Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Tuesday and Wednesday, July 20 & 21, 2010- Escanaba & St. Ignace, Michigan

Tuesday we traveled 277 miles from Superior, Wisconsin to Escanaba, Michigan.  Superior is along Lake Superior and Escanaba is along Lake Michigan.   This area is in the far north of United States, nice in the summer but probably not the best in winter.  There are many snow mobile trails so I surmise there is a lot of snow in the winter.  No major cities along the way only occasional small towns, between the towns are wooded areas.  We camped in a county campground, Pioneer Trail Campground.  Tom and I had camped here previously and I’m sorry to say that it is obvious that money is not being put into the upkeep of this campground.  We had to look hard to find sites that were satisfactory and this park is in a pretty, quiet area.   Seeing others washing their RVs and not seeing anything about not washing RVs we all took this opportunity to give our motorhome and Larry and Joanne their 5th wheel a good washing.  As we washed these RVs a storm arose but we were able to finish the job- just had additional help rinsing.

Wednesday we motored across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from Escanaba to St. Ignace- small towns, wooded areas and then along the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  St. Ignace is a resort town as it is in the Mackinaw area and south of Sault St. Marie.  After getting into the Tiki RV Park we drove up to Sault St. Marie to the Soo Locks. 

From Michigan 2010-07-21
Lucky for us, two ships entered the locks from opposite directions- one going from Lake Huron to Lake Superior and the other going from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. 
From Michigan 2010-07-21
Lake Superior is 21 feet higher than Lake Huron so in the locks the ships were either elevated or lowered 21 feet depending on from where and to where they were going.  There are 4 locks so more than one ship at a time can go through the locks.  After topping the afternoon off with ice cream we returned to the campground.  Today was a beautiful, bright sunny day with a nice breeze that kept the temperatures in the comfortable zone.