Back In the U.P. of Michigan; City of Detour/ Day 83/84 August 23 & 24

On Friday, August 23, Day 83 we headed down the St Mary's River, it was another pretty day, lots of fishing boats out & they all were fishing in the marked channel, of course. We arrived @ Detour State Marina which just opened in July after a total redo; all new docks, dredged, new layout, new facilities, everything & it is beautiful. 

No one should be out on these lakes in November!

As we stop and think about this very strategic location on the Great Lakes, over the past hundreds of years, every man that ventured to and from Lake Superior had to pass thru here. Consider the Indians that flourished here with the abundance of fish and wild life, then as the white man discovered the area, other natural resources began to be harvested and transcended thru this channel. Beaver furs from the Indians were worth a fortune to the settlers & traders, almost to the extinction of these poor animals. Indians traded the furs for trinkets.

We biked around a bit. Not really a bike path & not much of a downtown, but there is a post office, gas station, 2 restaurants, 1 bar, grocery, hardware & 2 gift shops. Really everything one needs, when you keep it simple. We dined out @ the Mainsail & had nicely spiced Whitefish & Doug had the fried pollock (a fish)-he is definitely getting more adventurous. 

We stayed 2 nights & ran into Vicky, Chris & Hannah who we met in Harrisville & hooked us into the wifi booster. Good to see you!! 

Not as impressive as Duluth

We biked to the Botanical gardens & the museum. The second day the wifi crashed so again I was not able to work on the blog. 

this is what Doug does after our strenuous days

Summer has arrived for us at Last!! Day 81 & 82 , August 21/22, The Soo

We decided to leave the next morning (Weds, August 21) & go across the river to Kemp Marina in Michigan, where we stayed in June. It is a much nicer marina.  We have chores of laundry, washing the boat, taking the kayak apart & need water & Kemp Marina is a much better place to complete these chores. They also have diesel priced @ $3.99/gal, which is a good price so both boats put some diesel in. We worked all day until cocktail time. I went on Krogen finder & found that Allizan had left this Marina just yesterday. Darn, missed them by one day :(  The boat, Hallelujah, who also just finished the Lake Superior coastline traveling counter clockwise, (we went clockwise) invited the 4 of us over for Docktails. This is our first time meeting or seeing them. They hit many of the same places we did. They are on a DeFever 44. They have done a great deal of boating, so they shared some stories & advice with us for the great loop trip. Thanks Barb & Dave for your hospitality. 

August 22, Thursday we stayed put because we needed to rest from the stressful work day yesterday & finish up a few things. There was a stressful situation in the laundry room yesterday, but it was resolved. We even did a little shopping today & stopped @ the American Legion because they were selling homemade pasties for $4.00 apiece & since we are such experts, we thought we needed to rate theirs. You know, we are back in pastie country. The Legion sells them frozen to go, which is fine.  We'll have them some cool evening in September. It is another beautiful warm, sunny day. 

Yes, another picture of a freighter!

1555 Miles logged on August 20th, our last day in Lake Superior

We left our last stop (Batchawana Island anchorage) in Lake Superior on Tuesday morning, August 20,

Day 80 of our trip. It is a beautiful blue sky, sunny, warm & calm water day.  A glorious bridge day; two months ago when we entered Lake Superior, we were driving from our bridge & today we are doing the same as we leave this awesome Lake. Considering, we have only had 1 other day warm enough & bug free enough to do this, it makes this pretty special. On our way into Lake Superior in June, we locked up through the American lock.  

Now, we are locking down through the Canadian Soo lock. We drop 21 feet in elevation. In the States lock, they threw us lines to hold onto (brand new ones-lucky us).  In the Canadian locks, they have plastic covered cables that our secured to the walls but have enough room to loop your own line around them. We positioned the boat with a cable near the bow  & one near the stern. Our line slides down the cable as the water level drops & we descend. Everything went smoothly. The Soo locks are located in the St Mary's River. We could see the rapids of St Mary's River from the canadian side.  

the viewing gallery

After leaving the lock, we docked @ Bondar Marina, Ontario, named for Canada's first woman astronaut. We now have logged 1555 miles. There are bike & walking trails along the shoreline & next to the Marina is a permanent tent where they hold concerts. There actually is a mall, walking distance from the Marina. We are disappointed in the marina; it's a tad run down. We walked to the mall, which has a Walmart attached so we were able to do some grocery shopping. Later we walked to Solo, a good Italian Restaurant.  We were hoping to bike some here in Canada, but we've decided to head back across the River to the states. 

Day 79/August 19th/Last stop in Lake Superior/ traveled over 1500 miles

On Monday morn, August 19 pulled up anchors (had a stern out for the first time this trip), because anchorage was too small for us to swing. Before our trip this summer, I never liked to swing with only 1 anchor.  I used to insist we tie to land or have a stern anchor out, but this trip, we were very comfortable with just the one anchor. Headed to Sinclair Cove where u r able 2 view ancient pictographs. We had been there before w/ our SeaRay & the drawings were pretty interesting to see, you could still make out the shapes of canoes & animals. When we arrived 3 hours later, we entered the cove first & realized it was too small for our 2 boats-Drat!! So we had to change course & will pass within 8 miles of where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down & is resting on the bottom.

