After a stop in Baie-Comeau to stock up with a bit more food and to fill Speedy, we were on our way up Quebec 389 and on the way to Labrador.
The first part of the road was paved an in great shape as we made our way to Manic-5, a very large dam run by Hydro-Quebec. Has a visitor center and tours but it is all in French, we left is out. It also has a gas station, so we topped up. Meanwhile, it began to rain. We stopped in a nearby parking lot to have lunch and hopefully wait out the shower. It let up a bit which was good since the next 104 kilometers were gravel.
The rain did eventually stop and it became partly cloudy again. The gravel section was mostly okay, not too much washboard road, but at a maximum of 70km/hr it took us quite while to reach Relais Gabriel where we topped up Speedy again as the next station was in Fermont, about 250 km away. At that point, the road turned back into pavement ans it was smooth going for the next 170 km.
As we continued on the paved section we started looking for places to stop, but couldn’t quite find the right one. Next thing you know we were at Fire Lake; it was raining again and the road turned back to gravel.This time it a bad washboarded road.
The environment changed significantly all the way along the road. It was initially a thick boreal forest with mostly evergreens and brich. This gave way to a much scrubbier open forest of mostly conifers. That part also hada fair number of burned over sections. When we got to Fire Lake, it became pretty disturbed as we now the the presence of huge mines.
We finally stopped at a truck parking area about halhway between Fire Lake and Fermont, having gone as least twice the distance we expected. The rain stopped, we made dinner and didn’t even get out of Speey as we could see the clouds of bug outside trying to get in.
Ellen has some photos along the road, including a couple of the dirt and dust encrusted Speedy aftr the first section of gravel road. Hopefully, we will post a few in a couple of days.
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