#205 Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Soo locks RV camp 1 night

I first heard of the name Sault Saint Marie (Sault is pronounced Sue or Soo) from a friend of mine named Barry who lives in Wilmington. He’s a good mechanic that’s helped me out of many of a scrape with mechanical problems. He is retired from the Coast Guard and has a second career as a dredge boat captain. He stays extremely busy always out of town for the Corps of Engineers dredging our waterways. I was talking to Barry a year prior when we were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He said you know if you've got time you really need to go to Sault St. Marie. It's an amazing Lock and Dam system and structure. I told him I'm afraid we don’t have time right now.

Well now we do have time and it's our next stop so here we are. I was looking for a campground in the area and I'm sure there were some, but there wasn't a whole lot. We found one that was right on the water near a museum. They decide to poke fun at their name and it was called Soo locks RV park.

The RV park was nothing exciting but had a nice water view even though the RVs packed in close together. They're just capitalizing on where they are. We found out that there is Sault Saint Marie America and Sault Saint Marie Canada. It’s the same exact lock just one country on this side of the river one country on the other side of the river. This would be our last stop in America as prepare to go into Canada. We went to the visitor center where we could sit and watch the locks operate. I thought that was pretty cool and took lots of pictures and a video of it. I learned about what is it, how it works, and what it used to be like. It was a treacherous area of rocky rapids interrupting a waterway. It was completely impossible for boats. It was kind of like a very violent flat waterfall. Not a very large drop off more just like a continuous gradual torrent. I can only imagine early settlers and even native people wanted to make this navigable. Slowly and surely they would build bridges to go over but ships could not pass. The Corps of Engineers created an enormous Lock and Dam like you would have in Panama. These two rivers are at two different heights and if navigable would connect the Great Lakes. When completed some of the ships that pass through are a thousand feet long. Later they decided to make two of them. The second was even more enormous.

We watched his gigantic tanker come through and I was in awe of how such a thing could be thought out, drawn, and done.

The most important thing about visiting an area like this is don't get into too big of a hurry. We sat in an observation area and I took some pictures of the empty lock. I saw a vessel coming and I could just barely see the deck of it. I guess it's called the superstructure that's where the captain operates it. That's all you could see. The deck was level to the horizon. We just sat there and it probably took about half an hour to an hour to occur. We noticed that the ship very slowly more became visible as the water level rose inside the lock. Now we're seeing the entire ship and it's about 50 or 60 ft taller than it was a half-hour before. It’s just so much mass being manipulated by a mechanical device. A machine if you will. As a gear head, I just loved it.

Ship entering lock at low level

Same ship 30 minutes later

Tanker Museum

Later in the day, we were walking around saw a cool door front.

The name of the place was called the Bomb Shelter Saloon. It reminded me of some signs I saw growing up pertaining to duck and cover.

There was a sign across the way that helped explain the purpose of beer.

I saw this very cool Native American art on the street. We had a nice visit at the soo locks. They only had one night available so it wasn't a long stay but it was a pleasant one.

Soo Locks Campground 1001 E Portage Ave Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan 49783

GPS: 46.493, -84.3236