Day 4 - Soo Locks

Last Friday, we were in Sault Ste. Marie, and took a morning boat tour of the Soo Locks.


Here are the girls on the boat. We got prime seats, on the upper deck, near the bow.



First we passed the hydroelectric plant...this pic does NOT do it justice...this building is 1/4 mile long, made of the most beautifully-constructed rocks, with lighthouse imprints on the side! There were tons of fishing boats right off the building, it turns out this is where Lake Superior State University operates a fish hatchery and releases 20k-40k Atlantic salmon each year. They swim all the way back here from the Atlantic ocean - right up to the gate! That's why fishermen hang out by this building all day long. Later in the day we took a tour of the hatchery (no pics unfortunately) and got to see a live fish cam of the zillions of salmon right outside the building. They weren't biting, they had been gorging on mayflies (see previous post).



Here we are getting ready to enter the Soo Locks.



Megan looks a bit concerned! Notice the water level in this pic...how low we are in comparison to the side walls.

Twenty minutes later, the lock was filled by 21 feet, and the gates opened to let us into the Upper St. Mary's River.

Cool sighting of two freighters passing each other. We followed the southbound freighter (on the right) later in the tour.

Silly pic of Meg.

Cute little K with her new Mackinac Island hat. It was a bit breezy on a few parts of the tour, so we were glad to have brought our jackets.

Here we are passing behind the big freighter. We hoped to get to squeeze in the lock with this guy, but we got our own lock, instead. It was for the best...it takes forever for these huge freighters to get into place...they only have about 2 feet of clearance on the sides of the boat and have to go reallllly slowly because of momentum. It still only takes them 20 min to fill or drain the locks, it just takes longer to get in place.

Here we are going southbound, with the lock at the high level.

Twenty minutes later, we are a LOT lower, and ready to enter the Lower St. Mary's River.

Here's a pic of the bridge to Canada, the railroad bridge, and the falls that necessitated the locks in the first place.

After the boat tour, we ate lunch at a great deli with a view right onto the locks. Then we went on a walk down to the hydroelectric plant to see the LSSU fish hatchery. Megan and Jessica didn't make it, though!

Here are two freighters, one going up and one going down. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the locks, just sitting in the park, watching the ships go by. It was truly fascinating, believe it or not! There is a great visitor's center, too, and Katie had fun doing a scavenger hunt there. Random facts about the Soo Locks: There is no charge for boats to go through the locks! It's run by the US Army Corps of Engineers. There are no pumps at all, it is all gravity-fed or -drained. There are 4 locks on the US side, but only 2 are operational. About 10-11,000 boats go through the locks each year, or about 30 per day. Mike Rowe did a Dirty Jobs show, cleaning the bottom of the locks (wish I'd seen that one!)

We went back to the hotel to let the girls swim in the pool for a while. They had to keep up their streak of consecutive days of swimming. (It's still going on day 11!) Chris got pasties for takeout while I showered the girls, and we ate dinner in the hotel breakfast area. Then we went on a long walk through LSSU, to downtown, for ice cream dessert and more locks-viewing. The downtown is only about 2 blocks long, facing the locks, so everywhere we went we had a great view of the boats!