A family visit to Sault Ste Marie and environs (1)

Dwight Peck's personal website

Summer 2025

A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

A family visit to Sault Ste Marie and environs (1)

Exploring the Soo Locks, walking the Batchawana Bay beach, 5-6 August 2025

We're on the straight-arrow US Rte 2, running east-west across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan . . .

. . . seemingly forever.

Passing through Crystal Falls, and soon turning north up towards Marquette on Lake Superior, then due east on . . .

. . . M28, passing by Brimley near here, to join . . .

. . . the I75 north across the Sault Ste Marie International Bridge.

Over the Soo Locks and the St Marys River (the falls of which are on the left) between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, leading down to the . . .

. . . the Canadian entry station, only slightly backed up ('carrying any firearms?', 'Welcome to Canada'). The US entry station is back on the USA side on the other highway lane.

We're booked into the Quality Inns & Suites Bay Front, and we really are on the bay front . . .

. . . except for the Station Mall, which runs . . .

. . . literally 500 meters (550 yards, i.e. 5½ US football fields) just along the bay shoreline. This is the nearly empty parking lot behind the mall; the carpark on the front tends to have slightly more cars during opening hours, like now).

We've booked one room for Alison and Ryan, another for Marlowe, Dmitri, and William, and the best room for ourselves . . .

. . . of course.

Out for a shoreline walk on the 'Hub Trail' along the St Mary's River Drive, and over to the famous locks.

That's the White Bridge over to North St Mary's Island.

Festive flower arrangements welcoming us onto the White Bridge. So thoughtful.

A look back at the Hub Trail and the St Mary's River Dr Pier

The St Marys River has no apostrophe, all other St Mary's here do have one. No explanations available.

Alison, as we're looking for the Sault Ste Marie Canal National Historic Site, which . . .

. . . should be coming up soon.

And evidently there it is, ooffff. Wait, that's just the unfinished part of it.

Here's the Visitor Centre, only unfortunately . . .

. . . there's no one here at the moment.

Ahh. 'Come back tomorrow'.

Some info on the canal, which dates from 1895 (then 'the longest lock in the world and the first to operate using electricity')

Here's the Soo Locks on the Canadian side, first built in 1798 by the Northwest Fur Company, but destroyed by the US in 1814 to disrupt British movements. It was rebuilt in 1895, after the US had forbidden Canadian ships from passing through the existing locks in 1870, and it was renewed in 1987; it's small and short by current standards at 77m, and is used only for recreational and tour boats.

('Soo' is just a pronunciation of 'Sault', an Old French word for 'rapids', based on 'sauter', to jump.)

It's fully loaded at the moment, with a 21 foot drop on the other side.

A look back westward up the Sault Ste Marie Canal.

There are presently two lock canals on the US side, the MacArthur Lock, 240m long, built in 1943, and the Poe Lock, first built in 1896 (at that time, 240m, then the world's largest, but now 370m long) and these are the ones used by shipping, with no fees to get through. There's a third one now in construction, to be finished (we're told) in 2030.

Both US locks are owned and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and they supersede four earlier locks, first begun in 1853 to carry the large ships bearing the copper and iron ore coming out of Lake Superior. According to Wikipedia, some 10,000 ships now pass through these per annum.

Here we are, waiting a bit impatiently to get this show on the road, errr, canal. (L-R) Dmitri, Kristin, Ryan, Alison, William, Marlowe.

The water looks like it's dropped by the requisite 21 feet by now. How about it, guys?

We're on the other side now, and the 'famous' Soo Locks Boat Tours rig is certainly settling down.

And they're off! (Photo by Alison)

The hare and . . .

. . . the tortoise.

We're off on a brief walking tour of Whitefish Island, i.e. the other side of the lock.

Contemplative Ryan (photo by Alison)

There's an 'Indian Reserve' on the island, but not on this part of it.

Back to the canal, as the lockmaster loads up the next client.

-- Hold on to your seats, folks, we're going down!

Ready, set, go! (photo by Alison)

Time to head back, dinnerwise.

A little shoreside adornment on the maritime theme

We're off to dinner now -- not mooses or elks, just at the nearby Lychee Thai Restaurant. They kept open past closing time for us, and it was all very good.

That's about where the sun would be at this hour, behind the Quality Inn Bay Front . . . but could that really be the sun we've known and loved for so long? Maybe it's all about Canadian wildfire smoke in the air.

Arising in the morning to find sunlight and no cars in the Station Mall carpark yet.

As mentioned earlier, that mall is more than 500m long, fairly narrow down at this end, but . . .

. . . but much fatter at the farther end. There were some suggestions that it's a doomed commercial enterprise, down here in the inner city. A general wave of the future, perhaps.

The southeastern view from the Quality Inn sixth floor along Bay Street. Today we're off up the coast, bound for so-called 'Batchawana Bay'. Breakfast in the Quality Inn was not inspiring, unless you really like waffles and scrambled egg wraps. (And wee tiny plastic juice cups.)

More classic Canadian and Upper Michigan straight-arrow highways, but this one's got a lot of serious maintenance all along significant parts of it. Well managed, no real delays.

Unless the satellite is mistaken, we're nearly there.

One of the chief reasons we'd chosen Sault Ste Marie for our reunion was to take the famous Agawa Canyon Tour Train, a 'one-day wilderness excursion' 114 miles northward through reputedly amazing scenery. But it was already fully booked months ahead, so, instead, it's Batchawana Bay Provincial Park.

We're in two cars, and ours jiggled the wrong way from the entrance -- missed the Batchawana Bay Provincial Park visitor centre entirely, and now we're at the end of the road.

So our carload sets off for an interesting beach walk.

Marlowe and Kristin comparing notes on things.

We'll leave the car up there in the dead-end lot and see what this Lake Superior beach has to offer.

Bits of driftwood strewn all about -- nothing at all as interesting as at our Lake Superior beach 'back home' at the 'South Beach' cottage by Ontonagon.

But this long thin auxiliary lake running all along behind is thought-provoking.

One kilometre down, there's the visitor centre (the interior of which offers daytime and overnight camping licenses, some thin brochures of local attractions, and two vending machines).

A map of some of the Provincial Parks along the 'Water Trail'. We're way down there at the lower right end.

That appears to be a council meeting planning our next adventure, but in fact it's not. It's just random nothing moment.

The Voyageur's Lodge [i.e. motel] and Cookhouse just up the road, as well as The Voyageurs' General Store and Apple Fritter Fryhouse. The Ice Cream Shack is an add-on, and the gas pumps are still called 'Esso', which is okay but a surprise.

The singular and plural voyageurs are from Google Maps.

In addition to Apple Fritters and smoked fish, there is a healthy sense of humor.

It's lunch time. [I had the best Reuben I've had in a long while, on a bun.]

During the summer season, and perhaps during the snowmobile season as well, this place looks like a moneymaker.

The 'voyageurs' were the French fur trappers who wandered all over the territories west of here on large canoes, and returned to the Sault Ste Marie trading stations to sell them off to be shipped away, mostly to Europe.

If you look up 'voyageurs' on Google, this picture is the one the AI Overview will give you. It's by Frances Anne Hopkins, 1879.

Next up: The Pancake Bay Nature Trail and the Bushplane Heritage Centre'