Day 20. June 10, 2014. Tuesday. Labrador City to east of Churchill, Labrador

Today we rode again with the cold north wind. The day was mostly sunny, but the temperatures topped out about 52 degrees with a stiff breeze that bit hard on our Nevada-warm-and-tender behinds.

We actually started the day warm and sunny birding the Labrador City Community Garden. Good soil is hard to come by up here, and often when there is some, people get together to make community gardens where everyone has a small plot, and in this case, spread over a total of about 4 acres. The willow thickets around the garden were full of warblers, flycatchers, and a few sparrows, plus one noisy American Robin with a nest.

Pressing on, birding the woods was difficult, as bird calls were muffled by the wind and bird movements were obscured by the dancing trees. Birding the lakes and marshes was a bust, as we saw almost no birds on or near the water. Even so, we had a delightful day hiking here and there without the benefit of biting insects.

We did several short hikes and one longer hike. On one of the short hikes, we found several piles of Willow Ptarmigan winter-scat, then found the remains of the creature -- perhaps a meal for a hungry lynx. The longer hike was on a real, 1-mile trail. The Bowdoin Canyon Nature Trail on the Churchill River runs along cliffs overlooking the river and gorge below the falls. The trail runs downstream to an overlook facing back towards the falls (upstream). The waterfall would be a world-class attraction in a more accessible part of the world. On the hike out, we noticed a very large dog track in the muddy spot -- it seems that there are wolves in these woods!

To our disappointment, we can confirm that information provided on a Canadian government website is not correct: the entire Trans-Labrador Highway is not paved. They are working on it, but we may yet have hundreds of miles of gravel road (turns out to be about 70 km of gravel).

We stopped in a pullout to camp about 8 PM, which turns out to be about 2 hours before dark. We walked around a bit and found a narrow road leading into the woods, so we ended up in a nice, quiet campsite with trees and raindeer moss all around. We also have moose tracks, Willow Ptarmigan scat, weasel scat, and perhaps wolverine scat in camp. Good thing we saw no bear scat!

Note: All distances, elevations, and other facts are approximate.
; Last updated 140705