Our fellow-Casita-traveler Katherine was able to book onto the same 10:30 ferry to Labrador which we took. She and S kept each other company on the 1 1/2 hour crossing of the Strait of Belle Isle, which started very calm and ended in dense fog with a slight swell which made toddlers revert to crawling. The ferry lands at ______ Blanche, just over the border from Labrador into Quebec. We drove the few K into Labrador and checked into the only RV park in eastern Labrador, to make sure we got a site. After lunch we went to the visitor center and got oriented for our 3 days here. Our plan is to go north to Battle Harbour tomorrow, back down to Red Bay Tuesday, and back for the return ferry on Wednesday.
This afternoon we drove SW along the Quebec coast as far as St. Paul and back. The N side of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec has a coastal road from Montreal as far east as Baie Comeau, but then there is 300 Km of coast serviced only by boats or planes, and then the road we drove today picks up at Vieux Fort, one town beyond where we got, 50 Km to here in Labrador. Today's drive (what we could see of it in the intervals between fog banks) was beautiful but stark. A few fishing villages of 300 people or so, a mostly mountainous coast with either low gorse vegetation or stunted trees. One stretch of dunes and sand beach. We stopped at one village which had a sign for a Fishing Interpretive Center, and were greeted by an old fisherman who told us great stories and a lot about fishing. We were slow to realize he wasn't any kind of guide, he was just an old fisherman who happened to be there. He told us that this year, for the first time in memory, they got none of their beloved Bakeapple berries- apparently too cold and wet.
Back at the campground, the fine ocean view was replaced by a fine misty fog view. Campground quickly filled up with arrivals on a later ferry, but struck up a conversation with fellow in next site who arrived from the other direction. Just in the last year or two the last stretches of the Trans-Labrador Highway have been built, from Quebec through central Labrador to the East Coast, and he had driven it in his truck camper: over 1000 miles of poor gravel road with huge stretches of nothing. Lots of construction continues on the highway, which together with Hydroelectric construction is a boom for employment for young people in the region. Barracks living, no alcohol, no women of good or ill repute, but median income $170,000. Canadian $, but still. He has driven all the way across Canada from the Pacific, and reports that he had the same weather all the way: cold and rainy. His home in famously-rainy Seattle, on the other hand, has had practically no rain for four months. And they are still talking around the Maritimes about record snow and storms last winter. Strange weather.
Have made it to church each Sunday of the trip, but not today. God made Newfoundland, Labrador and the Cote Nord, so he will understand.
The Newfoundland accent is alive and well but some people can turn it on an off. We'll hear two people speaking unintelligibly, but when one of them talks with us they are relatively clear by our standards. Others speak whatever you call our plain English. Others speak their Newfie dialect only and don't understand us well either. Today's fisherman, for example. He and I kept having to repeat ourselves
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