Day 15 - Wednesday, September 29 - Day in Sault Ste Marie

 Weather was absolutely beautiful again today. Down in the 50's last night and sunny and high in the low 70's today. PERFECT!

We took a 2 hour boat ride through the locks and up and down the St. Charles River today. There are going to be a LOT of photos of "stuff". I was an Engineer, I can't help myself. Consider yourselves lucky not to get paragraphs on the railroad lift bridges that show in the photos.

Kathy noticed the smog first thing this morning. That is not a low cloud, it is pollution from a steel making facility on the Canadian side of the border.

Then it was a short drive and a walk down to the tour boat docks.

While waiting to board we saw a sight that we don't think is common. A tug pushing a barge. The barge probably is full of iron ore.

There are two active American locks here. The MacArthur on the left (80' wide x 800' long and 29.5' deep) and the Poe on the right (110' wide x 1,200' long and 32' deep).  A new lock is being built and scheduled to open in 2030. It will be the same size as the Poe Lock. When the lock doors/gates are closed golf cart traffic moves people/employees back and forth to the buildings you see.

We are entering the MacArthur Lock, where we will be raised 21', to the level of Lake Superior.

The boat is tied off to the side of the lock and water from the Lake Superior side enters through the bottom of the lock as gates are opened. The water level of Lake Superior is about 3' below the top of the lock doors in the photo below.

We have now been raised the 21' and the lock doors are opening to allow us to exit into Lake Superior.

This is the Canadian steel plant. The dark piles are coal and the white is limestone.

The "purple" pile in the photo below is taconite iron ore. (When high grade iron ore became scarce a method to make use of lower grade ore became necessary. The low grade ore is ground, at the mines, the iron is separated and the mixed with bentonite clay and "pelletized."

As we headed back to the locks we "sped" by a freighter, the Oakglen, that was also headed for the locks. 

We won the race to the locks. For some reason they put us, a single small boat, in the Poe lock and the Oakglen in the MacArthur lock. The Oakglen is 760' long and carries over 22,000 TONS of cargo. She was still slowly getting stopped in the center of the MacArther lock when we had already been lowered to the Lake Huron level.

 Passing by the Soo Locks Campground on our return.

The window you see in the back of the trailer to the left of the trees is ours.

After the boat ride is was off to Zorba's Greek American Restaurant for a late lunch. We first went there when we were up here in 2011. We had a pizza & Greek salad and it was awesome. In 2018 we went back, the pizza and salad was just as good. It was still just as good today.

After lunch we walked around town, killing time until the Farmer's Market to opened at 4:30. We got cups of coffee ($1/cup) at a little coffee shop/deli, and sat outside drinking our coffee.

The fall colors are coming, but we will miss them at their peak. These trees were in the yard at the Methodist Church. I didn't take pictures of the church, but should have. It was a beautiful building constructed in 1873 from a red sandstone that was waste material when the first locks were constructed.

We are hear for 2 more nights. We leave Friday morning. We weren't sure of our routing when we leave here, and still aren't. This afternoon we made reservations for Friday and Saturday nights at Paradise Point RV Park in DeTour Village, MI. I'm not sure what you can make out in the cut and paste photo but DeTour is basically at the east end of the UP mainland.

PS. One of the workers at the boat tour place mentioned that they no longer were allowed to go through the Canadian locks. The Canadians are in a snit over US border crossing protocols. This person claimed that it is relatively easy to go into Canada but you have to jump through hoops, and wait in long lines, to get back into the US. We did notice that the volume of traffic on the bridge across the St. Mary's seemed to be less than half of what we remembered. Perhaps the Canadians just need to start crossing the river illegally. Then the US would provide them with free food, shelter, transportation and health care.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.