Mile 7312

 Today we leave Newfoundland, and it couldn't say nicer goodbye than with a morning sunshine, a moose at the roadside, and some icebergs along our way to St. Barbe, NL.  We arrive early at the ferry terminal, and the weather has changed to some fog which only becomes more dense as we cross the Strait of Belle Isle to Blanc Sablon, QC.  Here we enter Hwy-510 or the Trans Labrador Highway or TLH in short, and drive North.  In L'Anse au Clair we stop at the Northern Light hotel for our satellite phone to give us coverage in the TLH, but they only have one defect one left for us, and this doesn't do us any good.  We get referred to Red Bay, NL to try there again.  We visit the RedBay National Historic Site & World Heritage Site, not because of its historical significance, but for a phone.  But they don't have any, and so we stick with the history and decide because of the volume of traffic on the TLH we most probably are good without one.  We quickly secure a pillow for the night, and continue our way.  The weather has changed tremendously and we have gone from dense, dense fog at Blanc Sablon to cloudy with some blue skies in-between, to gray skies close to snowing, and back to cloudy.  And temperatures moved from 44F to 72F and finally settled at 66F here at Port Hope Simpson, NL.  The landscape is completely different to Newfoundland, and we both see similarities to the Abruzzo Alps or the Spanish Bask Land close to the Portuguese border.

Leaving St. Barbe, NL, arriving Blanc Sablon, QC

One of the many in the Strait of Belle Isle

Tender Sir William Alexander in the ST. Lawrence Gulf, Growler near Forteau, NL

Landscape along the TLH

Pinware River at TLH crossing and further upstream

Some lakes are still frozen here

"Places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.  We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.  For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."  - Mark Kenyon, from the book 'That Wild Country: An Epic Journey into the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands'; original quote by American writer Wallace Stegner from his 'Wilderness Letter" to the US Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission December 1960