Day 6, July 17...Sault Ste Marie, MI to Schreiber, ON

I left Sault Ste Marie, Michigan and crossed the International Bridge, which spans the Soo Canal and Locks, into...Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.  Actually, a pretty neat and clean city.  Sault Ste Marie was founded by the French in 1623.  The St. Mary's river, which runs adjacent to the Canal is the water connection between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.  There are a long series of rapids connecting the two, with Lake Superior being some 23 feet higher in elevation than Lake Huron.  In the old days, boats had to be hauled around the rapids by oxen, and hence the building of the Canal in the 1890's.  

The commercial locks (for freighters) lie on the US side of the border, and the locks on the Canadian side (the original locks) are for pleasure boats only.  There is a very nice park and display on the Canadian side that I found interesting.

Here is a look at the Soo Locks on the Canadian side with the International Bridge in the background:

And a better view of the locks themselves:

Of course, the locks on the American side are much, much bigger than this to accomodate the large ocean-going ships that pass through the Great Lakes.

After visiting the locks, I went to the Canadian Bushplane Museum on the other side of town.  This was very interesting, too, and they had a very well-done 20-minute movie about how Canada fights forest fires, including the usage of "water bombers".  These are specially-designed planes that can pick up about 4,000 gallons of water off a body of water in about 15 seconds and then deliver it to the scene of a fire.  These crews routinely make over 100 "drops" a day during the height of the fire season.

Here are a few shots from inside the museum:

As you can see, they have quite a collection in the museum:

This is an earlier model of the Water Bomber that is no longer in service:

If you remember the TV show "MASH", you should recognize this:

It's a Bell model 47-D that was actually built in Buffalo.

After taking in the Bushplane museum, I headed west on Hwy 17, which skirts the northern shore of Lake Superior for about 450 miles to Thunder Bay.  Much of the highway runs right along the lake and there were really pretty scenes every few minutes.  Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of places to safely pull off and take a picture, but I did manage to get this shot somewhere between Montreal River and Wawa:

I stopped at Batchawana Bay and took a couple pics of the shoreline:

Mind you, the water temperature must be about 35 degrees, and there were people sunbathing along the beach everywhere!

This part of Canada is about as remote as it is along the Alaska Highway.  There are small towns scattered every 50 miles or so, and there was one 150 mile stretch with no gas available.  (I did fill up!)

When I left Wawa (real place) around 3:00 today, about 10 miles out of town they were repaving the highway.  I learned the last time I went to Alaska that this means removing all the paving from anywhere from 10 to 20 miles of road and leaving a dirt road for traffic to travel on.  Fortunately, it wasn't raining, so that wasn't so bad.  Anyway, I'm about halfway through 10 miles of dirt road when up pops a Moose from the side of the roadway, just sauntering across the road like she owned it.  I started slowing down when up popped her sister, ready to make a dash across the road also.  I stopped, they went, and from about 100 feet away I can tell you, that is one BIG animal.  Makes our deer look like midgets!

Anyway, tomorrow it's off to Thunder Bay.  

Miles today:  330
Total:          1,688