August 24, Sunday – Locking Through

Saturday was spent inside of Snee-Oosh listening to the rainfall and relaxing but by Sunday I was ready to get out so I headed east to Sault Ste Marie. I drove to the end of Interstate 75 and noted that I had done both ends of this number; where it began in southern Florida – a long time ago (May 6th) and ended at the Canadian border at the St. Marys River. I-75 somewhat joined an elite group of interstates: Interstate 5 from the northwest to the southwest in San Diego; Interstate 10 coast to coast along the bottom and Interstate 95 up the east coast.
Downtown Sault Ste Marie was depressing. There were many empty buildings and the streets were dirty. Once upon a time it had an interesting historic district but due to the lack of leadership it was a mesh mash of architectural styles with no direction. Of course the main draw are the Corps of Engineers Soo Locks. Just as the Niagara Falls was a bottleneck at the eastern end of the Great Lakes, the rapids on the St. Marys River was a barrier at the western end of the freighting route. It was strange to have the 21 foot drop between Lake Superior and Lake Huron represented by the river rapids and right next to the river the paralleling locks to eliminate that drop in one giant step. Here lake freighters (lakers) moved up and down (up bound/ down bound) carrying iron and copper ore, coal, grain. One 1000-foot laker could haul as much as six 100 car trains or 2,308 semis. But the day of hustling commerce had past; the steel mills and gone elsewhere.
I did get to witness an up bound laker going through the locks along with a multitude of other folks as we stood in the raised, enclosed viewing platform. Someone in the crowd mentioned that once you were able to stand on the sides of the locks and almost touch the ships as they went through. In fact you could see the paint striping on the concrete outlining where people could walk. Now you had to be back on the platforms. This went along with the airport security type of entrance that you had to go through to reach the action area. 9-11? I was wondering if the Ballard Locks in Seattle had undergone a similar change. It would create a crisis because people walked across the lock gates to get from one community to the other community on the southern bank of the cut.
Further down the canal was a retired laker called the Valley Camp that had been converted into a museum and it was here that I spent two hours. I learned about life on board one of these workboats and what they carried. Equipment that was used in the trade was displayed and explained. One section was devoted to the sinking of the Edmunds Fitzgerald. They had a large layout of the history of the huge freighter which was followed by the radio log of that night in November 1975 when she disappeared off of Whitefish Point. It was intense reading the communications between two freighters fighting their way through this horrific storm. There was information on the two theories as to which way one of the largest ships on the Great Lakes persisted. Both were convincing. One was her cargo panels let go; the other she hit a shoal and ruptured. On a wall the names were listed on the wall. Also on display were two aluminum lifeboats from the stricken vessel. The hulls were twisted and holed revealing the force that had impacted them. The laker went down in 30 foot waves with winds gusting to 90 mph. It must have been filled with panic.