Today I would be leaving Labrador and
driving Route 389 in Quebec to the town of Baie-Comeau. It was a 365
mile drive, that was expected to take about 8 hours. From everything
I had read, this road would be the worst part of the trip.
After waking up and eating breakfast, I
headed out for today's journey. The first 20 miles or so were on a
paved road, and all was good. I crossed into Quebec and shortly
thereafter, the paved road ended and it was back to a gravel road.
The road essentially followed along a rail line, criss-crossing the
tracks many times over the next 30 or so miles. There were some very
sharp curves on this stretch and I was starting to understand
everything I had read about this road.
Finally, after about 30 miles of this,
I reached a mine at a place called North Fire Lake and the road was
once again paved. It had been raining the entire morning, and it was
nice to be back on a paved road. This continued for about 90 miles
until I reached a “town” called Relais-Gabriel. There was pretty
much nothing here but a gas station and restaurant. I stopped to fill
up with gas and continued on. Shortly after that, the pavement
inexplicably ended, and it was back on the gravel road. For the next
20 or 30 miles, the road wasn't too bad, then, everything changed …
At this point, for the next 15 to 20
miles, the gravel road became very hilly with lots of very sharp
curves. There was construction going on throughout this stretch of
the road, and it's very obvious that they are realigning and
straightening the road to remove all of the very sharp curves. I
finally reached the “Manic-5” dam, and once again, the road was
now paved, however, the hills and sharp curves continued all the way
to the end of the road in the town of Baie-Comeau … it was like
being on a roller coaster.
It seems pretty apparent, that Route
389 was built from Baie-Comeau as a construction and service road for
the dams and hydro-electric plants that run along the Manicouagan
River, and was never really intended to be a “through” road.
There are five dams on this river, with “Manic-5” being the
northernmost, which would explain why the road is not paved north of
that dam. From what I've been able to find, it sounds like the road
was built by the hydro-electric and mining companies, for their
purposes, and as I mentioned above, was probably never intended to be
used as a through road to get to Labrador. Now that this has become
the case, it seems that the Canadian government is working towards
improving the road to make it safer.
After reaching Baie-Comeau, which was
my planned stop for the night, I realized that I had passed back into
the eastern time zone, so it was an hour “earlier” than I
realized. At this point, I made a fateful decision … It was only
about 250 miles to Quebec City, and by having “picked up” an
hour, it appeared as though I could arrive in Quebec City at about
7:30 if I decided to continue, which would give me more time in
Quebec City the following day. This would also give me the option of
spending some time in Montreal on the following day, which was not
part of my original plan, if I chose to do so. Since I was now back
to “civilization”, I figured why not … the road shouldn't be a
problem now, so off I went.
As it turned out, the road while paved,
wound its way up, over and through the mountains that form the
coastline of the St. Lawrence River. It was a two lane road that
passed through a lot of small towns along the way, and there was a
fair amount of traffic heading west towards Quebec City. The weather
was also awful … it was raining on and off, and there was a lot of
very dense fog, making visibility somewhat limited. This was going to
take longer than I thought!!!
After driving for a while, there was an
electronic sign board that was in French only. I didn't understand
what it said, but there was one part that read “de 1H”. I started
to wonder if this meant “1 hour delay”, or something like that.
Shortly after passing the sign, the road widened to two lanes in each
direction, and went down a VERY long and steep hill. The left lane
had signs indicating that no trucks were allowed in that lane.
Suddenly, the westbound traffic in both lanes came to a dead stop! I
had no idea what was going on. After a couple of minutes, I turned
the car off and started to look at the maps that I had, and I
realized that the road appeared to go through a small river that fed
into the St. Lawrence River. I started to wonder if there was a
tunnel or something, and maybe there had been an accident in the
tunnel. After sitting for a while, suddenly, a “wave” of traffic
passed by in the eastbound lanes, and shortly after that, we moved
forward a couple of hundred feet. I could also make out red and green
“traffic lights” that were positioned above the lanes off in the
distance. Maybe they were alternating traffic through one lane or
tube of the tunnel.
This continued for a while, and as I
got closer to the traffic lights I realized it wasn't a tunnel, but a
ferry!!! The highway had a section that had to be crossed by ferry …
unbelievable!!! It took about an hour to finally get on the ferry,
and then about 5 minutes to make the crossing to the other side.
Perhaps it's time to build a bridge or a tunnel here!!!
I was now WAY behind “schedule”,
and it looked as though I wouldn't arrive in Quebec City until about
9:00 pm. I continued driving, up and down the hills, through the fog
and rain, when suddenly, traffic came to a complete stop again!!! Oh
no … not another ferry! I looked at the maps again, and it was
clear that this was not the case … there must be an accident or
something up ahead. Nothing moved in either direction for about 30
minutes. There was an occasional car coming eastbound, but I started
to figure that these were cars that had decided to turn around and go
back to the town that we had just passed through.
Finally, I could see up in the distance
that car lights were coming on, and people were getting ready to move
… we were finally moving again. After about another hour of driving
up and down the hills, through more fog and rain, I finally reached
Quebec City. I found the campground I had made a reservation at and
arrived at the office just before they were going to close, at about
5 minutes before 10:00 pm. They directed me to a sight and I parked
the car … I had been on the road for 15 and a half hours … I was
spent!!!
Fortunately, I was able to buy a couple
of beers in the campground office … I made a quick dinner and then
went to sleep. Tomorrow, I'd be going into Quebec City for some
sightseeing.
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