Sowerby blazes Canadian trail

The silence was broken by what sounded like a shot from a high-powered rifle.

My eyes flashed to the side mirror. Smoke was everywhere from forest fires that had been burning for weeks. I hit the four-way flashers and pulled over.

The noise evolved into a discordant symphony of thwacking sounds accompanied by a continuous high-pitched hiss. My focus was drawn to a black hose thrashing wildly between my GMC Jimmy and the 23-foot Airstream travel trailer hitched to the rear. One end of the hose was attached to a propane tank mounted on the Airstream, while the other end sprayed highly volatile propane gas into an atmosphere choked with smoke.

"Close that valve!" I yelled to co-driver Ron King.

Ron didn't hear. He was already out the door, scrambling for the valve that would pacify the berserk serpent. A Cadillac towing a U-Haul trailer drifted by. The words "Adventure in Moving" vanished into the opaque smoke as Ron shut the valve. He was shaking when he got back into the truck.

"Nice vacation," he gasped. "Let's roll or we'll never catch the convoy."

In the summer of 1991, I decided to take a driving vacation to Goose Bay, on the east coast of Labrador, located on the far east coast of Canada. The Trans-Labrador Highway was about to open, establishing a road link across the land where caribou out-number people 80 to one. We would camp in an Airstream trailer towed by my 1991 GMC Jimmy. I had enticed Ron, a journalist from Knoxville, Tenn., and Toronto photographer, John Stephens, to join me on different stages of the trek.

spray and a thousand other bits and pieces. It was hitched to the Jimmy by a series of chains, wires, cantilevers and parts with the word EA-Z-Lift emblazoned on their sides that looked like they had fallen off a UFO.

There was smoke in the air upon arrival in Godbout in the province of Quebec on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River where police dictated we join a vehicle caravan up Route 389 through forest fire areas.

Lining up behind 12 vehicles, some with canoes strapped to their roofs and others with trailers, I noticed a Manic 5 road sign with an arrow pointing up the road. I wondered what it meant.

"Rough going ahead. Lots of hills, possible flare-ups and lingering smoke," Ron advised. "Police say we'll clear the fires in three or four hours."

A mud-splattered Cadillac towing a U-Haul trailer was last in line and we were right in front of it. An hour and a half later it would blow by us as we wrestled the renegade propane hose.

We never rejoined the convoy but the smoke eventually cleared and the next two days were spent settling into the drive. We ate dust on miserable stretches of road and sailed over sections of smooth blacktop. We saw Manic 5 and realized it was not a camp for exiled maniacs, but part of one of the largest hydroelectric projects in the world.

It was hot and dry at Duley Lake Provincial Park's campground just west of Labrador City where a Ranger warned that we might have to evacuate because of a forest fire 10 miles away. We set up camp watching water bombers skim loads from the lake then vanish toward the flames on the horizon.

Later, John Stephens' airplane arrived and the three of us swapped stories back at the lake. The following morning, John and I dropped the sunburned and fly-bitten Tennessean at the airport on our way to Goose Bay.

The road from Labrador City to Goose Bay was finished except for a paltry-yet-gaping 60-foot section of bridge over the narrows of Ossokmanuan Lake. Our only crossing option was a construction barge too small for the trailer, so we backtracked 100 miles to Labrador City and waited for the train.

The train bound for Schefferville, in Northern Quebec, carried freight and an assortment of automobiles, trucks and schoolhouses. Four passenger coaches were connected directly behind the trio of locomotives. Cheerful workman chained our rig to a flatcar, then John and I stowed away inside the Airstream for the ride to Esker, where an industrial access trail led back to the "highway."

As the rail car heaved and jerked, we were entertained watching a food party unfold after leaving the fridge and cupboard doors unlocked: During the seven-hour ride, the refrigerator contents became intimate with the cupboard stuff. The cleaning supplies cornered the pork chops that had escaped from the freezer and the cooking oil went on a rampage, smashing three plastic glasses before dumping itself on a wandering roll of toilet paper.

"The brakes feel weird," I told John after unloading in Esker four days behind schedule. I crawled under the trailer and found severed wires to all four electric brakes prompting a new vacationing rule: Keep a sharp eye on cheery rail workers when they chain your trailer to a freight train.

"Hope there's no steep hills ahead," John laughed, smearing bug repellent on his neck.

But we hauled our silver albatross up and down plenty of steep grades on the worst road of the trip, taking 14 hours to cover the 200 miles to Goose Bay. There was no time to fish, but that night John fried up a pan of frozen fish sticks while I tried to repair the trailer brakes.

"There are three kinds of flesh eaters here," I joked while scratching my way through the pathetic meal. "Mosquitoes drill holes in your arms and neck while blackflies remove little hunks of skin. I haven't fought one of those horseflies yet."

But there were no telephone calls, no hassles and no errands to run.

We had created the desired effect: vacation á la Labrador.

Garry Sowerby, author of "Sowerby's Road: Adventures of a Driven Mind" is a four-time Guinness World Record holder for long-distance driving. His exploits, good, bad and just plain harrowing, are the subject of World Odyssey, produced in conjunction with Wheelbase Communications. Wheelbase is a worldwide provider of automotive news and features stories.