This morning we drove north to Sault Ste. Marie, MI.  Our mission today was to see the Soo Locks and hopefully see a ship or ships go through them.

The Soo Locks (sometimes spelled Sault Locks, but pronounced "soo") are a set of parallel locks which enable ships to travel between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes. They are located on the St. Mary’s River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, and between the Upper Peninsula of the US state of Michigan and the Canadian province of Ontario. They bypass the rapids of the river, where the water falls 21 feet (6.4 m). The locks pass an average of 10,000 ships per year, despite being closed during the winter from January through March, when ice shuts down shipping on the Great Lakes. The winter closure period is used to inspect and maintain the locks.

The locks share a name (usually shortened and anglicized as Soo) with the two cities named Sault Ste. Marie, in Ontario and in Michigan, located on either side of the St. Mary’s River. The Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge between the United States and Canada permits vehicular traffic to pass over the locks.

The first locks were opened in 1855, and were, along with the Erie Canal, one of the great infrastructure engineering projects of the eighteenth-century United States. They were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

When we arrived, there was one large freighter in the locks headed into Lake Superior, but heavy fog precluded us from getting the full effect.  Fortunately, the fog began to lift and we could see another ship preparing to enter the lock and going in the same direction.  They do not use motorized "mules" to pull the ships into and out of the locks, so it is amazing to see how the captains are able to steer their ships into the lock given that the newer ships are built so wide that there are only a few feet on either side to clear the sides of the lock.  In addition, the 1000 footers, as they are called, just fit in the lock.   We also got to see the local sightseeing boat enter and exit the lock while the larger freighter was being raised.  That gave us a better appreciation of how high the 21 foot difference between Lake Superior and Lake Huron is.  We also learned that the trip from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Duluth, MN is just over 2300 miles and that the elevation of the water rises more than 600 feet.

After checking out a couple of souvenir shops, we drove back to St. Ignace and stopped at the Mackinac Grill for lunch on their patio overlooking the marina.  It was a beautiful clear day.  Shirley ordered their "poorman's whitefish" - a seasoned full fillet of lake whitefish and fresh veggies grilled in a foil packet.  I ordered their fried lake perch dinner with hushpuppies, slaw, and steak fries.  Good eats!