Camping on a Freighter Highway

Last week I spent five days on the east side of Michigan, camped next to the St. Clair River, just north of Algonac. Algonac State Park provided my campsite, just a couple hundred yards from the waterway that runs from Port Huron to Algonac, separating the United States from Canada. Here’s our meager camp; I’d guess the campground was just 1/4 full or so.

It was pretty cool to see and hear those huge ships from our campsite. We made a number of trips up and down the river, trying to see as many ships as possible. Here are just a few of the ones we watched churning by:

The 787-foot Cason J. Calloway

Edgar B. Speer—1,004 feet in length!

AlgoCanada

Up in Port Huron, we also saw these coming in:

The John J. Boland entering the river from Lake Huron under the Blue Water Bridge.

AlgoSteel

My youngest son has gotten me very interested in Great Lakes shipping. The premiere web site for all things freighters on the Great Lakes and up the St. Lawrence Seaway is BoatNerd.com. Look what I found on one of our trips to Port Huron:

I went in to look around and came out with their 2017 booklet, