After an almost quiet night at the Pinware Provincial Park overflow area, it was a fine, sunny morning. There were three other RVs camped along the outskirts of the day parking area that serves as overflow overnight parking. We are here because the site we have, Site 15, is small and deep in the trees. The park staff said we can use overflow parking because everything else is full or reserved. This is much superior option. We are parked in the sun next to a grassy dune with a view out to the river behind the spit. While there is no running water here, there are three pit toilets, all quite clean.
There was another Class B RV, a Pleasureway Sprinter van, here yesterday and overnight, but we never saw anyone emerge from it. A travel trailer showed up late in the afternoon and disgorged a pile of wild children. They were followed by a big Class C RV. They all were too large for any of the available campsites. Both had generators, hence the almost quiet night. The Class C only used their loud Onan generator a few times, probably for meals, but the kids' trailer had a portable generator outside that ran from the time they arrived until the time they left this morning. Because we spent so much of the last 10 days or so alone, in the wild, it was a bit of a transition.
When the wind is up, which it has been both afternoons, we are mostly bug free, but when it quiets down the black flies appear. We have been successful at keeping most out of Speedy, particularly using Ellen's invention of using foam tubing in the edges of the windows to seal the screens at night.
We took a relatively short birdwalk up the camp road this morning when it was quiet. Copious applications of DEET mostly kept the bugs at bay. Ellen resorted to her head net at one point. Not a lot of species to be seen and heard, Fox, White-throated and Savannah Sparrows, Robins, Herring Gulls, Cormorants and a Common Loon were all that we recorded.
The park is located on a long spit and after lunch we walked along the riverside beach. It was quite breezy, so bugs were nowhere to be seen. We were going to walk all the way around the point, but the wind was just too strong on the oceanside, blowing sand directly at us. We returned the way we came. About three quarters of the way up the spit, we saw trash barrel and sign in the field. The sign read that upriver from that point it was the Pinware River, a Salmon River, and a fishing license was required. In the other direction, it is considered ocean, so no license is required. It seemed a rather arbitrary boundary.
We returned to Speedy thoroughly windblown and settled in for an afternoon of reading and deciding on what direction the rest of our trip would take. We will probably spend a couple of more days on Labrador, before taking the ferry to Newfoundland. We hope to spend time on the island visiting places we haven't been to before as well as favorites from our other two visits.
Pinware Photos
 |
| Click Photo |
Some Random Notes
Starlink
With some moral trepidation, I bought a Starlink Mini just before we left. The primary justification for it was the lack of communication services on Quebec 389 and the Trans-Labrador Highway, where there is no cell service on most of both roads. Starlink seemed the only reasonable option as satellite phones are significantly more expensive to both buy and use.
It turned of that our concerns were a bit overblown. While there is virtually no traffic between towns, there was always enough that vehicles came by every so often when we were stopped and we didn't choose to go down back roads which were few and mostly led to high-power transmission lines.
On the other hand, Starlink is ubiquitous up here. Many of the pickup trucks that we saw have them roof-mounted and just about any building outside a town had one on it. On Quebec 389, there were a series of SOS phone stops that were connected via Starlink and even offered free WiFi while you parked there. We were planing to overnight at one the parking areas with an SOS phone south of Mont Wright, but were driven out by all the 18-wheelers pulling in for the night, probably because of the free Wifi.
While we haven't needed the Starlink for emergency communication, it has been very useful for access to weather forecasts and finding local spots. Ellen even used it today to make a phone call to her brother and I've been using it to post to the Speedy Journal.
We pay for it by the month so might as well use it.
What Highway?
There seems to some confusion about highway nomenclature for our route at least in my mind. Exactly what is the Trans-Labrador?
First, there is Expedition 51°. This seems to be the official promotion of the route between Baie-Comeau on the Quebec Côte-Nord to Blanc-Sablon just over the Labrador border where the ferry leaves for Newfoundland. This route is over Quebec 389 (with its gravel sections) to Labrador 500 (which runs from the Labrador border near Labrador City to Happy Valley - Goose Bay) to Labrador 510 (which starts just before Happy Valley at Cartwright Junction and goes to the Labrador border with Quebec just before Blanc Sablon) which becomes the eastern section of Quebec 123) and terminates at the ferry.
Then there is the Labrador Coastal Drive. It is what the province has named Route 510 from where it starts outside of Happy Valley to the end just before Blanc-Sablon. It is somewhat of a misnomer as the first 400 kilometers is nowhere near the coast.
Finally, there is the Trans-Labrador Highway. It was originally Route 500, the road from Labrador City to Happy Valley. I have been using this definition, But, when they built the section of Route 510 from Happy Valley to Red Bay which opened in 2010, it finally opened a road connection all the way to Blanc-Sablon. Route 510 seems to be both the Labrador Coastal Drive and part of the Trans-Labrador Highway.
But I'm sticking to the old definition.
Tomorrow we expect to continue a short way south, probably to the Point Amour lighthouse where we can park for the night and do some seawatching from the top of the cliff there. We have been there before, almost exactly seven years ago, but didn't stay (Speedy Journal 7/14/2018 Photos). They have since paved and enlarged the parking area and we are not in such a rush this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment