The Soo to Hilton Beach on St. Joseph Island, 2015

Tuesday, Aug, 11th. Laundry day. Followed by a visit to the Valley Camp Museum boat. Valley Camp was a great lakes boat. Much smaller than the 1000 footers that are used today. This was a good opportunity to explore one of these boats. The museum was very well done. Too much information.









A museum trip takes about 3 hours.  Or perhaps I should say a good museum takes about 3 hours; and this was a good museum. Really quite exhausting. By the time you get through it you are wrung out. And all of the information begins to jumble together in your mind. It is only when you look back on your pictures that some of the information starts to settle.

And what Lake Superior museum would be complete without the Edmund Fitzgerald portion.   They had a timeline for the day of November 10th, 1975. That fateful day. The theater had a presentation of what is the most commonly suspected cause of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.










There was two crumpled buoys, that looked like someone had crushed a pop can. They had secured a research boat over the resting place of the Edmund Fitzgerald. A strong storm came in and blew the research vessel off the buoys, and the buoys sunk 250 feet. At that depth the pressure is 10 times the surface pressure, and the pressure crumpled the buoys. That led us to a discussion of what the pressure must be like for submarines that go much deeper than 250 feet.

It took 3 hours to begin to do this museum some kind of justice and by then we were exhausted. Back to the boat. It was after 3  pm and the winds had got up. Too late in the day to fuel the boats and make our way to the Roberta Bondar Marina across the river, so we signed in for another evening at George Kemp Marina. A quick lunch and we were off to the local Walmart for provisions. While there was not a courtesy car, the boy in the marina office said we could borrow his. Now that is some local northern hospitality.


Wed, August, 12th, Dawned with another beautiful day. Little moth type bugs had covered the boat once again overnight. We hosed  down the decks to get rid of the pesky little things, filled up our water tank, and refuelled. Believe it or not, it was after 10 a.m. by the time we had this done.

We left the Soo and were off to see what we could see. A different route this time. Rather than use the St. Mary's River we went behind Sugar Island and thru Lake George. Lake George, while a good sized lake, has some very shallow spots. You don't want to get off the channel, only 1-2 feet of water. What a pretty trip.

The currents in some parts were adding 1 to 2 knots to our speed.

We saw the first coloured leaves of the season. Bright red. And more than just one tree. Pretty, but a little early. It doesn't feel like we have had summer. It has only been the last 4 to 5 days where we have enjoyed summer like temps. It is way to early for fall colors.

The summer clothes have not seen the light of day until this past week. Sure hope we get more use out of them before this trip is over. We would like to enjoy some summer before the season changes.

 Although it was only 2.30 pm we checked in to the Hilton Beach Marina on St. Joseph Island. The winds were building and white caps were beginning to form.

While Peter and Jim were checking the boats in, Linda and I enjoyed a glass of wine on her back deck. How civilized. This is the first time on our trip that the weather has encouraged this.

When the boys got back to the boat, they made their telephone call to Customs to check in by phone. Both boats are now legal in Canada and we did not contaminate Jim and Linda's boat this time.

After a short rest, we went to the local restaurant for dinner. Found out that there were still 4 seats available for the local theatre. Tonights entertainment was Sophia Perlman an up and coming Jazz/Blues singer. We were a half hour late for the opening of her show as the restaurant took awhile to get our meals.

The theatre, The Old Townhouse Theatre,  is run by volunteers. Jim figured there were about 400 people in the audience.  At $37.50 per person; they are not giving the performances away. It looked like locals and cottagers in the audience.  At intermission people were breaking off into groups. While they knew each other, Peter pointed out that he did not recognize anyone. Nor did Jim. Jim thought he was too far away from home for that.

The local theatre company hope to break even with their productions. Apparently the max they pay for the entertainment is $7,500. This Perlman group of four; Sophia, the singer; a piano player extraordinaire, a base fiddle player, and a drummer; all come from Toronto. We figure a 10 hour drive for them.

And that is the cultural portion of our trip.

We walked back to the boats; all down hill. Whew! It was after 10.30pm. Time to call it a day! We will wait and see what tomorrow will bring.