Silver Moose vs. TLH: Round 2

A scene repeated many times today on the TLH

Day 20: Happy Valley - Goose Bay ~ Labrador City (589km)

She got in a dust up today, the Silver Moose she did. But I believe, when the dust settled (on the car), the Silver Moose came out on top. Today Andrew and I took on the meaty chunk of the Trans-Labrador Highway, from Happy Valley - Goose Bay (HVGB) in the east to Labrador City in the west. A total of about 520 kilometres of gravel from one end to the other with only one tiny town along the entire route, Churchill Falls, right in the middle.

Around 7:30AM this morning, our overnight ferry cut through the glassy waters of lake Melville, docking at Goose Bay just a few minutes later and disgorging about 60 cars and trucks into the tiny town, most of which sped directly for the TLH and Churchill Falls or Labrador City beyond. Not wanting to get caught in the mess of gravel-spewing traffic and also desperately wanting a non-ferry breakfast, we hung around town until the BK opened at 9AM. While waiting we toured the two slightly separate but amalgamated towns, Goose Bay being almost entirely military, and neighbouring civilian Happy Valley. The former had A&W, Subway and KFC, while the latter had the BK. On our mini driving tour of CFB Goose Bay, we noted the extensive barracks and operational facilites for the German armed forces, and despite my shouts of "Guten Morgen, wachen Sie auf!" we saw no one out and about that early on a Sunday morning.

Breakfast quickly downed, we were on the road by 9:30. Although a little narrower in places and with some slightly tighter corners, this section of the TLH was also in really good shape and we had a far more pleasant drive than we were expecting. Entering onto the roadway from HVGB, a sign warns you to check your fuel, as there are no services for 294km. That includes gas and food and even cell phone reception! We saw a more treed landscape than yesterday, a good mix of dark green conifers and what looked to be birch, leaves already turned bright yellow. Every now and then there'd be a cabin with some hardy soul living in the middle of nowhere with a wood stove, a generator, and of course, a satellite dish pointed upwards.

Once again, traffic was light, and thankfully so, since passing vehicles kick up such a cloud of dust that you almost have to stop and wait for the cloud to clear before you can see the road again and proceed safely. This is especially the case with trucks. They start as a white cloud or line of cloud among the trees off in the distance which you can see coming from a couple of kilometres away. As they round the last bend or come over the top of the last hill separating you from them, it looks as if a tornado is chasing the truck as it hurtles in your direction - a menacing little sight, as if the gravel-spitting truck weren't enough. Then the truck passes with a whoosh of white smoke, blocking out the sky and everything in front of the windshield for 5 or 10 seconds and you let out a sigh of relief and uncross your fingers if you don't have a new chip in your windshield, or else let out a terse "shit" if you do. All in all, we repeated this process about 20 times today, thankfully with no new windshield chips.

We stopped just after midday in Churchill falls, entirely a company town dedicated to the operation of the Churchill Falls hydro-electric facility there. It's the largest underground electrical generating station in the world, producing 5500 megawatts, and has a staff of about 250, who with their spouses and families make up the roughly 650 people in the town. The residents have heavily subsizied rental homes, free electricty (they work for a power company, after all - no meters on the homes!), and receive $4400 per person per household per year in vacation allowance. All this in addition to free access to the sports and health facilities in the centralized town building. You still couldn't get me to live up there though. The black flies and mosquitoes alone keep everyone indoors during the spring and summer months, while temperatures as low as -40C greet them in the winter. Sounds great.

The tour and a quick lunch completed, we knocked off the second half of the drive in just under 3 hours, arriving in "booming" Lab City (as we were told last night by the local girl on the ferry) around 6:30PM. There doesn't seem to be much going on here, but there is a Tim Horton's, a McDonald's and a Walmart, so I guess it qualifies as a town, although I'd say the "city" part is in name only.

There won't be much more than driving left after tonight's stay. We're almost 2000km away from Toronto and have two days to drive it. The forecast tonight is for flurries and a low of -1C.

Thank goodness it's all southbound from here.