Run back to the Soo (Canadian side) -- and a blog break

 Saturday, June 10 -- Whitefish Point State Dock to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (42 miles)

We woke to another cool day, but now with an overcast sky. We were underway by ten for a three-hour run to the Canadian side of the Soo. We locked down on the Canadian side, which is a much smaller lock and more user friendly for pleasure boats. The original lock (and the lockmaster's house) was built in 1895, but it collapsed in1987 and a new lock was built within the old one in 1998. 

We docked at the Roberta Bondar Marina, which is a city marina right downtown. Unfortunately, there isn't much more to be said for downtown Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario than for the American side, except it is bigger and more spread out. But equally dreary. We did a load of laundry and caught up on emails and blogging now that we had WiFi again. We also learned that Roberta Bondar is a native of the Soo, Ontario who was Canada's first female astronaut. She flew on NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992. 

We found a very nice Italian restaurant in town and enjoyed a lovely meal. Back at the boat we figured out how to watch an episode of Ted Lasso on Janet's laptop. The mosquitos were not nearly as bad as on Lake Superior, though still around. 

The blog is going to go silent for the next ten days. Craunological II is going to take a rest here at the Roberta Bondar Marina while we take some time off from boating. We'll take a few days to drive down to Holland, Michigan to see old friends, then fly to NYC for a long weekend to visit with our son and his family. And our daughter and her family will come to NYC for Juneteenth, so we'll get to see everyone. We should be posting again June 21 or 22.

P.S. Forgot to include these nice pictures of the Algoma Steel plant on the Canadian side of the Soo. It is upstream of the rapids, so its ore boats don't have to go through the locks. You can see the taconite pellets piled up in front.

And also this picture of the tug/barge combination Charles S. VanEnkevort and Erie Trader, upbound just a few miles into the lower end of Whitefish Bay. This pair is in the same fleet as the tug/barge combo that we saw loading ore in Marquette, but are newer, built in 2011/12. They threw a very big wake, which bounced us around pretty good when we hit it.