Monday, August 3 

At the southeastern corner of Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior drains its bulk into the St. Marys River, a neck of water engineered to pass 80 million tons of iron ore, limestone, and other cargo annually through the Soo Locks. Before today, my only other memory of visiting Sault Ste. Marie is of a boozy October night in 2003 to celebrate my friend Nate's 30th birthday. I have video evidence of our bizarre hotel bar karaoke session on an old Sony camcorder, which I now feel obligated to recover. In my mind, it was some sort of Lynchian bacchanal, eerily lit and populated by masked strangers, though I’m guessing the video will reveal a tamer night than I remember.

I’m camping with my friend Sky across the bay at Tahquamenon Falls. Today I've booked us an afternoon voyage on the Nokomis, a butter-yellow sightseeing vessel that ferries us upriver into MacArthur Lock. Once inside its massive gates, we are raised 21 feet from the level of Lake Huron to that of Superior. Exiting the lock, the captain warns of his obligatory horn blast with a courteous "3, 2, 1…" Further upriver on the Canadian side is Algoma Steel, a hulking industrial menace of rust-red ducts, smokestacks, and cranes that marks our turnaround point. A smaller Canadian lock lowers us back down the ladder alongside a couple pleasure boats. Behind us, a family of eight are packed like sardines into an elegant wooden Chris-Craft tethered to a vertical guide rope.

On the Michigan side, looming incongruously over the river, is the Tower of History, a brutalist viewing tower built in 1968 by the St. Mary Catholic Church as a shrine to its intrepid missionaries. Inside its musty lobby, opposite a mural of Bishop Baraga, a bored teenage girl accepts our $8 fee. On the wall is a map of the U.S. where visitors can mark their place of origin with a colored pushpin. Michigan is full, so Sky plants his red pin in Minneapolis where he now lives. Faded dioramas of Ojibwe artifacts are scattered around the room. A looped video mutters away in a dark alcove. We take the elevator up to view the city and locks from 210 feet.

After beers at the Wicked Sister and a hike around Monocle Lake, we pull off at Pendills Beach where I log an evening swim in a shallow, sandy stretch of Whitefish Bay. It's my fourth Great Lake swim of the summer. Only Ontario remains.