We are certainly not the first people to come up with the
idea of driving around Lake Superior, or any other Great Lake for that matter.
In fact, “circle tours” of the various lakes are marked with highway signs and
promoted by state and provincial tourist bureaus.
Nonetheless it seemed like a bit of an exotic adventure when we left the travel trailer at its “home” in Washburn and set out to “circle-tour” the lake. We decided to go in a clockwise direction and started out by driving across the
Bayfield Peninsula and then down to Duluth and then up the Minnesota North
Shore to the pleasant, touristy little town of Grand Marais, MN.
This was all ground we had covered before, on previous trips.
But the beautiful scenery never grows old and it was a clear, crisp
day that allowed us to see (with binoculars) our Sand Island Lighthouse 25
miles across the lake from a viewpoint near Silver Bay. MN. When we give tours
of the lighthouse and take people up into the tower to look out on the lake we
are often asked about the reference points that can be seen 25 miles across the
lake on the Minnesota shore; the most prominent of which is a plant that
produces, and loads onto ships, the pelletized iron ore known as taconite. So
it was fun for us to poke around that area and get a better handle on exactly
what we had been looking at from afar the last three summers.
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| GRAND Marais, indeed! |
We stayed at a pleasant “motor inn” in Grand Marais and walked
into town for beers, food and lake views.
The next day the wind shifted to the south and the weather turned
to a mix of clouds and rain and humidity with temperatures mainly in the 60s.
And, with a few exceptions, that was pretty much what the weather was like for
the remainder of the trip.
The border crossing was uneventful with most of the
questions about guns.
“Do you own any guns?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever travel with your guns?”
“Not when I’m in Canada.”
With a rueful chuckle at that remark we were released to roam
as we pleased (albeit unarmed) around this vast, sparsely populated country. In
land area Canada is 30 percent larger than the lower 48 states but it has three
million fewer people than California. The emptiness is palpable.
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| Fortunately, they haven't built any walls to keep us out - yet. |
Our first stop (a few hundred yards past the checkpoint) was
the Ontario Visitor Center. On past trips we have found these provincial travel
centers to be extremely helpful and Ontario did not disappoint us on this trip.
We got suggestions and maps and brochures for the entire
trip (all of the Canadian portion of the Lake Superior Circle Tour is in
Ontario, a province that is larger than Texas and Montana combined) AND they
called ahead and made reservations for us for the next three nights.
With a population of 109,000 Thunder Bay, Ontario is – by far
– the largest city on the lake and we stayed in an older hotel in the heart of
downtown with a good view of the lake.
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| Americans sometimes give Canadians more credit for "progressive" city planning and environmental preservation than they deserve. In fact, most Canadian cities are pretty dreary places; Thunder Bay being a prime example. This photo is taken from the waterfront, looking back at downtown and our hotel. |
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| Thunder Bay's attempt to make its lakefront more inviting. |
Thunder Bay was created in 1970 when the cities of Fort
William and Port Arthur were combined. Although it has stunning views of the
lake the city itself is not much to write home about, with lots of grain
elevators and a gritty, industrial vibe. However, we enjoyed our time there and
packed a lot into our 24-hour stay; touring the Fort William Historical Park,
which depicts the trading post that was at the heart of the Canadian fur trade
in the early 1800s; gazing at Kakabeka Falls (Ontario’s second largest behind a
little bitty thing called Niagara Falls); walking along the waterfront, and;
eating some excellent poutine (a Canadian dish made with French fries and
cheese curds topped with a light brown gravy).
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| On the other hand, Canada sometimes has some pretty good ideas! |
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| Shrimp poutine...much better than it looks. |
Our next stop was a two-night stay in a cabin at Sleeping
Giant Provincial Park. The “giant” is a massive complex of cliffs and rock
formations that abruptly rises nearly 1,300 feet above the lake forming the
northeastern edge of Thunder Bay. I hiked the 22 kilometer (about 13 miles)
roundtrip to the summit overlooks on a very humid, sometimes overcast day and
was treated to spectacular views that included the city of Thunder Bay and Isle
Royale National Park, which is just across the U.S./Michigan border in the lake
to the south of the Giant.
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| This is a two-in-one shot, the "Sleeping Giant" in the background and (in the foreground) a geologic formation still known as the "Sea Lion" even though the lion's head fell off more than a century ago. |
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| Above and below, spectacular views from the Giant. |
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| This is not the "Big Lake" but Betsy got this nice photo of the sun setting on Mary Louise Lake just outside our cabin door in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. |
The next two days we covered about 350 miles or so on
Highway 17, the Trans-Canada National Highway that loops around the beautiful,
sparsely-populated northern section of the lake. We stopped both nights at
quaint roadside motels and made frequent stops at turnouts and roadside parks
to take in the views.
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| For some reason a Canadian soldier from Winnipeg - en route to Europe during WWI - thought it would be a good idea to buy a bear cub at the White River, Ontario train station and take it with him. He named the bear after his hometown. The bear ended up at the London Zoo where he was noticed by children's book author A.A. Milne and his son, Christopher Robin Milne. The rest, as they say, is history, and White River found its claim to fame. |
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| Supposedly, this Canada Goose near Wawa, Ontario is one of the "most photographed landmarks in North America"? The goose was placed near the final section the Trans-Canada Highway to be completed, in 1960, because Wawa chamber-of-commerce types were crying wawa because the highway bypassed the town. |
We crossed the border on the international bridge in Sault
Saint Marie with a simple “welcome home” after a show of passports.
