2026-06-24 – Sault Ste. Marie
After having breakfast in a small diner in Roger’s City, we struck out for 40 Mile Point Lighthouse, our first stop on our day’s drive north. Completed in 1896, it was one of a series of lights constructed so that mariners would always be within sight of a light along Lake Huron’s Michigan shore.
The light was interesting to us in a couple of ways. First, the light’s tower was directly accessible from the house so that the keeper didn’t have to go outside during bad weather. Second, the keeper’s house was a large duplex. Lighthouses tend to be in remote locations and were often inaccessible during the harsh winters. Having two families on location had both safety and social advantages.
There was also a small, one-room school nearby that we stopped to admire.
Our drive finally took us north, across the five mile long Mackinac suspension bridge to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Yes, folks, we’ve finally arrived in the land of the Yoopers!
Continuing north through the UP, we arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, our destination for the next few days. Our host for our first two nights was the overflow parking area of the “Original Soo Locks Boat Tours”, a Harvest Host. They do boat tours through the locks between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. We elected not to do a lock tour as we’ve transited many other locks in the past.
The Soo Locks are, however, the main event in this city. They bypass rapids on the St. Marys River, where the water level falls 21 ft. An average of 10,000 ships pass through the locks each year despite being closed during the winter when ice shuts down shipping on the Great Lakes. With about 35 ships passing through each day, it’s a very busy scene!
There are two operating locks on the American side, the MacArthur, which is 800 ft long, and the Poe, which is 1,200 feet long. Two smaller locks, the Davis and Sabin, were decommissioned in 2010 to be replaced by a new lock the same size as the Poe lock. It’s a ten year construction project that is halfway along.
Sault Ste. Marie has a “twin” city on the other side of the St Marys River in Ontario, Canada, that is also named Sault Ste. Marie. And there is another, smaller lock on the Canadian side of the river that mostly serves pleasure craft.
A big attraction in town is the viewing platform on the American side where you have a close up view of ships transiting the locks. One of the small tour boats was locking upriver through the MacArthur Lock as we arrived.
Then a huge tug and barge combination came down river to pass through the Poe Lock. The tug, Joyce L. VanEnkevort, is fitted to the barge, Great Lakes Trader, with an articulated tug/barge connection system. Together they are 840 feet long and appear almost as one. The barge has a “self-unloader” system that allows it to discharge cargo at smaller ports that don’t have unloading equipment. While the barge is unloading, the tug can detach and go about other business.
2026-06-25 – Sault Ste. Marie
Our morning was spent planning the next phase of our trip through the UP and securing campground reservations.
Returning downtown, we ended up back at the viewing platform. Several very large bulk carriers were passing through. Two of them were 1,004 feet in length and 105 feet in beam. That’s very close to the largest Great Lakes carrier which is 1,013.5 feet. It’s impressive to watch these behemoths proceed carefully through the narrow confines of the lock system.
The Tower of History, a 210 foot tall observation tower, overlooks the town. Originally envisioned as a shrine to early Catholic missionaries, the shrine aspects of the tower were never completed. Today, while it does display a few exhibits of an historical nature, the attraction for its 40,000 annual visitors is the view from the top. We chose not to climb the more than 300 stairs, taking the elevator instead. The view from the top is, indeed, striking.
Dinner was at Oh Crêpe! on the main street along the waterfront. The crêpes were delicious and filling. Afterwards we crossed the street to listen to a concert in the park which consisted of a series of performances by a youth string orchestra, the cast of a local production of Oklahoma and other vocalists.