Richard's Landing to Sault Ste Marie, MI

Day #684; Loop Miles to Date = 8,208

On Monday, we transited up the St Mary's River, through Lake George, and arrived back in the USA at Sault Ste Marie, MI. This is now our 12th state in addition to Canada. It was a lovely travel day, and one that we again timed perfectly with the weather. An incoming front was bringing some strong winds, and sure enough they came! The last 2 days, we have been snugly tied up at George Kemp marina while the winds have been blasting through here at 20-25 mph. But, we see promise in the forecast, and plan to cast off for points SOUTH tomorrow (Thursday).

We had an absolute blast in Canada...loved almost every minute of it. In all, we spent 61 days in Canada, and traveled 867 miles in these 2 months. Our plan to maximize the time that we devoted to this portion of the loop really paid off, as it lived up to expectations and then some. The only slight downside is that it is getting chilly on us...the summers don't last long up here.

The last lighthouse that we passed in Canada.

Coming up to the Soo was not in our original plan, but we are really glad that we did. The locks are impressive! The town itself is a bit old and run down, but there are a variety of touristy shops along the water, and it is obvious that there is a substantial amount of tourist traffic here during the summer. The enormity of the ships and the lock systems is tough to describe and tougher to represent in pictures. There are actually 4 parallel locks to handle all of the traffic that have been constructed over the past 100 years or so. The largest amount of cargo that is still being transported through this lock system is iron ore from Lake Superior. In total this season, there will be 67 Million Tons of cargo that is locked through.

Coming out of the St Mary's River and the peacefulness of our trip through the North Channel, it was a minor shock to the system to see all of the industry once again as we approached the locks.

Picture of a picture in the Visitors Center. This is the entire Soo Locks system. The lock chambers on the left (The American Locks) are 1200' long.

Taken from our boat in the marina...these 1000' long Lakers go right by our slip basically.

A graphic from the viewing area at the locks. The only one that really applies to us is the transit to Chicago...we doubt we can get there in 29 hours.

So, as the weather has been fierce while we were here, we were glad to have a couple of days of downtime. We had traveled the past 8 days straight in order to make this side trip happen, and needed some time to slow down a tad. We're off again tomorrow for another stop in the UP (Upper Peninsula to those of you non-Michiganders) at Detour, and then further south from there. There is supposed to be a Farmers Market here later today (Wednesday) and a concert in the Lock Park tonight...time to bundle up!

 

Thanks for reading...stay tuned for more...