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| The downbound 1,000-foot long ore boat Walter J. McCarthy, Jr. passes through the locks at Sault Saint Marie. The opening of the Soo Locks in 1855, bypassing seven miles of rapids on the St. Mary's River that connects Lakes Superior and Huron, is one of the most important man-influenced events in Lake Superior history and made Duluth-Superior 300 miles to the west one of the largest ports in the country. |
After an interesting stop at the Soo Locks we left Lake
Superior and drove about 50 miles to Lake Huron and a ferry that took us out to
Mackinac Island for a two-night stay.
Mackinac (MACK-in-awe) Island is a place of odd, but oddly pleasant,
contradictions; a contrived tourist trap that is also a beautifully maintained
historic site; and a place where the wafting smells of horse manure and fudge somehow
manage to pleasantly coexist.
We walked, hiked and biked our way, literally, around the
island on an occasionally rainy, humid day.
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| Pretty good timing on this photo that Betsy took, eh? (notice how I'm starting to speak Canadian?) Fort Mackinac was established by the British during the Revolutionary War in 1780 to oversee the crucial Mackinac Straits that connect Lakes Huron and Michigan. The Americans technically acquired the fort at the end of the war in 1783 but did not actually get the British out until 1796. In July 1812, in the first land engagement of the War
of 1812 in the United States, the British re-gained the fort in a surprise attack that occurred before the U.S. commander had even heard that there was a war. In 1814 the Americans attempted but failed to retake the
fort in a bloody battle. After that war concluded the fort was once again returned to the United States and it
remained active until 1875 when it became the nation's second national park (after Yellowstone). During these years Mackinac Island was
transformed from a center of the fur trade into a major summer resort and in 1895 the Federal government gave the fort (and the park) to the State of Michigan. |
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| Looking down on the main part of the town from the fort. |
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| This photo pretty much sums up Mackinac Island where "horseless carriages" have been prohibited since the 1890s. | | | | | | | | | |
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| The motor vehicle ban includes commercial deliveries...horses only. |
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| After all of these years, a soldier is still on duty. |
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| A Mackinack Island H&B trail. |
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| The island's famous Grand Hotel, where it cost $10 just to walk past the point where I took this photo. It's also the primary filming site for the syrupy 1979 Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour flick "Somewhere in Time," which our hotel ran 24/7 on a TV channel in our room. |
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| This is a Michigan State Highway that loops around the island. Supposedly it is the only highway in the U.S. that has never had a motor vehicle accident. Check out the video! |
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| All Michigan taps! |
After a ferry ride back to the mainland we briefly crossed
the bridge from the Yooper to the Mitten (translation; Upper Peninsula Michigan
to Lower Peninsula Michigan) to look at a lighthouse that is a “twin” to our
Sand Island Light.
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| A Sand Island Lighthouse "twin". |
Then we quickly hopped back up north to the Yooper and the shores
of Lake Superior in time to take in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at
Whitefish Point.
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| This photo is taken from the Whitefish Point Lighthouse and shows what is arguably the most dangerous place on the Great Lakes. The lake narrows here as ships approach the locks at Sault St. Marie. However, to the northwest (left in the photo) there is more than 100 miles of open lake. When the winds blow from the northwest massive waves more than 30 feet tall can form. That's what happened 17 miles northwest of this point on Nov. 10, 1975 when the Edmund Fitzgerald went to the bottom with all of its 29 crew members. That night the beacon in the Whitefish Point Lighthouse (where I was standing when I took this photo) went dark when the power went out and the grounds were flooded by the massive seas, disabling the backup generators. The outage of the light may have been a contributing factor in the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. |
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| The Whitefish Point Lighthouse was the first on Lake Superior (1849) and is still one of the most important beacons on Lake Superior, currently operated by the Coast Guard. However the grounds are operated and maintained by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, which is must-see stop for anyone on the Lake Superior Circle Tour. |
After a spending the night in the optimistically-named town
of Paradise, MI we blew by Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which we had visited
two years ago, to take in the Keweenaw Peninsula, a place where we had never
been.
We arrived on a beautiful afternoon and went all the way to
Copper Harbor at the tip of the peninsula where we had time to tour another
Sand Island Lighthouse “twin”.
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| Copper Harbor, near the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. |
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| Another Sand Island Lighthouse "twin" at Eagle Harbor on the Keweenaw Peninsula. |
The next day was cold and rainy but it was a perfect day to tour a copper mine. The peninsula had some of the richest copper deposits in the U.S. and they were mined on a massive, commercial scale that employed thousands of men, most of them immigrants, from the mid 1800s well into the 20th Century.
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| A modern-day miner. |
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| In the background of this photo is a "one-man drill", an innovation that set off a long, bitter strike in 1913 that turned out to be the beginning of the end of copper mining on the Keweenaw. |
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| A chunk of pure copper. |
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| The Keweenaw National Historical Park celebrates the life and history of the region and the copper mining industry. However this beautiful area is clearly in decline, with few jobs and lots of snow (about 300 inches per year). At the turn of the last century brownstone like that used in the facade of this church in Calumet, MI was a popular building material. It is a beautiful stone, but also symbolic of a bygone era and a place whose best days may well be behind it. |
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| A memorial for "The Gipper" in his Keweenaw Peninsula hometown of Laurium, MI. |
Soon enough, the Circle Tour was completed, and we were back “home”
in Washburn after 12 days and more than 1,200 miles.
