Day 10: Whitefish Point Park -Locks and Shipwreck Museum

Sawyer loves his boat rides! 

Our plan first thing in the morning was to top off our diesel and head to the locks, which are located just outside the harbor. Unfortunately, we learned that the locks were shut down for two hours for repair and there were several freighters lined up to enter, which means our wait could be five hours. Lucky for us the most used lock by pleasure craft (which is what we are considered) is the locks located just across the St Mary's River on the Canadian side. Only they don't open until 9am and we were ready to go at 8:00. We waited a bit, walked Sawyer one last time, and then headed to Canada! (Canadian locks are located just across from the US locks) This lock is much smaller than the US locks. It still raises us 21 feet but here there are plastic covered cables you wrap your line around as you ride up/down. While the US locks throw a line to you and you hold that while riding up/down. We shared this lock with a car ferry, much bigger than us.

Entering the locks

In the lock! We are being raised 21feet 

Sharing the lock with a carferry

Leaving the lock

While in Sault Ste. Marie, we ran into a couple we met sometime ago and they are heading to Whitefish Point as well. We will spend some time with them visiting the Shipwreck museum. They travel slower than us (if you can imagine that!) at 8miles/hour. They left before we were awake and will be waiting for us just in time for lunch. The run is a short one with only 33 miles of travel time but will need to add at least 45 min for transiting the locks.

Whitefish Point State Park offers a free dock but no power, no water and no toilets. All is totally fine with us as we have a generator and an inverter for running A/C/microwave/TV...etc, we hold 300 gallons of water and we travel with two heads (toilets)!
We have had wonderful weather so far, temps have been in the 70's during the day and the evenings have been cool enough for windows to be opened. We love the sound of the water and the smell of fresh unpolluted air, it's been great for our souls.

We were the only boats on the dock with the exception of some old fishing boats...

The old fishing boats

This was a scary metal dock (for me), narrow and open to the water and loud. Thankfully Sawyer got over his fear of this sort of dock back in Leland.

Cool old fishing processing sight, still in operation

We enjoyed our visit to the shipwreck museum where they have the actual bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. The bell was removed from the wreck as a request from family members. They replaced the original bell with one that has all the crew members names engraved on it and it is with the wreck off the point of Whitefish Point.

The Bell

Family photo at the Shipwreck Museum

After our trip to the museum we walked the mile or two back to the boat, enjoyed our time with our friends for a bit, had some dinner on board and called it a night. Tomorrow we are off to Grand Marais, MI. We are picking our way west along the southern shoreline and going to enjoy our time and get as far west as possible.

Sawyer is always up for some play time! He is loving boat life!