Travelling in Newfoundland and Labrador

I am posting these notes to benefit anyone who may intend to travel to NL
in hope they might be of some use.

First let me strongly point out that NL is absolutely beautiful.
Newfoundland more so than Labrador. I would even say that travelling
throughout NL is like travelling through Norway, Sweden and Switzerland all
in once (minus the Alps of course). The natural scenery is fantastic and
people are helpful and friendly. However, there are some points to
consider when preparing your trip. They are mentioned below in no
particular order:

Trans Labrador Highway: I would not recommend travelling Trans Labrador
Highway (TLH) in a sedan or on a bike, unless you are _very_ experienced
biker. We met several drivers with broken windshields, punctured tires and
we saw an accident involving a biker on a BMW crosscountry bike. TLH is
mostly a gravel road. It is not as bad and narrow as it used to be, in
fact the stretch from Churchill Falls to Goose Bay is quite new and seems
to be designed for normal highway speeds once it is paved, which is
currently not. The problems are twofold:
Some stretches of the TLH are covered with what seems like inches deep
loose gravel. Vehicle tends to "float" on this surface and incoming
traffic can generate flying gravel. It is useful to use 4x4 with locked
differentials. It makes driving much easier. For bikers such surface is
really dangerous and it was in one of those stretches where we came upon an
accident resulting in biker's broken collar bone, three ribs and his bike a
write-off.
Another problem is the way they do highway maintenance. They just send a
grader on the road and shave the upper-most layer of the road, filling the
potholes with the shaved-off material in the process. However, when
grading is repeated too many times, all the upper layer is eventually
shaved off and the grader starts to pull out larger stones from the layer
below. We drove upon stretches randomly sprinkled with rugged stones
bigger than human heads. Such stones can do serious damage to your
suspension and tires.
I would suggest to use either a pickup truck or a larger SUV for a trip on
the TLH.
The information we got about crazy truckers on the TLH did not prove to be
correct. In fact, all truckers we met were very courteous, slowed down for
the passing and pull as far away to the side of the road as possible. Some
stones and gravel still flew though.
Visit of Manic-5 and Churchill Falls hydro generating stations is a must!
Especially Churchill Falls with its 5.5 GW generating capacity completely
build inside a 300m high rock is a marvel of engineering.

Black flies: Despite dare predictions, we did not have much trouble in
early September. We only used repellent twice. We could see some flies
and after each hike or look around we would bring couple of them into the
truck, but that was about it. The only problem I found with them is that
they prefer to crawl inside your clothes and bite you there. They inject
some stuff into the wound to keep the blood flowing. It does not hurt and
one does not realize he was bitten until his T-shirt has been destroyed by
large blood stain.
Once I entered a local diner and people just stared at me. There was a
large blood stain on my chest as if I were shot :-)
Surprisingly, the worst black flies infestation we encountered was on Cape
Spears. The back of my wife's yellow parka was so covered in black flies
that it looked black from a short distance of several meters. We had to
cut short our hike as we did not take any repellent with us. The wind was
pretty strong though so I did not understand where were all those flies
coming from until I noticed they were crawling all over the boardwalks and
when we passed, they just moved onto us.

Driving in NL: There is generally very light to light traffic on the Trans
Canada Highway (TCH), much lighter on other roads. Some side roads are
still gravel, those are generally in worse shape than the TLH. Most of the
roads are paved. The TCH is generally in good to very good shape, other
roads are worse. It is interesting that the same highways would
inexplicably change their quality in stretches sometimes shorter than
couple of hundred meters. You would travel on an almost new highway that
suddenly would become much potholed and in a kilometer or so would be as
good as new again.
In general, on the side roads one has to pay attention all the time as the
road can seriously deteriorate without much warning.
There is another peculiarity I've never seen anywhere else. In general, NL
drivers would abruptly brake when being passed. Before I grew accustomed
to this behavior I almost rearended couple of them. How it works: You
drive behind a car waiting for an opportunity to pass. When the
opportunity presents itself, you turn on your left passing light and hammer
the gas while moving to the left lane. At the same time the car being
passed abruptly slows down. If you are not far enough in the left lane
already, you will hit the rear left side of the car in front of you.

