Dear All

The Labrador trip began with an invitation to go visit Jeff and Debbie in Ontario. Back in February, we were planning our Easter trip to Ron and Junie's golden wedding celebration, and thought we could also travel a couple of hundred miles extra along Lake Ontario and go visit Jeff, Sandie's youngest brother, and meet Debbie. When we called, Debbie told us that Jeff would be in Afghanistan at Easter, but we were welcome to come and visit later in the year.

Our plans firmed up in the summer when we were visiting Bob and Pat in Chilliwack, on our way to Alaska. They had a pile of Jeff's property, his share of their mother's estate, which was waiting to be transported 3000 miles across the country. We volunteered to take it back to Minnesota with us and then carry it out to their home in Verona, Ontario.

Verona is about 1200 miles from home and we couldn't go all that way without exploring the surrounding area, so I started planning a trip along the St Lawrence River, past Montreal and Quebec City, and perhaps further along to the mouth of the river. Then I found a mining road on the map. The road went north from the river into Quebec's interior and then struck out east across Labrador. That looked really interesting. There wasn't much on the Internet about the route, but I found a magazine article about a team that drove it with a bunch of Landrovers, so a trip along it looked to be feasible, and it was "only" another 1400 miles on from Verona. A check of the Labrador climate showed that the weather was usually reasonable (snow-free) into early October. And so the Labrador Trip became a possibility. The maps we had were a little vague but we hoped that we'd find more information along the way.

The advantages of traveling late in the year were that we'd miss the bugs, particularly the blackfly, and we should see the fall colours at their best. The trip was turning into an "Autumnal Tints" tour, rather like those that Campings Coaches used to run from Brighton Seafront. The only difference was that we'd end up in Goose Bay instead of the Singing Kettle in Alfriston.