The Fire Lake mine:

Mont-Wright mine.

Mont-Wright does not exist any more.

See?

Check out this one tailings pile.  (There were dozens of these, this isn’t even the largest) For scale:

Fermont is an interesting mining town.

It’s a company town.  It’s so cold and windy, that the town is built as a huge structure that doubles as a windbreak.  It’s 1.3km long.  Here’s a film.

It’s an arcology!

After Baie Comeau, we turned north on Route 389.

First roadside attraction was the Manic-2 power dam site.

Here’s a turbine:

For the rest of the description, we turn to Wikipedia:

The Québec North Shore Company and Hydro-Québec completed portions from Route 389 to the Manic 5 hydroelectric project site (km 212), now known as the Daniel-Johnson Dam.

From km 212, the highway follows a path traditionally used by aboriginal people and explorers, with access to the Hart Jaune Hydroelectric Complex at km 390.

The town of Gagnon, now torn down, was at km 394.

Starting at km 482, the “Fire Lake Mine Road” section was built by unemployed workers during a labour dispute, influenced by the presence of the railway owned by the Québec Cartier Mining Company. This section of paved road is notoriously known as “the trail.”

From km 482 to the provincial border at km 570 (354 miles from Baie-Comeau), the road is an accident-prone section notorious for its poor surface and sharp curves (the joke being you can see your own taillights).^{[citation needed]} Local citizens in adjacent Labrador have been urging realignment of this road, a vital work if it were to be the routing to a fixed link to Newfoundland.

One of the coolest things ever, ever seen, was the Manicouagan Crater.  The impact was from 213 MYA (at time of publication).  The entire northern region has amazing amounts of Impactite.  It’s basically a bunch of glass-like rock and glitter, everywhere.

We crossed a few parallels today.

A lot of dusty, bad, mountainous gravel roads.  Much better roads than the Alaska Highway, however.  So far, it’s a piece of cake in terms of road conditions.  The roads are ridiculously steep though.  We saw one stalled truck rolling backwards down a steep, loose grade, things got a bit sketchy as he barrelled backwards right at us.

This was our first wilderness campsite of the trip.  The air smelled amazing and the mosquitos and blackflies weren’t even that bad.

There was muskeg everywhere this morning.

And tadpoles!

Ah, finally.  A night spent in a Wal*Mart parking lot.  This one was somewhere near Granby, QC.  There were about 1/2 dozen other campers.

The next morning we rolled eastwards to Charlevoix.  They seem to have a big cycling race scene there.

Also, the dogs are happy.

Sometimes the highway got a little soggy…

Fjords are cool.  That is all.