In general, NL drivers on other roads than the TCH do not pass too often.
Therefore you would see an empty road for 10, 15 minutes and then a convoy
of 5 or more cars would come in the opposite direction followed by another
stretch of empty road. Therefore if you want to drive faster you have to
anticipate that eventually you will encounter such convoy and you will have
to pass the cars one by one, which is sometimes a difficult and lengthy
process due to the curvature of the road and the braking phenomena
described above.

When ordering food (no matter if you are in a diner or a fancy St. John's
steakhouse), never order "fries" if you do not want to get rice. Always
order "French fries".

The tourist season apparently ends by the end of August. Many places we
wanted to visit were closed in mid September though the weather was still
nice and congestion nonexistent.

If you travel to NL in September I strongly suggest to visit
http://www.targanewfoundland.com and plan your travel in such a way you
will not get blocked off the road by the race. Unfortunately, no tourist
publication including the official one from the NL government mentioned the
race anywhere and we were unaware of it until we got stuck for 4 hours in
place called Leading Tickle because the road was closed. The organizers
let us drive on temporarily opened closed road all the way to Leading
Tickles without a word of warning and then locked us there. The next
morning I woke up in a motel that was just being cordoned off the highway.
After a _very_ brisk packing and running to our truck I persuaded the
official to let us drive away instead of waiting in the motel till 2 pm for
the road to reopen. That evening I gained an access to the Net, checked
the race itinerary and we had to completely revamp our plans to make sure
we were not going to get tangled in the race again. Such information
should be made public on all tourist web sites of NL!. We were by far not
the only ones being involuntarily trapped in Leading Tickles!

For an average traveller I would recommend to fly to St. John's or Gander
and rent a car there. In any case, Newfoundland is a place not to be
missed!

FEEB wrote:

There is another peculiarity I've never seen anywhere else. In general, NL
drivers would abruptly brake when being passed. Before I grew accustomed
to this behavior I almost rearended couple of them. How it works: You
drive behind a car waiting for an opportunity to pass. When the
opportunity presents itself, you turn on your left passing light and hammer
the gas while moving to the left lane. At the same time the car being
passed abruptly slows down. If you are not far enough in the left lane
already, you will hit the rear left side of the car in front of you.


Why does that strike you as peculiar? It makes perfect sense
considering the pavement (road strewn with rocks the size of
human heads) :-)

On 26 Sep 2006 09:05:51 -0700, kujebak wrote:


FEEB wrote:

There is another peculiarity I've never seen anywhere else. In general,
NL
drivers would abruptly brake when being passed. Before I grew
accustomed
to this behavior I almost rearended couple of them. How it works: You
drive behind a car waiting for an opportunity to pass. When the
opportunity presents itself, you turn on your left passing light and
hammer
the gas while moving to the left lane. At the same time the car being
passed abruptly slows down. If you are not far enough in the left lane
already, you will hit the rear left side of the car in front of you.


Why does that strike you as peculiar? It makes perfect sense
considering the pavement (road strewn with rocks the size of
human heads) :-)


That's a misunderstanding. The above described peculiarity was observed
solely on paved roads of Newfoundland. Passing is done completely
differently on the Trans Labrador Highway: When you see someone coming
fast at you at your rearview mirror, you move to the right as much as you
can and slow down _way_ before he reaches you. The passing vehicle slows
down as well and the passing occurs in a kind of a slow motion. As you
won't see much after the vehicle passed you, you have to stop anyway and
wait till the dust clears. This is not done very often, once an hour or
two perhaps. There's not much traffic there. From Churchill Falls to
about 50 km off Goose Bay we passed perhaps two vehicles and saw maybe 5 in
the opposite direction (some 300 km).
On the stretches with loose large stones only lunatics yearning to walk
next 300+ km to the nearest civilization would attempt to pass.

