Cedarville, DeTour, and Sault St. Marie

Well it has been a while since the last post primarily due to a poor internet connection. The wifi at the Wild Cherry Resort near Suttons Bay is usually good, but we took a week and traveled over the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula and had no internet connection. So this post starts a series of catch-up posts.

The main reason for the trip, was to go to the Les Cheneaux Islands Antique Wooden Boat Show that is held at the marina in Hessel, MI. The show is held annually the 2nd weekend of August. We attended the show a couple of years ago and were quite impressed with the quality of the boats. More on this in a later post.

To get to the Upper Peninsula (UP) from northern Michigan requires a drive accross the Mackinac Bridge. The bridge is 5 miles long and rises 199 feet above the water. Lots of steel cable was used to construct this suspension bridge- 42,000 miles worth to be exact. Those cables weigh over 23 million pounds and the bridge total weight is over 2 billion pounds. All this to go across the Straits of Mackinac. It is one impressive structure. Here are bridge pictures of our crossing.


Our campground was located in Cedarville about 4 miles from Hessel the location of the boat show. Cedarville makes for a good central location for exploration. One of the side trips took us to the Village of DeTour located at the east end of the UP. Traveling farther east than DeTour requires a ferry ride to Drummond Island. We have done that in the past and decided to not take the ridethis time. A couple of pictures of the ferry tells the tale.
Another side trip was a drive to Sault St.Marie and a visit to the locks on the St. Marys river. We always enjoy watching the ships "locking through" the locks. We lucked out as we got to see 2 ships lock through within 2 hours.

The first photo's show the empty lock, a ship entering, and the ship fully in the lock. This ship is 712 feet long and 72 feet wide. The second ship pictured is one of the Great Lakes big boys. It is 1000 feet long and 105 feet wide. This is the first time that we have had the chance to see one of the big ones- what a sight. Click on the full length view for a good look.