Shipping Disasters and Successes

Making our way from Houghton to Sault Saint Marie, we stopped off for one night in Munising. This was only our second overnight stop on this trip so far, and was basically to allow us to stretch out the following day to go to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Museum on Whitefish Point on our way to the Soo. We parked the motorhome at the intersection of M-28 and M-123 and drove the car up M-123 to Whitefish Point. The museum tells the tale of several shipwrecks near Whitefish Point, many as the results of collisions, and most notable, the “Edmund Fitzgerald”. Geoff was at Michigan Tech in November of 1975 when the storm blew in which caused the sinking, and he remembers that the sky was a particularly ugly color that day. He heard about the ship being lost then but it was many years later, when Gordon Lightfoot released his song that Geoff remembered just how that sky had looked and the song still gives him goose-bumps to this day.

After returning to the RV, we discovered a fifth-wheel rig sitting in the same parking area, and it turned out they had had a blowout of one of the tires on their trailer. It had made a mess of the side of the rig and they were planning to change the tire and then go get all of the tires checked out and replaced if necessary. We are thankful we have not had any incidents like this on our recent travels.

From here, we traveled on to Sault St. Marie and close proximity to the Canadian border, which generally plays havoc with our cell phones. They seem to like to pickup the Canadian cell towers and limit our use of the internet on our phones. Fortunately the campground wi-fi here is pretty good. Shortly after arriving, We watched our first ship go past the campgrounds.

They have a very nice viewing platform right up against the locks so you can get a really up close and personal view of the ships going through. The closer lock is smaller and usually handles the tour boats and personal craft, tugs, and smaller cargo ships. The second over is for the big freighters up to 1000 feet in length. The 3rd and 4th locks are no longer in use and are being converted into a second large lock like number 2. This may take several years and the progress should be visible on Google Earth. Right now you can see the coffer dams they have created at either end of lock number 4 to facilitate the draining and excavation of the new lock.

On the second day, we took the Soo Locks Boat Tour which traveled up close to some of the ore carriers and went “up” through the Canadian lock and then back “down” through the American lock number 1. It also went over close to a Canadian steel factory. Very dirty but very necessary for an industrial society. Geoff interviewed at one while job hunting in his last year of college. It was not for him but it was interesting to see the rolling mills for the steel into the big spools you see on trucks.

On day two, we went into two of the local tourist exhibits; the Tower of History and the Valley Camp. the former is a tall, concrete tower designed originally to be a church monument, but then taken over by the city and turned into a towering view of the locks and the whole St. Mary River Valley. You can see for miles in every direction and have great views of the Cloverleaf Electric Cooperative Historic Generating Station. You can see the lock area but, trees block a direct view of ships in the locks.

The Valley Camp is an old ore freighter which has been converted into a museum. By today’s standards, it is pretty small, only about 500 feet long, whereas the large freighters now are 1000 feet. Still, it makes for a pretty impressive space and shows of the meager amenities of these large vessels. The ore space is all displays from many old lake-going vessels and one large display on the Edmund Fitzgerald. We enjoyed it a lot.

Next, to the Straits of Mackinac.