Oh Canada! June 5th - Happy Valley-Goose Bay to Cartwright, Labrador

Day 8 Tuesday, June 5^th – Cartwright

In the morning, before leaving Happy Valley-Goose Bay, we visited Dorothy’s Crafts & Sewing where we bought Labradorite jewelry.  Chris was very happy to have finally found some.  It was ‘on list’.  And Dorothy told us these pieces were made by a local fellow in his 80’s.  That made it even nicer.

We also found a liquor store and got some spirited Labrador items made from iceberg water - a fun way to capitalize on your local resources.

And we patronized the local post office.  I just had to send some cards that would have a postmark from Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

As we left town we were now on the stretch of the Trans-Labrador Hwy called the Coastal Drive, but it didn’t seem very coastal till the end of the day when we reached Cartwright.

We crossed over a river that had such a strong current under the bridge we stopped to check it out.  John saw actual whirlpools being formed – dissipating – then reforming.  It looked both fascinating and treacherous – which I’m sure it was.  I’m not positive the name of the river, but it may have been the Minonipi River (we crossed soooo many rivers in Labrador – some named, many unnamed).  It flows into the Goose Bay right outside the town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

And speaking of bridges, most of them were marked with a date at the abutments.  It was interesting to see just how new this stretch of road is.  It wasn’t that many years ago that the parts of Labrador we were driving through were not accessible by road at all.

This bridge, dated 2006, is at the edge of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, headed East.

This bridge is only about 1 hour further down the road between Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Cartwright, so the road probably only went as far as HV-GB until the last couple of years when they expanded it to Cartwright.

When we stopped for lunch today, beside an unusually accessible lake, we had a guest.  A gull, who must have known that cars = potential food, was hanging around outside the Highlander waiting to see what might be ejected from the windows.  We don’t normally like to feed wildlife, but we did throw the fellow a few bits of bread so that we could have the pleasure of watching him eat it.  I must say, he was a pretty large specimen of gull.  But then everything in Labrador is large.  Must be why they call it The Big Land.

It was pretty chilly today, and we were glad we had our warm clothes on.  It’s a taste of what we’d experience in Cartwright which is influenced by the cold Labrador current.  There were still pockets of snow in the woods.

We took our usual amount of time on the road, poking along at about 45 mph and stopping frequently for photos, piddles and closer looks at rock...

and more rock...

and yet more rock.

The terrain was different – high wide plateaus with not as much water as we’d seen so far on the trip.  

And we started to see cairns built on the tops of the roadside rock cuts.  The number of cairns increased the farther east we drove.

BEAR!  We saw our first bear today but he didn’t hang around long enough for us to get a very good picture of him.

Can you find the bear in this picture?

We arrived in Cartwright about 6:00...

...just in time for a really good dinner at the Cartwright Hotel.  The hotel was modest but clean, and the food was very good.  Chris ordered cod tongues – one of the regional delicacies she’d wanted to try during the trip.  They were deep fried, and actually were pretty darned good.

About cod tongue:

Cod tongues are not actually tongues, but a small muscle from the back of the neck.  Way back when Cod was king in these parts, the ‘tongue’ was discarded along with the rest of the head after the more desirable parts of the cod had been harvested.  In those days, children would gather them up fresh from the scrap heaps and either sell them for candy and matinee money, or they’d take them home to supplement the family’s dinner.  Now that the mighty Cod has been decimated by over fishing, tongues are harder to come by.  And because of that they have gained a wider following and are more sought after, as with anything that is considered scarce and desirable.  

Here is a recipe for Fried Cod Tongue if you are lucky enough to find any to cook in the first place:

2 lbs. cod tongues, fresh or frozen

1/2 C flour

1 - 1 1/2 tsp salt

1/8 - 1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 - 1/2 lb salt pork

Carefully wash cod tongues and dry with paper towel.  Allow 6-8 tongues per person.  Put flour, salt and pepper into a plastic bag, add tongues and shake until evenly coated.  

Cut up salt pork into small pieces and fry until fat is rendered out and the pork 'scrunchions' are crisp and brown.  

Remove scrunchions.

Fry tongues over medium heat until browned and crisp on both sides.

Serve with potatoes and peas. 

When we first got to the hotel, the lady in charge became a bit verklempt. Yes, she had our 2 night reservation.  But she had forgotten about that when one of her guests extended his stay, and he was in the room we were to have.

Seems this customer is a sea plane pilot, and he needed to extend his stay at the hotel because the ice had not left the bay sufficiently for him to take off in his sea plane.  So he had to stay till the ice moved out to sea.

All was resolved when she gave him the boot to another room, and by the time we finished dinner, our room was ready for us.

While eating dinner, we chatted with a couple of fellows, and they invited us to drop into one of their rooms later for a nightcap. 

After a full day on the road, we weren’t really in the mood for socializing, but felt we needed to at least stop for a minute or two.  It was a very small hotel with only a few folks staying there, so our presence would be missed.  We stopped in and had a drink with them while they watched some of the queen’s diamond jubilee festivities on TV in the background.

Back in our room afterward, ready to settle in for the night, we started to hear a guitar being played and people singing.  We decided this was an opportunity we shouldn’t pass up, so we got up again and joined them and some additional friends of theirs for an hour or so of singing, visiting and generally having a good time.  John took a turn on the guitar himself, something he hadn’t done for years.  We are so glad we took advantage of the opportunity.

These fellows all work for Hydro Quebec, which is owned by Nalcor (remember Nalcor?  They own Churchill Falls?), if I get my corporate hierarchy right.  Anyway, many of these remote towns don't have direct electrical lines running to them.  Instead, each town's electricity is supplied by a diesel powered generating station.  These guys travel the circuit and service/maintain the generating stations.

Which reminds me of another interesting thing we noticed - that being above ground gasoline tanks.  Pretty darned big above ground gasoline tanks.  I don't know if they do it that way because it's too hard to drill through rock, or because it's too prone to ice damage in the winter, or what.  But we saw many of these above ground tanks along our travels in Labrador.

Point of interest:
Wherever we've stayed so far, even in this far outpost, we've had access to high speed wireless internet.  

There has been, however, no cell phone service along the entire route. 

The literature describing the highway make that point over and over - 
- There IS no cell phone service along the Trans-Labrador Highway.
- There is NO cell phone service along the Trans-Labrador Highway.
- There IS NO cell phone service along the Trans-Labrador Highway!

They do, however, have satellite phones you can check out to take with you on your drive across Labrador.  It is pre-programmed to one, and only one number - the police - in case of an emergency.  

So we availed ourselves of that satellite phone on the journey.  There is no cost, but you do need to check it out, and if you don't return it, expect a $1,400 charge on your credit card bill.