How far North can you drive on the North American East Coast? Looking at this map http://www.cec.org/naatlas/NA-Watersheds.gif ,(provided by waterj2 in the watershed thread), I noticed the town of Nain in Labrador. Wikipedia says it is inaccessible by road and may be reached only by air or sea. Any thoughts on how far north you can drive while still on a road?
thanks
One can drive from the coast of Maine into New Brunswick, though you do end up going inland slightly owing to the bay at the mouth of the St. Croix River, which is the international border. The problem is that New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Gaspe Peninsula in southeasternmost Quebec constitute a massive mega-peninsula owing to the St. Lawrence River Estuary, which is several miles wide north of the Gaspe. Ferries from Riviere-du-Loup and Matane, QC, cross the estuary to Quebec highway 138 on the north shore (the last bridge downstream seems to be way southwest of there at Quebec City, and it’s not clear whether there’s still a ferry from Ste.-Anne-des-Monts to Sept-Iles). Highway 138 continues up the coast at least to Moisie, a short way east of Sept-Iles, and I’m not clear on how much further. But somewhere in Quebec along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River Estuary is the furthest you can go and remain on the coast.
As I understand, it’s now possible to get to coastal Labrador by vehicle, but the route involves driving through backwoods Quebec and then across the interior of southern Labrador.
There are also ferries from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland (meaning the island, as opposed to the province which also includes mainland Labrador). And there are roads, some not too impressive, throughout the island; Cooks Harbour on the northern tip of the island seems to be the farthest north point you can drive on a Canadian East Coast coastal trip.
AFAICT, there are no roads that reach to Hudson’s Bay to enable a road trip to the eastern coast of mainland Nunavat.
Oh, implied but not clearly stated in the above – there is a good set of highway systems circumnavigating the coasts of NB, NS, and the Gaspe. It’s getting any reasonable distance past that that becomes the problem.
They run the Targa Newfoundland up there every September. It’s open to passenger cars as
well as modified racing cars.
Indeed. It’s around 10 miles wide at Riviere du Loup, and at least 35 miles at Matane.
