Today summed up: snow, $1.39 gas, and sex motels

Dusk falls on the Saguenay River

Day 21: Labrador City ~ Quebec (1019km)

It got chilly last night in Labrador City - down to about 3C, but not enough to get us the forecasted flurries. We got on the road fairly early, around 9AM, knowing that we had a lot of driving to do, some of it on pretty rough road.

Labrador City sits only about 10km from the Quebec border, where the Trans-Labrador Highway changes into Route 389 that heads all the way down to Baie Comeau on the shores of the St. Lawrence. Being in Quebec doesn't mean that the road is any better. In fact, the first stretch of about 80km of gravel road from Labrador City is the worst that we've faced all trip. The road is narrow and up and down and twisting virtually the whole way, keeping you from going fast anywhere on the route. It didn't take us long to find the previous night's forecasted flurries, as we ran into a little snowstorm in 0.5C weather for about 10 minutes along the way. Now I can say that we've really seen it all, weather-wise, on this trip, from sun and 25C weather to gale-force winds to snow.

The road later turns into pavement at the Fire Lake mine site, from where you get just over 100km of paved, unpatrolled, empty highway that allows you to make up for lost time. The pavement ends again just after you pass through the former site of the town of Gagnon. Gagnon was either a mining or logging town that saw the end of industry work in the area, so the entire town was completely dismantled and no trace left, aside from the main road sporting curbs and sewer grates. The rest has been reclaimed by nature. After the pavement ended, we drove for another 100km or so on gravel before stopping at the only gas stand and restaurant on the route. It truly is in the middle of nowhere, which is why we ended up paying $1.39 a litre for regular gasoline. The lunch was good, however, and not too expensive.

Another 60 or 70 kilometres later paved roads reappeared for good as we came upon Manic 5, a hydro-electric dam of massive proportions and just one of five (the others down river are smaller) that Hydro Quebec has operating on the Manicougan River. After that, about 220km of winding but paved up and downs got us to Baie Comeau, where gas was a wondrously cheap (at least to us) 88 cents.

The drive along the St. Lawrence River from Baie Comeau to Quebec, where we find ourselves tonight, was pretty but rather uneventful, save for the brief and picturesque crossing of the Saguenay River on a (free) ferry. Enroute we booked a motel here in Quebec City, simply to grab some sleep before getting up tomorrow and doing the drive home. Our motel is nice, but we've since begun to doubt the neighbourhood it's in, as the street is lined with motels on both sides, all of which advertise hot tubs and adult videos on their signboards outside, with some even offering mirrored rooms.

Anyway, that's it for today. There's not much material to work with on driving days.