Sunday October 2nd

We met some road construction early on Sunday. In this part of the world they don't waste money on flagmen or traffic lights. Anyone who comes along just has to thread through the mud and construction vehicles and try not to get stuck, or bulldozed, or dumped on. It was a wet and windy drive, but still very scenic with rivers, lakes, and swamps. The trees were mainly golden tamaracks with a bright red undergrowth of blueberry bushes.

We had timed our return trip so that we could be in Labrador City early on Monday morning to fill up with propane, but that morning the propane had come back at full pressure. Very odd, but we were a lot happier! We did some shopping that afternoon in Labrador City, and then looked for a campsite. We found one just outside town at the end of a muddy track overlooking a lake. It was a scruffy spot, probably part of the local summer party scene, and it also overlooked the QNSL railroad track, so it wasn't too peaceful that evening with all the railroad maintenance vehicles coming back. We must have been closer to the iron mine too as we could hear machinery clanking as well as the foghorn noise.

Monday October 3rd

The day started damp and soon became wet. We had a slow start as we expected to have to stay around until 2pm for the library to open and give us access to the Internet. The propane guys had no clue as to why the propane had stopped and then started again. It sounded to them like a regulator freeze-up but it hadn't been cold enough for that. It looked like we'd used about half the tank and everything was now working again.

We went back to the visitor centre to fill up from their water supply and to shop for some souvenirs of Labrador. We also found we could access the Internet there for a small fee. While we were there Sandie asked why the maps of Labrador and Quebec don't match. We'd noticed that Labrador showed part of the border as a straight line along the 52nd Parallel and Quebec showed it as a very wiggly line which looked like it was the watershed boundary for all the rivers flowing south into the St Lawrence. They hand out both maps there and the lady got them out and admitted "Oh, I'd never noticed." We looked it up on the Internet and, sure enough, there was a redrawing of the boundaries back in 1927 which Quebec has never accepted. Nobody lives in that area so it probably won't be settled until one of the provinces wants to use the hydro power in those rivers.Fortified by Tim Horton's chili and donut combo, we set off retracing our steps, west to Fermont and south down the 389 towards Baie Comeau. I wanted to get to a good campsite I'd spotted on our way north. It was on the beach at Lake Manicouagan, the meteor crater. The weather had cleared but the road was just as bad as we remembered until we reached the blacktop just before Gagnon, the disappeared town. From Gagnon it was good fast gravel and the drive became a race against the light through a corridor of reds and golds.

We finally reached the road down to the lake. There were a few trucks with boat trailers there but their owners were out on the lake in their boats, so we had the beach to ourselves, including the site I'd been aiming for. We just had time to set up and watch the sunset fade across the lake.

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