Sault Ste. Maire (pronounced SUE Saint Maire) is really two cities - one is in Ontario, Canada and the other is in Michigan. We were about 2 miles from the US. When I started mapping out things to do earlier this year I never noticed that some of the things we wanted to see were on the US side! Our passports were back with the MH so we decided to do what we did in Winnipeg - wing it!
We first stopped at the Sault Ste. Marie canal locks. They are doing major work so the locks weren't in operation, but we were able to walk around the grounds and look. They were first used in the mid 1800's for "big" ships to move between lakes Superior and Huron. Now "big" ships are too big and they have to use the locks on the US side. The Canadian locks are only used for pleasure craft. Still in operation today is the original swing dam. That is a mechanical "bridge" that will swing into the channel and drop steel "fingers" that will stop the flow of water in case the locks fail.
Stop #2 was at the Sault Ste. Marie museum which is housed in an old post office. This was a great place to get to see the beginning and on-going development of the city. Three floors of history.
After lunch we are off to discover the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre. For plane nuts (which I'm not) this would be a great place to hang out for a few hours. It has everything you would want to know about bushplanes, bush pilots, and bush fire fighters. They had a couple of short films that were interesting to watch, but that still doesn't make me really interested in planes - bush or otherwise. Karl said it was a great museum.
Our last stop was at the Ermatinger-Clegue National Historic Site. This piece of land housed the Ermatinger Old Stone House (original site) and the Clegue Block House (moved to this site). Both were residences of prominent Sault Ste. Marie businessmen of the 1800's. Ermatinger owned shares in the Hudson Bay Company and Clegue was an entrepreneur - sometimes successful, sometimes not.
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