The steep spiral staircase in the lighthouse at Iroquois Point has 72 steps. I climbed them. Twice.

I haven't blogged our Family Fridays in a couple of weeks, but we've still had them. Two Fridays ago, Teri and I geocached our way across Route 30 on our way to Orrville, then joined the girls, and the whole Johnson clan for Emily's Graduation Party and a whole Independence weekend of fun. Last Friday started out with more geocaching and a picnic lunch at Pontiac Lake, then we picked up Saturday afternoon with enough hours at our friends' pool to turn me into lobster man for most of last week.

This week, we started Family Friday a day early, with a drive to my inlaws' cabin in Grayling on Thursday evening. This gave us a good head start on our weekend trip to Sault Sainte Marie.

Even with our late departure, our northern starting point allowed us a stop for lunch in Mackinaw City, and we arrived in Sault Sainte Marie by early afternoon. We headed to our first choice for a campsite at Sherman Park, right on the St. Mary's River at the west edge of town. This was a nice enough campground at the back of the largest public park in town. The location would have been good, but it wasn't quite the "out-in-the-woods" experience we'd like to have, so we piled back in the van and headed almost twenty miles out of town to the Monocle Lake Campground in Hiawatha National Forest. This beautiful campground was nearly full by 2:30 in the afternoon, so we quickly selected a great site and set up camp.

By 4:00pm, we were back in town. We'd planned to start with the train tours, but they had closed up shop for the day, so we stopped in at the Soo Locks Visitor Center. There we learned that the last of the freighters had already passed through for the day, so even though there was a lot of daylight left, we seemed to be behind schedule on all accounts. There was a working model of a lock at the Visitor Center, so the girls at least got to see what they could expect. After a little shopping, we followed up on the dinner tip that Grandma Sandy had given us.

Marissa and Anna loved wading at the shoreline.

If you ever go to Sault Sainte Marie, you must eat at Antlers Restaurant on East Portage, across from the Edison Sault Electric Plant. Do not let its somewhat seedy exterior deter you, even if you find a row of Harleys parked outside. I assure you that inside, this bar and grill is entirely family friendly. You must make sure you get a full demonstration of all the "bells and whistles" while you are there.

After dinner, we headed out to Wal-Mart for a few necessities, then headed back towards camp, which was out on Lakeshore Drive just past the Bay Mills Indian Community. We decided to take a quick run up towards the cache at the Point Iroquois Light House. We loved this location, and the girls got to wade in the big lake at the mouth of the St. Mary's River. We spent so much time at the beach that we decided to come back and seek the cache at a later time, and in fact we revisited this site on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. The fact that this site had the nearest clean flush toilets to our campground was only part of the attraction.

And so, after a hearty breakfast, we did start our Saturday adventures back at Point Iroquois. This time we all climbed the 72 stairs to the top of the tower for a commanding view of the waterway, and then I went and found the cache while the girls returned to wading on the rocky beach.

We started out in a beautiful morning, but as we drove towards the city, clouds gathered and we began what would turn out to be a rainy day. (It never did rain back at the campsite, which was a good thing, since we'd left our tent windows slightly open.) The day was spotted with showers that seemed to form only over the city, and it was never bad enough to be a real problem. We got our tickets to the Soo Locks Train Tour and spent an hour learning all kinds of information about the town, the locks, and the LSSU campus. We also confirmed what we were beginning to fear: the time required to pass through customs would be more than we were willing to spend, and so we had to skip our intended run over to Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. (We also learned on the tour that before 9/11, there were five Border Patrol officers stationed in Sault Sainte Marie. Today, there are 49.)

Watching operations at the Soo Locks. Though we basically missed the big freighters, we got a great show from the smaller boats that passed while we were here.

Marissa wanted a genuine Upper Peninsula pasty dinner, and while the best place I know for this is six hours west at the Kaleva Cafe in Hancock, we found excellent fare at Frank's Place, just a block east of the Soo Locks.

After that, it was over to the Locks for the 4:00pm freighter, who turned out to be about half an hour early. You can see the superstructure in the photo, but we pretty much missed this one going through, and I was quite disappointed. However, as Anna and I stood on the observation platform watching the freighter get under way, we spotted a small sailboat headed for the MacArthur Lock. As Teri and Marissa joined us on the platform, one of the Soo Locks Boat Tours joined her. (By "small" sail boat, I'm guessing this one was around 20-25 feet. It was of local registry, and a shouted conversation between her owner and a crewman on the tour boat informed us that the former was starting his vacation.) As the lock operated to raise these two vessels 21 feet to the Lake Superior level, we had a good running commentary from the loudspeaker system on the tour boat. While the boats were motoring into place, Marissa announced that she was "bored out of her sandals", but as the water began to rise, she became quite excited at the sight.

We wrapped up the day with a little more shopping, until the rain became bothersome. Then we headed off to Glen's for a food resupply. The featured course was homemade baggie ice cream. We hit a few caches on the way home, including a really neat visit to
Mission Hill Overlook and Cemetery. Our last hunt was at the cache in our own campground, but that cache was already thought to be missing and has since been marked as needing repair.

On Sunday morning, we packed up as quickly as we could, made our morning trip to Iroquois Point, where Anna and I climbed the tower once again, then we jumped in the car and headed away from home. We'd originally discussed a day trip to Tahquamenon Falls, but it really would have taken too long. However, we did head across Lakeshore Drive towards the mouth of the Tahquamenon River. We wanted to get a peek at the Bay View Campground which had also been on the short list. We will definitely try to get into that campground on our next trip. There are only 24 wooded campsites in this small campground right on the beach of Whitefish Bay.

Back in the lower peninsula, the girls ham for the camera by the Mackinaw Bridge.

After that, we found a pull-off where the girls could wade one last time, and both ended up needing to change to dry clothes afterward. Then it was on over to M-123 and the trip southward. Quick stop in Mackinaw City for a photo op and to pull lunch fixin's out of the cooler, and then we started the long Sunday afternoon trek back down I-75. We didn't run into too much trouble until we got to Bay City, and then we turned on the radio and heard that there was a backup on and over the Zilwaukee Bridge, so we bailed out and took my super-secret alternate route and bypassed all of the traffic.

We got home at around 5:30pm and had a nice evening of unpacking and relaxing, and Marissa got to join the Sunday evening family chat.