Sault Ste. Marie Locks

As we came back from the north shore of Lake Superior, we stopped at Sault Ste. Marie (the "Soo") on the US side to watch the locks between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Lake Superior is 21' higher than Lake Huron. There are rapids between the two lakes and in the past cargo had to be off-loaded and portaged around the falls and reloaded. There are five locks at the Soo (1 Canadian and 4 US, though 1 isn't in operation). One of the locks was rebuilt in 1968 to handle 1,000' ships. This lock handles 79% of all traffic through the locks. The locks are operated by the Corps of Engineers and it costs nothing for a ship to go through them. The locks are filled and emptied without any pumping of water. There is a hydroelectric plant which provides the electricity for the doors of the locks. While we were there we saw both locks operating simultaneously, though in an opposite way; one was for ships going upstream and the other downstream. It was fascinating. In the above photo you see the front lock filled for boats going down to Lake Huron while the back lock, MacArthur Lock, is empty and there is a large ship entering the lock. The drawbridge arm in the center left of the picture is lowered after the ship enters the lock. As far as we could figure this was to prevent a boat from getting in the way of the opening of the doors. This boat was 784' long.

This photo is looking up towards Lake Superior where there are three boats waiting to enter the filled lock. The bridge is the international crossing.

Here, the large boat has risen up and the private sailboat has only the tops of its masts visible. Each boat is tied up to the wharf on one side before the gates are closed. The water rises and falls very quickly.

Here you see two boats heading out of the closer lock into Lake Huron. There were two men who were tieing up the boats on the wharf below. Since it is after 9/11, there was only one entrance to the locks and our handbags were searched and there were many areas blocked off from public access.

Musings about US Camping

The picture above is at Tawas Point State Park in Michigan, a huge campground; i.e. 250-300 spaces tightly clustered around several loops on a sandy spit sticking out into Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay. On this trip we have stayed at lots of different campsites, from commercial sites to state and national park sites. I find that in these packed sites I don't feel like I am getting away from it all. When we were at the campsite in Yoho National Park, what I heard was the river and what I saw was the huge peaks and even though there were RVs relatively nearby, I didn't feel like I was living in a city. When we stay at these other sites, I feel like I'm living in a city. I can hear my neighbors and I can see into their lives. I remember something I heard at a ranger talk about the long houses the First Nation people lived in in Canada. Many families shared these huge houses and there was an understanding that you didn't look into other people's space. I find myself both drawn to and feeling like a voyeur when I do so in a campsite.

Other than people with small canvas-sided pop-ups and tenters, we are a very small camper and we draw a lot of curiousity everywhere but the far west (in Fort Flagler WA there were three A-frame pop-ups). Many of these campsites have accessible sites for those with disabilities, a wonderful addition. At Tawas Point and at Pancake Bay there were boardwalks out over the sand so that people in wheelchairs could go out on the beach. Many people come with the most amazing number of toys: swimming pools, lights, signs listing their names (and the names of their dogs and children), boats, ATVs, tents, awnings, mosquito enclosures, games (Monkey Claw - the game I described that Bill Schuckel built involving the throwing of golf balls tied together towards a ladder [or in some cases a ladder with a paddle wheel on top]), a bean bag game that we found out was called "Potty" because the target looks like the top of a toilet seat in a latrine), chairs, radios, etc. They also have RVs of various sizes and congregate in family compounds and multiple cars. As a result, it doesn't feel much like wilderness to me. In addition, many people are listening to radios or watching TV inside their RVs.

I know I am probably from a different socio-economic class and have a different level of education from many of these people. I also know that the kids are having a fabulous time. It's like the 50's; they are running around on their bikes, playing in the playgrounds and at other sites and having fun. People are out jogging and walking their dogs. It is a community created at the campground. For many people, this is their vacation, and a cheap one at that.

However, I still wish for more quiet and wilderness (though I do appreciate a warm shower occasionally).

Kokanee National Park

The next day we got up, broke camp and headed over the Continental Divide to Kokanee National Park, which is directly south of Yoho. On the way we saw the above mountain goats right next to the highway. Everyone had slowed down and was out taking photos. There were supposed to be mountain goats at Hamilton Lake, but we never saw any. After getting down into Lake Louise Village we went back over the Continental Divide into Kokanee National Park and the Stanley Glacier hike.

