2018-08-05 Day 7 – Lots of Gravel –Nice Day – Made it to Pinware River Provincial Park

Up and at it early this morning. I really liked the hotel – but back to the real world – camping – hopefully for the rest of the trip! From Happy Valley, you head back west about 7-8 km on the 500 – and then you head south and east on the 510. Nice road –for about 80 km. Then – you hit 350 km of gravel – all the way to Mary’s Harbour. There is one 2 km stretch of brand new pavement at Port Hope Simpson – for the 2 km just as you get to the bridge – and you think “All right!” But – nope – back on to the gravel for another ~100km.

Remember me telling you about all the mud from the gravel in Quebec on the 389? Well – today it 

was dust. Man oh man –tons of dust. I got really lucky as far as not following a dust cloud – did not have to all the way to Port Hope Simpson. I did not catch up to anybody – and the couple of folks who passed me were really moving along – so I just backed off on the gas and let them get well ahead and then went back to my 80 kph cruse. The gravel was in really good shape I thought – yea it was dusty – but hardly any washboard, and not really loose, although it was a bit wiggly at times.

After Port Hope Simpson – the first gas stop for ~390-400 km – I got in to a group – I was 3 out of 5 –and we all sorted it out – the guy in the front was going a bit faster than I had been originally – but I figured out his speed – and then dropped about 1500 meters back – to let the dust settle / blow off – and just followed. Everybody else did about the same – so it worked just fine. Man – if you happen to get a bit close – and somebody goes the other direction at the same time – talk about a “dust out” – visibility drops catastrophically – and you quickly back off. I was driving with my headlights on – so hopefully anybody who got close behind me could (hopefully) see my taillights.

I must confess – when I was researching this trip – I found a lot of horror stories – and advice like “take 2 spare tiers mounted on rims” – and I was a bit nervous about being under-prepared. Well – I wasn’t. I have driven worse gravel on the Trans Canada construction nightmare in Northern Ontario last summer! This was good – dust and a bit slippery – but hey – it’s gravel! So – I am very glad to have it done – and done without incident – I never had a rock hit with a “ping”, and no marks on the windshield.

Oh yea – before I go for the evening – one last thing. Those of you who know me will know I am a consistent recidivist with smoking cigars. Well, I slapped on the patch almost two weeks ago. And it has gone really smoothly. But – as you will see when I get bandwidth and post pictures – I have the perfect campsite tonight. I am sitting in the screen tent blogging,  with a “few” blackflies outside, none inside, a cool breeze coming in off of the ocean, a whisky and water on the rocks close at hand, and a good magazine to read. Man – the two things it would take to make this perfect – my honey Kim (maybe next year when she is retired she will do a trip like this with me), AND –I could really smoke a cigar right now. It would be perfect.

Ok, Ok, one more thing before I go. Reading – the magazine in question is a copy of the 2018 August Scientific American – which I bought to read a really good article by Sabine Hossenfelder & Stacey McGauth about Dark Matter verses Modified Gravity – which was a great article. Turns out the entire issue is pretty interesting.  Good article about climate change – and sea levels rising – buy a copy –really good read. BUT – the reading story I wanted to tell is about the book “The Fall of Berlin” by Antony Beevor. My neighbour Mike lent me his copy, and it is a truly compelling piece of history –finished it last night. Thanks Mike – good read – I think I will need to read his book about Stalingrad when I get back and get to a library.

The above notes are from the evening of the 5th – once I get some bandwidth and upload photos – I will finish this entry.