Happy Valley-Goose Bay to Mary’s Harbour


Visited Drumdancer Arts and Crafts and bought Woman of Labrador book, the story of Elizabeth Goudie’s life as a trapper’s wife in the early 1900s. We also sampled toutons with partridgeberry jam. Next was Slippers ‘n Things where Pepsi got a Labrador dog kerchief and then Herb Brown’s Birches Galley to see native art work. Herb has a fine collection of pieces in his home/gallery including some in blue-eyed granite. There was a beautiful 400lb bear there for $35,000 that Herb said he would personally deliver if we bought it.

We left Happy Valley-Goose Bay at around 1PM for a 480 km gravel highway trip to Mary’s Harbour. Most of the highway wasn’t all that bad although it did get progressively worse once past the Cartwright Junction. Along the way we saw two cars that must have been in accidents and had been stripped of everything of value, leaving only the bare frame.

Besides lunch and dinner we also stopped to help a pickup truck driver who had had his second flat of the day in the same tire.

The last 50 kms were so bad that we were only able to move at 30 km/h. We both laughed out loud when we saw the “bump in 100m ahead” sign.  As if it could really get worse.  It did.  The town of Mary’s Harbour has some pretty bad roads and we finally inched into the school parking lot for the night at 11PM.