Jamie and Adler had plans for the weekend so Bud and I decided to go for a trip. Not wanting to face the trip across Canada (with the bridges and customs) to go back to WNY we decided to head north, like all the other vacationing Michiganders. Hoping to outrun the crowds Bud voted for all the way up north and we drove almost 400 miles up to Sault Sainte Marie.

It turned out to be a very nice destination and a nice weekend. The temperature was near 90 back in Saint Clair Shores, but only in the upper 70's this far north. I'm not including these locations on the present position information because I'm leaving that for sailing. We did get as far north as 46 degrees, 46 minutes at Whitefish Point. It was downright chilly with the breeze off Lake Superior.

We went through a lighthouse and a shipwreck museum there. That area has more wrecks than anywhere else on the Great Lakes. In part because of the potential for storms on Lake Superior, but mostly from congestion as the boats come together to go through the Soo Locks. Today there are only two or three hundred lake freighters, but at one time there were over three thousand. With fog and no radar, collisions were not uncommon.

We also hiked in a state park on the Tahquemenon River. We saw both the Lower Falls, a series of 5 falls, and the Upper Falls, which drops about 50 feet and is the largest falls outside of the Niagara east of the Mississippi. The photo is of Bud and Fuzzy enjoying the view of the Lower Falls. I put other photos from the weekend in the gallery.

On Sunday we toured the Museum Ship Valley Camp. It's a retired lake freighter. We spent almost two hours aboard and would have spent longer, but we could hear Fuzzy yipping to protest his abandonment in their free dog kennels. I have a few pictures from the ship in the gallery too.

We took our time on the way home and wandered down the east coast of Michigan along the shore of Lake Huron. We stopped to see a lighthouse at Presque Isle and saw some of the boats in the Detroit to Mackinac race go by flying their spinnakers in a brisk wind. We got back a bit after 9 PM. Bud's still sleeping it off. Touring in the land barge lets us cover a lot more ground, but it's very confining. Needless to say, I'd rather be sailing.