Carefree Highway

You are listening to:  "Carefree Highway" Gordon Lightfoot

Route 389, from what I was able to learn, started out as a private maintenance road for the companies operating the hydroelectric dams up the length of the Manicouagan River. It took me 7.5 hours to travel the 370 miles to Wabush, Labrador. This road was paved some of the time and gravel most of the time, but it mattered little, since in the middle of February it is covered with hard packed snow. I have to say that the road was in great shape considering the time of year. I saw many snowplows all along the length of the road keeping it clear. I saw perhaps twenty other vehicles on this ride, of which perhaps five were cars. Most of what you run across is logging trucks, construction vehicles and plows.

I was able to make the whole trip without filling up the gas tank, although I did bring a 10 gallon can along just in case of trouble. There are 2 gas station/motel stops along the way. The first is after about 120 miles at Manic 5. Here you will find the Energy Motel near the huge Daniel Johnson Dam. The people running this place were very nice. They have a little restaurant attached to the motel. On the way up, I dropped some keys in the restaurant and they were nice enough to hang on to them for me. I was able to pick them up on the way back home. After another 120 or so miles, you come to Relais Gabriel where there is another gas station/restaurant and motel.

That is it until you get to the iron mine at Mont-Wright and the town of Fermont (Iron Mountain), Quebec just before the Labrador border. Around Relais Gabriel, I was passed by this fellow in a van going along at a pretty good clip. A couple of hours later, I caught up with him just before Fire Lake. There is a very sharp right angle turn in the road there and his van just decided it wasn't going to make it around. The van ended up on its side about thirty feet off the road over a snowbank. This poor fellow and his wife were standing outside wondering what to do. I stopped and picked them up and brought them about 40 miles to the mine at Mont-Wright where he used to work. I couldn't get pictures of the van at the time, but I stopped on the way back and took a shot of the spot where it happened. Twenty miles further on brings you to Fermont, the last town in Quebec. I didn't stop there, I pushed on to the Labrador Frontier and the adjacent towns of Labrador City and Wabush where my snowmobile outfitter, Ed Burke, is based.