Upcoming trip through Quebec, Labrador, Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick

I'm heading out on a (roughly) 3000 mile two week solo trip through Quebec, Labrador, Quebec (Blanc Sablon), Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in a couple of weeks. (See approximate route in the Google maps image below: outbound light blue, return dark blue.)

If there's an interest, I am totally up for posting images from my travels.

This is a home coming of sorts for me since my original NAS 110 did the route 389 trip from Baie Comeau to Goose Bay back in 1999:


(Back then there was no road from Goose Bay to Blanc Sablon.)

It goes without saying that I'll be a ways outside Ineos's North American dealer network. So if stuff happens, well, it will be interesting. But, and this is what I expect, it will be a grand road trip with some particularly good times in northwestern Newfoundland.

PM sent but sounds like an amazing trip.. send pictures

Yes, please do!

You may want to add the Cabot trail on Cape Breton instead of taking the T-Can and add a stop in St Andrews before crossing back into the US.

St Andrews by the sea

I drove today from Levis (just south of Quebec City) to Baie Comeau. The pictures shown are prior to and on the free ferry across the Saguenay River at Tadoussac. Tomorrow I'm shooting to cover the 587 km between here and Labrador City. I'm hoping there will be more time for pictures since Route 389 is likely to be way less crowded than 138 was today.

When I cross the Straits of Belle Isle early next week I'll have four plus days in (roughly speaking) in L'Anse Aux Meadows and Gros Morne with an over night ferry from Port Aux Basque to North Sydney. I may well visit the Newfoundland coast around St. Andrew's before showing up at the ferry after dinner. Once I'm in Nova Scotia, it's back with one stop for rest. (I've made several trips to Nova Scotia and PEI over the years.)

Today I traveled om 389 from Baie Comeau to Labrador City: roughly 600 kilometers of which about 200 were unpaved. The highlight of the day (not pictured) was a nice French speaking lady at a restaurant and gas station 100 km and 250 km from the two nearest stations (looking south and looking north) who asked me what year my Land Rover was, I tried to explain (and I think I succeeded) that it was one year old, not a Land Rover but a truck made by an English company in France.

Traffic is very light and through tourist traffic almost non-existent, but there are a LOT of semis that have no misgivings about using their throttles: a little unnerving on some of the curvy unpaved portions of the route.

Also, since I just got the software update (24.1) I'll add that I am occasionally getting a previously unfamiliar yellow warning message on my Infotainment screen: "Speed assist limited function". Something tells me this is related to the fact that the truck (incredibly) doesn't seem to recognize kilometers properly, much less let you display your mileage data metrically on the US models.

Thank you for the updates, and photos!

Today (Saturday) I traveled on route 500 from Labrador City to Goose Bay / Happy Valley, by way of Churchill Falls: a big hydro power center en route.

Labrador Ctiy (and neighboring Fremont, QC) are BIG iron towns. And a lot of iron moves down to the St. Lawrence by rail, the QNSL being Rio Tinto's railroad out of Labrador City.

Shortly before I arrived in Goose Bay, a power failure wiped out this entire corner of Labrador including the only three filling stations between Churchill Falls (300 km to west) and Port Hope Simpson (400 km to the south). While this wasn't an immediate problem for me, folks who planned to head out of town this afternoon got caught in something of a bind. The reports I was hearing was that it was a fire either caused by or affecting the hydro transmission lines east of Churchill Falls (see picture of truck standinging in front on the power poles near Route 500).

Then after four hours down, the power came on again only to die again 20 minutes later. It came back an hour or more after that and has stayed up now for over an hour so I went and gassed up since if it were down tomorrow morning, I would be seriously SOL. (No asking about octane grades in this part of the world.)

I took a spin down to the Goose Bay ferry terminal. This was where I departed 26 years ago for Lewisport, Newfoundland on a 30 hour ferry. (And also where I had my first poutine from a tiny shop by the ferry that's still there -- if you don't know what it is, look it up!)

Also: Goose Bay was historically a place for a lot of USAF operations (going back to World War II) which explains one of the accompanying pictures.

Off to Blanc Sablon tomorrow...

Today's 600 kilometer trip from Goose Bay to L'Anse au Clair, Labrador (just ten minutes away from the ferry out of Blanc Sablon, QC to Newfoundland) was relatively uneventful. I typically passed another car or truck every 15 to 20 minures. The vastness of the open space was really quite something. Stopped for a late lunch at Red Harbour on the coast.

Monday saw me getting up at 4:30 a.m. to standby for the 8:00 a.m. ferry from Blanc Sablon to Saint Barbe which (happily) I made. Drove north to St. Anthony (first 91 octane gasoline since Baie Comeau) and uo to L'Anse aux Meadows. I am planning to explore the underpopulated east coast of the northwestern Newfoundland peninsula tomrrow from my position here in Main Brook. (Off roading? This is tricky countryside because the topsoil is thin and there are bogs everywhere.)

I should note that I am now for the first time starting to see the occasional Range Rover or Defender. (NO new Defenders so far.) Incredibly, I saw one new Range Rover in Labrador City with a Newfoundland & Labrador plate. Unless he was on holiday from St. John's, I would like to know how he gets his car serviced. Also saw a G-Wagen with a Newfoundland & Labrador plate in Happy Valley (Goose Bay). Not sure there's a Mercedes dealership anywhere on the Labrador mainland. Once again, maybe a tourist from St. John's.

A few random pics from today's travels.

Tuesday was spent exploring the French shore towns of Croque, St. Juliens, Conche and Englee. Encountered a moose along the way. I also got in a pretty basic trail through the woods to a salmon run. The truck continues to perform nearly flawlessly (although I could have done without the dozen or more times that I had to re-enable AEB when I was in on-road mode -- not much of a safety feature if you have to keep resetting it). Meanwhile the growing build up of dead blackflies on the lower front grill is reaching epic proportions.