Ahhh, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"... thank you, Ellie, and thank you, Gordon Lightfoot! Now this has been stuck in my head all day too!

I've been to Lake Superior once.. When I was about 15 or 16, my family took a vacation trip to the Upper Peninsula. This was not long after the Mackinac Bridge linking Michigan's Lower and Upper Peninsulas had been built and opened to the public, and it was a big deal then to take the 5-mile stretch of it. (Still is for many, and I'm sure myself if I ever get up that way again.) We were quite thrilled driving across.

(Historical note: I was born in Detroit, grew up in Dearborn [Detroit suburb], in the southeastern corner of the state. I moved to Boston in 1969 and lived in the Boston area and then Providence until 2002. In many ways, that area became home to me in ways that Michigan never had been and still isn't really. But after some serious medical and other problems I moved back here, to Ann Arbor where my sister and her partner live, to be near my remaining family.)

The first night, we stayed in a motel in St. Ignace, just over the bridge on the U.P. We were treated to a display of Northern Lights that night! Not the colored kind, but beautiful shimmering layers of white light hanging in the sky.. still, not something you ever see around Detroit.

The next day we traveled along the northern coast of the U.P., which was my one visit to Lake Superior. I do not recall if we actually stopped and took a dip in the lake. It is the largest of the Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, with a volume of roughly 3-quadrillion gallons (see http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/superior/facts). I've heard that the Lake Superior water is MUCH colder than that of Lake Michigan!

We also visited Sault Ste. Marie* and watched the Soo Locks in operation, raising or lowering the water level of the St. Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, so that a ship can pass through from one lake to the other. The locks bypass the rapids of the river, where the water falls 21 feet (7 m) !!!

It was a delightful trip all around!


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*Interesting factlet I just learned about Sault Ste. Marie: While there are two of them, across the St. Marys River from each other, one in Michigan and one in Ontario, they were originally ONE PLACE!!!...

"Sault Ste. Marie is a cross-border region in Canada and the United States. Formerly a single settlement from 1668 to 1817, it was subsequently divided by the establishment of the Canada–US border in the area." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sault_Ste_Marie