On 9/26/2006 1:38 PM FEEB plucked Senior Frog's Magic Twanger and said:
On 26 Sep 2006 09:05:51 -0700, kujebak wrote:


FEEB wrote:


There is another peculiarity I've never seen anywhere else. In general,

NL

drivers would abruptly brake when being passed. Before I grew

accustomed

to this behavior I almost rearended couple of them. How it works: You
drive behind a car waiting for an opportunity to pass. When the
opportunity presents itself, you turn on your left passing light and

hammer

the gas while moving to the left lane. At the same time the car being
passed abruptly slows down. If you are not far enough in the left lane
already, you will hit the rear left side of the car in front of you.


Why does that strike you as peculiar? It makes perfect sense
considering the pavement (road strewn with rocks the size of
human heads) :-)



That's a misunderstanding. The above described peculiarity was observed
solely on paved roads of Newfoundland. Passing is done completely
differently on the Trans Labrador Highway: When you see someone coming
fast at you at your rearview mirror, you move to the right as much as you
can and slow down _way_ before he reaches you. The passing vehicle slows
down as well and the passing occurs in a kind of a slow motion. As you
won't see much after the vehicle passed you, you have to stop anyway and
wait till the dust clears. This is not done very often, once an hour or
two perhaps. There's not much traffic there. From Churchill Falls to
about 50 km off Goose Bay we passed perhaps two vehicles and saw maybe 5 in
the opposite direction (some 300 km).
On the stretches with loose large stones only lunatics yearning to walk
next 300+ km to the nearest civilization would attempt to pass.








That strikes me as not that much different than making a Mexican Left
Turn. If there are cars approaching behind you, you move right to the
shoulder or as far right as you can to let them pass. You move back on
the road and make your left turn as long as there are no cars behind you
or approaching you from the oncoming lane. Once you get used to it, it
seems more courteous then holding up traffic behind you as you wait for
the oncoming lane to clear.

--
________
To email me, Edit "blog" from my email address.
Brian M. Kochera
"Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once!"
View My Web Page: http://home.earthlink.net/~brian1951

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 06:39:59 GMT, Brian K
wrote:

That's a misunderstanding. The above described peculiarity was observed
solely on paved roads of Newfoundland. Passing is done completely
differently on the Trans Labrador Highway: When you see someone coming
fast at you at your rearview mirror, you move to the right as much as you
can and slow down _way_ before he reaches you. The passing vehicle slows
down as well and the passing occurs in a kind of a slow motion. As you
won't see much after the vehicle passed you, you have to stop anyway and
wait till the dust clears. This is not done very often, once an hour or
two perhaps. There's not much traffic there. From Churchill Falls to
about 50 km off Goose Bay we passed perhaps two vehicles and saw maybe 5 in
the opposite direction (some 300 km).
On the stretches with loose large stones only lunatics yearning to walk
next 300+ km to the nearest civilization would attempt to pass.








That strikes me as not that much different than making a Mexican Left
Turn. If there are cars approaching behind you, you move right to the
shoulder or as far right as you can to let them pass. You move back on
the road and make your left turn as long as there are no cars behind you
or approaching you from the oncoming lane. Once you get used to it, it
seems more courteous then holding up traffic behind you as you wait for
the oncoming lane to clear.

Almost, but not quite a Melbourne hook turn. Bear in mind
that we drive on the left.

When you wish to turn right at certain CBD intersections you
stay in the left lane, leaving the right car lane clear for
through traffic and the centre lanes clear for through
trams.

When the light goes green you move forward and then stop in
the left lane, indicating right turn. You do not proceed
until the light goes red in your direction and green in the
direction you are turning into, after checking that no
latecomers are hurtling up from behind trying to beat the
lights.

Believe it or not - it works:-) It applies to only 13
intersections IIRC.

Cheers, Alan, Australia, ex-Melbourne cabby.