You may call this cheating, but I've actually been there once. I remember the very inorganic mining town look of it all, and I've actually climbed up that ski slope in summer, but i've no recollection of the lake. Clearly I got put up in the room with the lesser view.
It's one of the most exotic places I've been, and I have to say the people there are among the nicer I've met. They're mostly Newfies who went there to mine, but there are natives in the area too, belonging to the Innu nation, and a whole seperate French speaking mining community accross the Quebec line.
If anyone goes there, make sure your car has a big gas tank. It takes a day to drive up the gravel road from the anyway remote Riviere du Loup in Quebec. My traveling companion and I actually went on from there to Goose Bay and Sheshatshiu to the west and that took up another day. The whole area is just insanely empty, I've never been anywhere like it.
That's not cheating, but I'm suprised anyone from Boston would have been there; it's hard to get to. How bad were the roads, and how was the scenery & nightlife?
The roads were INSANELY bad, and the people we met in Labrador City couldn't stop complaining about it. The problem is it makes no sense for the province of Quebec to pave 500 kilometers of a road that lead to somewhere from which it gains no tax money. 100 Miles before LC the gravel road turns impossibly curvy, it's a nightmare.
Past LC the road is equally unpaved but less windy, Churchill Falls is an interesting stop midway to Goose Bay, it's got the world's largest underground hydroelectric plant and a very peculiar, ready built "town" housing the people who work in it. Goose bay was less remote-feeling, it's accesible by Ferry and has an airforce base, but the nearby native communities of Sheshatshiu and Northwest River were two of the most interesting places I've been to.
The scenery in most of Labrador is perfectly austere. Black Spruce is the only tree growing on the high plateau, and these trees grow smaller and smaller the further north you go until they vanish altogether. the ground is covered with the white moss eaten by the Caribou, the best views were halfway between the dam at Manic 5 in Quebec and LC, where the mountains are huge.
We did see some wildlife - interesting birds, black otters and beluga whales in the inlets, but missed out on the bears. Oh well, nest time... We did have a very satisfying time with the aurore borealis. We saw the northern lights in the sky on every single night of our trip. It's stuff like that that makes it worthwhile to go on roadtrips 3000 miles long.
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