This, the longest section of the Labrador Highway with gravel, is also the one with no services. Nothing. Not even a sandwich. It starts off easy, with 100km of pavement, then shifts to gravel of varying densities, always smooth. When I travelled it was wet, so there was little dust. And the temperature never climbed above 40 degrees F, which kept the black flies down. It definitely is the right time of year to do this road. The only problem was built into the bike, which kept flashing a warning snow flake emoji in the dashboard indicating that the temperature was at freezing, and disaster could not be far behind. Good for BMW. Always taking care of its drivers. Last year when I drove the Alaska Pipeline Haul Road up to Prudhoe Bay, they kindly positioned ... read more

This entry is dedicated to Dorothy Rhyne Blyth, Beth's much loved aunt, who passed away in Chapel Hill NC on June 3, 2017, aged 93. In empty uncultivable places such as Western Labrador with hunting and trapping no longer a viable alternative, small communities often become enclaves that exist in the shadow of the big natural resource companies: Big Oil in Alaska and North Western Canada, Big Hydro and Big Mining in Northern Quebec. I had wondered who was King in Labrador, until I visited the town of Churchill Falls, in the middle of Labrador on the Churchill River. NALCOR, a government owned hydro power corporation rules. Its initial base was in Churchill Falls, where in 1971, in partnership with Hydro Quebec, a large power project was completed producing some 5,000 Megawatts. Now it is engaged ... read more

I didn't know it at the time, but the road from Baie-Comeau to Labrador City has a bad reputation. If you make it to the other end there are stickers available with "J'ai survécu à la 389 Nord". Getting more savvy about these stress pitches, I decided to cut the journey in half, and spend the night at "Motel de L'Energie". Built in the shadow of the gigantic Manic 5 hydro dam this little motel is about half way to Labrador City, just where the pavements stops and the fun begins. At the start, the run North out of Baie-Comeau was a motorcyclists dream: paved, little traffic, always turning as it swooped up and down the hills. No houses. No towns. No cell phone towers. Just a dark wilderness of spruce and hemlock, interspersed with white ... read more

I never realized. The US got the mountains of New York and Vermont, Canada got the flat rich farmland in the valley south of the St Lawrence. So flat. After entering Canada, I skirted the slight elevation of Mont Real, and then rode the absolutely flat farmland until the hills of Quebec city, three hours later. Its interesting if you get the Michelin map of Quebec. It opens to show Southern Quebec, the Maritime Provinces, and Northern New York, Vermont and Maine, exactly the land claimed by Champlain and his successors for New France, until they gave it up in the treaty of Paris in 1763 at end of the French and Indian War. That war is all you hear about when you visit Quebec. The epic battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, where ... read more

For many years after graduation, I never went back to the college. I am not sure why. It had something to do with preserving memories of a special time, and not crushing them with the weight of the present. I eventually did attend a reunion, enjoyed it, and kept coming back. I find my Swarthmore memories are safe in a different compartment of my (decaying) mind, in there with boyhood in Uruguay and my father. The campus was at its best, and so were my classmates. We all looked so good ! Though some of us were missing. This group in this place is unique in allowing us to bring lost friends back for a while, and talk about them without too much explaining. Things have changed so much since we graduated, that my old memories ... read more