Sinclair Cove

Indian Pictographs

Big Batchawana Bay

Today, Day 79 we hit the 1500 mile mark on our way to Batchawana Island, our last anchorage in Lake Superior. It is a large area, with cottages along the mainland shoreline where the beach is. There is a road that comes down to the water also on the mainland. We anchored in 15 feet of water which didn't take us very close to the island. It feels like we anchored out in the middle of a small lake. We were hoping to stay out in Lake Superior for a few more nights but this is not conducive for staying more than one night.  
We were visited by 5 loons this evening, saying goodbye to us. 

 As of today we have  spent 2 full months cruising Lake Superior. It has been amazingly spectacular. We are running out of adjectives to describe it. Even though, we have had 2 months here, it seems like it went too fast, isn't that amazing? The rest of the trip will be fun, but I know I will miss the beauty & awe inspiring scenery we have been lucky enough to experience.  One thing though, I won't miss the cold temperatures.  

Our last sunset over Lake Superior

Indian Harbor/ Devil's Chair; August 17, 2013

Garry & his 2 beautiful Salmon

Fresh Salmon & sweet potato chips

Saturday, August 17, we arrived to Indian Harbor after a few short hours. We have traveled 1447 miles. Connie B was anchored there, the Nordic tug we met in Otter head. Waterford & Day Dreams both had to put out stern anchors due to the size of the anchorage. It is a pretty place with a sand beach to our starboard.  The weather has continued to improve, it's sunny & in the 70's. Garry started fishing immediately after getting the anchors set & caught a salmon from the stern of the boat. That got him excited so he spent some time fishing from his dinghy in our cove & caught a bigger salmon.  Needless to say we had a great dinner. Then for dessert we had a beach campfire with s'mores.  

Sunday morning, after checking the wind & wave forecast, we hopped into our dinghy's & headed out to Superior to explore the rock formations called Devil's chair. These are really cool and fun. We were able to wade around these interesting volcanic rocks. 

Moose skull :(

After lunch, we hiked 3.5 miles to the next bay, Warp's bay & we were tracking Moose & bear but didn't see either. But we sure did see tons of evidence; a moose skull, tracks, paths & lots of big piles of poop. 

After dinner, Doug & I kayaked a couple of miles. It was a gorgeous, calm evening.  Our last few anchorages, the lake water has been clear as glass. You can see the bottom in 18 feet of water. We had another warm 70 degree day. 

We have broken a personal record: we have anchored 27 out of the last 30 days & still loving it! We haven't run out of food, water or space! 
  
Anchorages: all in Lake Superior

Grand Island   2  Nights

Lac le Belle.    2 Nights

Stockton Island   2Nights

Isle Royale  10 Nights

Loon Harbor  2 nights

Otter cove  3 nights

Woodbine  1 night

Battle Island 1 morn

Slates  1 night

Pulpwood  2 nights

Otter head 3 nights

Bruele  2 nights

Indian Harbor 2 nights

Brule Harbor/ Day 75/ August 15, 2013

Day 75, Thursday, August 15 pulled up anchor, the strong wind warning over, almost. Waves 2-4's to occas 6's but the thermometer says 61 degrees. It has been 48 degrees in the early mornings when we get up. So 61 looks good to us. Under way 7 hours, we arrive to Brule Harbor. We are anchoring close to mainland Canada, in Lake Superior Provincial park. Thank you Canada for making most of your beautiful Lake Superior coastline, park area, so it is still wild & rugged. Yes, I could become a tree hugger with a little encouragement!! 

Our view out of our back deck

We are anchored in a beautiful snug spot, which took some maneuvering to get secure. The water is pretty deep in here which makes it tougher. We are tied to shore & Garry has a stern anchor out, both to keep us from swinging. Garry is in the same cove but not close. We have a huge beaver dam in our area. Jacque made a nice meatloaf for dinner for us all, Thank you for feeding us, Jacque.

During dinner, a small sailboat sailed into our cove & proceeded to tie up very close to us. There were five 20 something's on board. Wouldn't you think they would like some privacy?  They got settled, ate a quick dinner, then they donned rain gear, it wasn't raining but it was cool out. All 5 of them hopped in their dinghy without lights & took off.We don't know where they went & it was after dusk.  There are no public places anywhere near, only the open waters of Lake Superior. We didn't hear them return but the dinghy was tied up in the morn when we awoke. Thank goodness! They left that afternoon.

Water clarity, can you believe it?

Friday, turned into one of the nicest weather days we've   experienced. We took off in our dinghies early while the Lake was calm & checked out the Pukaskwa pits, we had read about. They have been studied & researched. It is thought they are thousand of years old, but no one knows what they were used for. 

Garry in his hot tub Pukaskwa pit

   Of course there are theories. Garry's theory is that this one was a hot tub for their tired achy bodies after a long day of hunting & gathering. Hot rock therapy. We then checked out Old Woman's Bay.  The cliffs are high & majestic. We walked along a sand beach, found a spring fed small pretty inland lake off the sand beach & the guys had to skip some stones in the calm water. 

In the afternoon, it actually got up to the mid 70's. We kayaked our cove & around the near by islands. We walked around the rocks on Entrance Island. This is another beautiful, quiet spot. We heard loons last night but haven't seen any but we have watched Eagles soaring & one flying down to a beach to grab a fish. 

We were able to sit up on the bridge & read our books & I even went for a quick dip in the water behind the boat. 








We kayaked after dinner, the moon rose brightly @ about 3/4's full.

Everyone says HI, wish you were here!!