This hike was only 8.6 km with 300 meters of vertical rise. It started in the remains of a burned forest. The fire was in 1968, but the burned stumps and trees still hadn't decomposed and there were few baby lodgepole pine, evidence of how hard the climate is. However, the open slopes allowed for amazing wildflowers - Indian paintbrush, columbine, roses and lots of things I couldn't identify. The hike was very gradual until we got up into the glacial valley at the base of the Guardwall (see above). If you look carefully, you will see a cloud of dust in the center which was a very large rock fall. The trail continued up the valled to its head where three branches of Stanley Glacier hung above us. There were waterfalls all over the edges, some disappearing into thin air because of the wind.

This phot shows two of the lobes of Stanley Glacier. There was a large moraine below which we did not climb, though there was an unmaintained trail to the base of the ice fields.

As we headed back out, we could see the mountains across the highway and down the U-shaped glacial valley. We drove on to Calgary on the Trans Canada and then headed south to Fort Macleod on our way back to Montana.

We have been making tracks since the Canadian Rockies. We have crossed three time zones in four days and are now back in Ontario near Thunder Bay. The first day we went south to Montana and headed across US 2 to Glasgow Montana. The next day we continued on US 2 to Larimore Dam (25 miles west of Grand Forks, ND). Today we went across Minnesota and up to International Falls where we crossed back into Canada where we plan to go around the north shore of Lake Superior. We've had four long days of driving and I'm looking forward to slowing down in the next few days as we head to Sault St. Marie and down the east side of Michigan and then across southern Ontario to Tunkhannock PA. The drives have been beautiful in a quiet way. It's been very wet (there was standing water all over N.D.) and the fields are all very green. There are a lot of rolling hills, so it isn't all flat. Minnesota, as its motto says, is the land of 10,000 lakes.

Yoho National Park

We drove from Cobble Hill, BC, via the Nanaimo ferry to Vancouver and to Kamloops, beating the forest fires that are presently ravishing Kalona and the Okanagan Valley. The route went up the Fraser River canyon and once we got to Kamloops Bob played disc golf on the longest course in B.C. We got up early headed east on Canada 1 (the TransCanada highway). All day the scenery was spectacular; starting with Shuswap Lake, Revelstoke National Park (where we crossed the Columbia River for the second time on the trip), Glaciar National Park, on our way to Golden where we crossed the Columbia River for the third time. We ended up at Chancellor Peak Camp Ground, just inside Yoho National Park on the banks of the Kicking Horse River, which runs fast, wide and green and under Chancellor Peak (3280 m). We decided to take a short 4.8 km hike to Wapta Falls on the Kicking Horse River. While we were hiking it started to thunder and pour, and although we had our waterproof jackets, our pants and shoes got soaking wet. The view above is of Wapta Falls (which means river in the Nadoka language of the Stoney people) in the pouring rain. The structure in front of the falls is a large piece of rock. We ended up hanging our wet clothes inside Snoopy, not leaving much room for us. However, we were grateful for the dry space to cook, eat and sleep as it continued to rain most of the night.

The next morning promised better weather and we headed to Emerald Lake and the 11 km hike (with 850 m of vertical rise) to Hamilton Lake. We started out flat and then switch-backed up and up through the forest. Finally we came out to this view and many other wonderful views over the Kicking Horse Valley and the snow covered peaks surrounding it. The mountain wild flowers were fabulous. Darwin got to chase sticks and we felt pretty good at making the ascent in 2 hours. When we got to the top, we ate lunch on the edge of Hamilton Lake.

This is a portion of Hamilton Lake which is on the dividing line between two different rock forms. On the left are the softer shale strata which but up to the horizonal strata of harder quartzite, limestone and dolomite of Mt. Carnahan. In the center is an anticline, the semi-circular strata. The lake really was this blue.

When we got down to Emerald Lake, aptly named as the above picture illustrates, we had a beer at a lovely patio on the lake while Darwin collapsed and attracted the photo journalists. The place was crawling with Japanese and German tourists. Our campground is also filled with quite an assortment of rental RVs filled with mainly Germans. Yoho is a Cree word meaning aw and wonder and it is an amazing place. There are 28 peaks over 3,000 meters and was the second national park in Canada. Yoho is also the location of the Burgess Shale which is a very important fossil site because the soft animals were burried in silt and thus werent scavenged and didn't decay, so the number of new species is amazing.