Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan - July 20th, 2021
Our bodies were a little stiff on Tuesday from our long hike the day before. Since we had already seen both the Upper and Lower Falls at Tahquamenon Falls State Park, we decided to spend the day in Sault Sainte Marie to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Sault Sainte Marie was just an hour’s drive away.
The day started out cloudy and drizzly. We headed straight for the Famous Soo Locks Boat Tours dock and got on the noon cruise. The Soo Locks are right on the United States and Canadian border. There are two cities named Sault Sainte Marie, one on the American side of St. Mary’s River and one on the Canadian side. The border was still closed due to the pandemic, but was scheduled to open in another month.
The Soo Locks are on St. Mary’s River, which connects Lake Huron to Lake Superior. The locks were built to allow ships to pass through the shallow rapids of the river at that location. The tour boat takes you through the locks, then turns around and takes you back through the locks. A tour guide on the boat points out a few other points of interest along the way. Even though the border was closed, the boat crosses over the border while on the river, so we like to say we snuck into Canada.
After our cruise, we walked down historic Water Street to the Soo Locks Park. Inside the park, there is a two story observation deck which overlooks the locks. We saw a couple of large ships, called Footers, go through the locks while we were on our cruise, but only the small tour boats were going through while we were in the park. The large freight ships, the ones over 1000 feet long, are called Footers. There are 13 of them that sail the Great Lakes.
Now it was time for ice cream. Zak & Mak’s on Portage Avenue, right across the street from the park, fit the bill. They had a dark chocolate ice cream, we think it was called The Muddy, that seemed to satisfy RB’s chocolate craving.
We hung around Sault Ste. Marie until dinner time, enjoying the cell signal that was better than back at our campsite. For dinner, we ate at Zorba’s Greek American Restaurant. The place was hopping. Their take-out business looked like it was serving more volume than their dine-in business. We both had a gyro sandwich with fries and a Greek salad. Don’t let the plastic cups and plastic silverware fool you, the food was delicious.
We took the scenic way back to Tahquamenon Rivermouth Modern Campground, taking the road along the Lake Superior shoreline called the Whitefish Bay Scenic Byway. We stumbled upon the Point Iroquois Lighthouse along the way, so we stopped to snap a few pictures as the sun started to set over Lake Superior.
When we got back to the campground, we thought we would open the bottle of wine we bought back in the Amana Colonies in Iowa a few weeks earlier (Amana Colonies, Iowa - July 4th, 2021). Then we realized we had no cork screw. After asking about half a dozen neighboring campers, we gave up trying to find a cork screw. It was time to get creative. LB first tried cutting through the cork with a knife. He managed to cut all the way through, but the cork was not budging. Then he tried “drilling” through the cork with a screw driver. He poked two holes all the way through, and still the cork would not budge and no wine would come out. The cork was made from some type of synthetic cork that seemed to expand back to fill in the holes he created. After a couple of more holes and widening the holes with larger Allen wrenches, LB managed to push the cork into the bottle. As he did so, a spray of wine shot up out of the bottle, into his face and eyes, into RB’s face, onto our shirts, and up on the ceiling of the van. LB was a little upset that RB was laughing because the wine was stinging his eyes. It was a blush wine instead of a red wine and didn’t seem to permanently stain anything. So we ended the day drinking some rather large glasses of wine to complete our anniversary celebration.
So that is the classy way we celebrated our anniversary. Starting out with an international cruise, followed by dinner in a five star restaurant (according to Google reviews), and ending with sipping wine out of our finest wine glasses, otherwise known as measuring cups. Does it get any more romantic than that?
Check out our related video: Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan
(RB)