rock on his back and with weapons, food, and other indications of gifts intended to assist him in the afterlife.
We then went to Canada’s tallest lighthouse (and now a provincial historic site) at L’Anse Amour. We almost didn’t go in because we’ve done a few lighthouse tours now on this trip. But the price was reasonable so we decided to go ahead.
This one turned out to be a gem. The lightkeeper’s residence was typical of other lighthouses but the upstairs had an extraordinary display of the historic maps of Labrador. The earliest known map dates to the early 1500’s, when the Basques came for cod and whales during the summer, then returned home for winter.
But the highlight of the visit was the lighthouse itself. It’s constructed of local limestone blocks (walls six feet thick at the bottom, four feet thick at the top), covered by a layer of brick, then, believe it or not, cedar shingles. The lighthouse was first used in the 1850s and at the time didn’t have the cedar shingles. But after a few seasons passed, the mortar in the bricks was deteriorating very quickly—thus the decision to cover it with cedar shakes. The painted shakes also deteriorate, of course, but are relatively easily painted or replaced.
The climb to the light was 136 steps round-and-round but our climb was broken by landings where our guide would pause to tell us more about the lighthouse and the area. Perhaps the most interesting thing we learned was that for years eider ducks would crash through the very small (but ¼-inch thick) windows. The lighthouse was unknowingly placed in the migration path of the eiders and some days a dozen or more would be found on the interior steps of the lighthouse during the migration season (and of course windows would need to be replaced). Something doesn’t sound right about that but our guide then told us of a new telegraph line which had been strung locally and it had the same effect. Migrating ducks would fly into the wire and fall dead below.
We then returned to the main road and continued north, next stopping for the night at Pinware River Provincial Park. We were the only campers in the park and had a beautiful ocean-side campsite all to our own. We had had a windy day but this evening the wind died off and we had a perfect evening.
I walked a bit before supper to explore a bit and then after supper Labashi joined me for a tour of the campground and then a walk to the day-use area and its boardwalk to the mile-long sandy beach.
We started our regular blogging and reading routines but then I noticed the lights coming on in the little fishing village nearby, then the flashing reds and whites of the lighthouses and navigation markers, then the lights of the little villages across the Strait of Belle Isle—in Newfoundland, some nine miles across the strait, in other words.
I dug out our little Kwik Kampfire (sort of a campfire-in-a-can) and our chairs and lit the fire. We sat out for about an hour watching the lights twinkle and listening to the waves washing up onto our beach as the nearly-full moon rose over Newfoundland.
We then retired to Mocha Joe and fell happily asleep.

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