After Mackinac Island, we headed north to Whitefish Point MI, which is home to a Coast Guard station, and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. This point on Lake Superior is where ships from the west turn south toward the Sault Ste. Marie canals to enable passage southward. Many shipments of iron ore have passed through here on the way to Detroit.
Our first view of Lake Superior.Whitefish Point Light StationSo here we are on the shore of Lake Superior! Our fourth lake this trip!When we arrived, it looked like a storm.Two hours later, the sky had cleared quite a bit. Here is a ship turning southward.Sunset on Lake Superior (we woke up to sunrise on Lake Huron this morning!) This view is looking northward. Looking eastwardLooking southwardThe Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. This was one of the stops I have really been looking forward to. The Edmund Fitzgerald was a large ship which sunk 17 miles from here in November 1975. I remember that shipwreck, primarily because it was memorialized by Gordon Lightfoot hit ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you have some time, look it up and give it a listen. It is quite fascinating.White Shoal Lens. This is a second order lens (Outer banks lights are all fourth order lens). It has a 9 foot diameter and weighs 3500 pounds. Its light with 344 separate precision ground prisms can be seen 28 miles away!The museum contains artifacts from a number of shipwrecks.There have been over 6000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.The Edmund Fitzgerald sunk 17 miles from Whitefish Point. It was broken apart in a severe November storm and sunk 500+ feet deep. The entire crew of 29 men were lost.Scale model of the Edmund FitzgeraldArtifacts from the Edmund FitzgeraldThis is the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. The divers removed this bell, and replaced it with a replica. The divers did not look inside the ship, so they did not otherwise disturb the final resting place for the crew. A memorialSurfboat houseWe stayed here overnight. This was the Crews’ Quarters, and has been converted to a B&B.We ate here…… they go out on Lake Superior early every morning and bring in their haul of whitefish. They only serve what they caught that morning. They are open until 7 PM, or when they run out of fish, whichever comes first!Tahquamenon Falls (pronounced like phenomenon). The brown color is from tannic acid, which results from decomposing vegetation in the cedar, hemlock, and spruce forests upstream.Tahquamenon FallsWhitefish Point Light Station in action!
