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Whitefish PointAug 11, 2007
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Munising Falls
Surfboat at Sand Point
Forest Fire
Aug 11, 2007 9:40 46757
Our first stop today is at the Munising Falls. It is a short walk to the falls and when we get back to the parking lot we talk to a couple who had just completed a 4 day 42 mile hike along the Pictured Rocks Lakeshore from Grand Marais to Munising.
We then take the car and run up to Sand Point. This is the site of an old Coast Guard Station. There is an example of a surfboat used by the Coast Guard. The boat was housed in a barn like structure on land with rails leading into the water. The rails were on a slant and the boat would slide down into the water when needed and then be hauled back up on shore.
With such harsh winters here this offered more protection for the boat and it was also better conditions to maintain the boat.
We stop in the small town, actually a village, Newberry for diesel. It is $3.009 a gallon. We put in 40 gallons for a total of $120.36.
We are headed up M 123 to Whitefish Point. A forest fire just raced through here in the past few days. You can still smell the fire and the speed limit is just 25mph through here because of emergency vehicles entering and exiting the road. So far the fire has only been on the north side of the road.
Whitefish Point and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. Lake Superior's deceptive beauty has an unrelenting fury and has earned the reputation as being the most treacherous of the Great Lakes. Of the more than 6000 ships lost on the Great Lakes in 400 years the most famous and mysterious is the Edmund Fitzgerald, and ore carrier out of Milwaukee. She took on taconite in Superior, Wisconsin in early November 1975. Just a few days later on November 10, all communication was lost and she took 29 men to a watery grave.
This museum is a memorial to the more than 30,000 men, women and children who have lost their lives in shipwrecks on the Great Lakes.
In the summer of 1995 a joint effort by the Great Lakes Historical Society, the families of the Fitzgerald, the Canadian Navy and the National Geographic Society raised the bell of the Fitzgerald to honor the 29 men. In its place a new bell engraved with the crew's names was placed on the now broken ship in 535' of water. The divers utilized the Newt, a self contained diving suit that allows divers to go to 1200' depths for indefinate periods with no decompression needed upon surfacing.
The museum offers a 15-minute movie on the Fitzgerald and displays of other ships that have gone down just off of Whitefish Point. The restored lighthouse shows how the light keeper Carlson lived during his 20 year tenure here from 1913 to 1933.
Since the light is a working light you cannot climb the tower to the lens.
3:15 46937 We are at the Aune-Port City Campground. Water, electric, Internet and a view of the locks for $25.00 a night.
We have been sitting here this evening watching the huge ore tankers come in. Tomorrow we will head down to the Soo Locks and watch them go through.
