Montag, 11. August 2008

Day 2 - Baie Comeau - Labrador City (Labrador)

Distance: 590 km

We started our drive early at around 8 am as we had quite a bit of driving (most on gravel roads) in front of us. Between Baie Comeau and Labrador City there is not much except for wilderness and you pass endless forests. On our way to Labrador City we passed several hydro electric powerplants which were basically the reason for building this road between Baie Comeau and Labrador City. We did a free guided tour of the Daniel-Johnson Dam and of a powerplant called Manic-5. The tour was very interesting, howerver, we had quite a tough job as the tour was in French (but fortunately they had a folder with English translations for us :-)).

The Daniel-Johnson Dam was built back in the 60ies and is really impressive. Believe it or not for building the dam 2.000.000 tons of beton were needed. With this amount of beton one could build a sidewalk from the north to the south pole - isn't this crazy? Back in the 60ies this was the biggest construction project in North America. The water for the powerplant comes from the Manicouagan reservoir which was created by an asteroid more than 200 million years ago.



























































































































After the tour which took as about 2 hrs we headed further north. Along our way we did several stops to take pictures of the remote landscape. Werner had quite a tough job with driving as parts of the road were in pretty bad shape.

After a bit more than half of the overall distance we arrived at Relais St. Gabriel where we made a fuel stop. Avaliable facilities except for the gas station are a resteraunt and a small motel.














The next 200 km there was mostly taiga which is
mainly composed of small black spruces, lichens and mosse.








































After about 550 km of driving we came to
Mount Wright which is well known for its iron ore mining.














Near Mount Wright a small city called Fermont is located, which is basically company-owned and has been built to give home to all the mining workers. Just a couple of kilometers from Fermont is Labrador City also a mining city where we stayed for the night.



























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