Labrador Tales: Roughing It

After a delightful time at Cartwright, I continued east. There are a couple of side roads/towns off the main highway to explore. I was excited about this part of the trip because there were more off-the-beaten-path locations, similar to Cartwright, and I had high expectations. However, these places weren’t as spectacular and the weather turned against me at this point.

Camping in Labrador isn’t as restful as my posts might suggest. The bugs are some of the worst in Canada, it can be very windy, and it seems to rain a lot…not to mention that being so far north, it can be cold. While the camper Jeep is significantly better than a tent, bad weather can still be a tough time. Much of my time along the coast was plagued with some sort of elemental struggle that made the camping less than peaceful…but specifically these next few days were worse than most.

Next up was the gravel road to the small coastal town of Charlottetown, not to be confused with the capital of Prince Edward Island. Eight years ago, this road was the sudden ending of my trip, as I was in a head on collision, destroying my vehicle and starting an entirely new adventure of getting home. Apparently it happened long enough ago that some of my friends and followers aren’t aware of the story. Read more here.

Needless to say, driving the road again was a solemn affair. I managed to find the exact spot where the accident happened, although there’s no evidence left. In town I saw the tiny clinic as well as the airstrip I was airlifted from. Since I had been on a stretcher with a neck brace, I hadn’t really seen these places, and seeing them now just underlined how remote the accident had been, filling me with thankfulness for God’s protection through the ordeal.

Otherwise, Charlottetown wasn’t as spectacular as Cartwright. There is no bare coastline to walk along, no hills to drive up, and the town is very plain. Just a small town with not much going for it. I don’t think there were any trails or attempts at tourism at all.

I also drove the side road to Pinsent’s Arm, but that was just a tiny village, also without much to see or explore. The roads had the odd scenic moment, but otherwise were just typical gravel roads.

I ended up camping in a parking lot by an outdoor ice rink. Not the most glamourous, but it worked. The bugs were really bad that evening, and even with long sleeves, a hoodie and bug spray, I was still getting eaten. This was fairly common most days, and made it hard to relax outside of the camper.

The next morning it was raining. The forecast was for rain all day. So I setup the awning and hunkered down. It was decently cold, which made for a miserable day, but I was able to brew some coffee and enjoyed some down time with the gentle sound of the rain. Later in the day the wind got a little gusty, which would sprinkle me with water…which amplified the cold. So by the end of the day, I was done with rain. This would have been much worse in a tent so it was nice to have a bit of a nicer setup, but it’s less glamourous than you might think.

The next day wasn’t raining, but the clouds were quite dreary. I was done with Charlottetown, so I packed up and continued on. The misty, stormy weather made for a few nice photos on the road, but generally the weather was too dark to really do good photography.

At Port Hope Simpson I checked out a potential camping spot, but it was spitting rain, and the wind had really picked up. So I decided to carry on. All throughout the day I was looking for a more scenic camping spot to stop and wait for better weather, but the wind was becoming really fierce, and most spots had no protection from its power.

On the next side road, as I approached St Lewis, the land changed, with less trees and grander hills. It looked epic and I was excited that one of these backroads would actually be an interesting exploration.

St Lewis has some amazing views, and the photos even worked decently well, as the dark clouds add some depth to the scenes.

However the wind was becoming completely unbearable. Walking along the coast, I was getting slammed with cold, heavy gusts. I stopped to make a sandwich for lunch, set it down for a second…and it blew away!

There’s a hill behind town with a steep road; the end of which is the farthest point east that you can drive on the continent.

There is also a trail up here that goes out to the point, but the wind was so intense that I just sat in the Jeep for a while in indecision. Part of the problem was that I hadn’t seen any sheltered spots to camp, and I kind of wanted to stick around St Lewis and experience it more slowly in better weather.

I found a really small spot that had a hill blocking some of the wind and setup the camper, and just stayed inside for a few hours. The hope was that the weather would change.

It was still incredibly windy. The sides of the camper were flapping around and the Jeep was rocking too. It was too stormy to cook or be outside. At least it wasn’t raining much. At the very last minute as the day was ending I decided to head out of town to a small spot I had seen on the way in. It was right beside the road, but there were some trees and maybe it would be more sheltered.

There was an incredible sunset on the way down, but I was kind of frazzled from the bad weather and didn’t really enjoy it much, aside from to snap a quick photo.

My new spot was a bit calmer, but still quite windy, so I didn’t sleep much because of the howling noise. The next morning things weren’t much different. I was a bit sad to leave St Lewis so soon but there wasn’t much point in hanging around. From my previous visits to Labrador, I knew that weather could be very different from one cove to the next, so I decided to press on.

Further down the coast I spent some time hiking short trails around Mary’s Harbour, but the weather was still overcast and I was feeling quite battered by my experiences, so it was a mostly forgettable time.

At some point in the day I decided to press on all the way down to Pinware and spend the night at the Provincial Campground…the only one in Labrador. I knew there were trees and sheltered spots there, so I would get some rest from the wind. Considering this was the first night at an actual campground after 13 nights of wild camping, I guess I did pretty good at surviving off the grid. Camping in a real campground actually felt a bit weird at first after so long in the wild! The sun was shining in Pinware and the weather would be nice again for the next few days, which was a relief.

Of course the bugs at Pinware are legendary. So I traded one trial for another. This was a common thread throughout Labrador. If it wasn’t one thing, it was the other. While I normally would say the weather adds to the adventure, it was draining to be constantly fighting the elements. It definitely has me thinking about how to improve the camper build.

P.S. I feel like I should mention: I’m usually someone that easily puts up with the typical bugs in Northern Ontario. So when I say the bugs were bad, I imagine other people would have “literally” been dying. Haha.