After this we set off to explore Labrador. The Labrador area has two roads, the Trans Labrador Highway that links Labrador City with the coast at Goose Bay, and a coastal road that goes from Cartwright to Vieux Fort in Quebec. The two are only linked by ferry. We were just going to drive the first of these. It links three groups of communities, Labrador City/Wabush, Churchill Falls, and Happy Valley/Goose Bay/North West River/Sheshatsiu. Churchill Falls was only 150 miles away, but the grandly named Trans Labrador Highway is narrow with mostly poor gravel and it was slow going. The land can be summed up as rock, water, and trees. It was very beautiful at this time of year, as the rock is covered with light green moss and white lichen, and the trees and shrubs are red and gold and dark green, a blaze of colours. We'd picked the right time of year I think as it would be very buggy in the summer time with blackfly and mosquitoes.

	QC389 & LAB 500 (10.56)

We enjoyed the scenery: lakes, swamps, and rivers. We saw loons and ptarmigan and osprey, but few mammals other than chipmunks. This is caribou country but not in the summer and fall when they are further north. It is also moose country, but we didn't see any, possibly because Sandie was busy knitting for Joanna and I was busy dodging bomb craters in the road. There were also some pickup trucks cruising slowly past open swampy areas, so we suspect that any moose who come close to the road are quickly harvested.

We almost made it as far as Churchill Falls, but after crossing the river on the single track bridge I spotted a trail leading off the road and up the river. We followed that and came out onto a flat spot above the river, a perfect camping site. Thirty years ago there would have been a mighty river directly below us but the river was diverted to feed the Churchill Falls power station, so now there's a very impressive river bed, full of great rocks and very little water, but still a great spot to camp.

Wednesday September 28th

We had a sunny morning for our drive into Churchill Falls, a neat and tidy place, but very much a company town with its rows of identical houses. We'd been told not to miss the tour of the power station, so we called the number from the hotel and were told we could take the 1.30 pm tour. A single building houses the town's hotel, grocery store, post office, library, and gym, which is a good feature for a place that has 20 feet of snow each year and may hit -50 at times.

Our guide, Vanessa, collected us from the building in a van, and we found out that we were the whole tour, just the two of us. She explained that Churchill Falls is a company town, with the power company itself owned by the Newfoundland and Labrador government. The workers rent houses from the company, get free electricity, and a trip to the "outside" twice a year. They aren't allowed to keep renting the houses though once they retire, which must be tough if your children are also working for the company. Vanessa's husband flies helicopters for the company, and she thought the deal there was pretty good.

There are about 650 people in town, of whom 250 work for the company. She said that as everyone knows everyone else it's like going back 25 years in terms of the neighbourhood and kid safety.

She showed off the power pylons that carry the 735 kilovolt lines south to Quebec, which is their main customer. Quebec Hydro then sells much of the power to the state of New York. Vanessa took us to the power station entrance where we were checked out by security, after which we donned our hard hats and went down the elevator shaft. The elevator display is measured in meters above sea level rather than floors and we went down three hundred, a thousand feet underground.

Back around 1970, the company built a dyke around an existing large lake and converted it into an enormous reservoir, about the size of Wales, and diverted the Churchill River to feed the reservoir. The water then flows down eleven penstocks, giant tubes going a thousand feet underground to eleven turbines, which generate the 500 megawatts of electricity. Each has a transformer which boosts the voltage up to 735 kilovolts. Vanessa took us down to the massive rooms which hold the transformers and the control equipment for the turbines and the gates for their auxiliary reservoirs. These rooms are caves, carved out of the granite rock, 800 feet long and 50 feet high, all about a thousand feet below ground. The water leaves the station and flows back into the Churchill River a few miles below where we'd been camping. It looked like a good set for a James Bond movie. It would, of course, be blown up at the end of the movie.

We thanked Vanessa for the tour, which was free, all paid for by the government, and headed out east again, this time towards Goose Bay. We met a cyclist who was going in the other direction having come in on the ferry from Newfoundland. We'd considered traveling back that way but at this time of the year the ferries only run if they have enough freight traffic to make it worth their while.

2005/09 Labrador trip - Churchill Falls
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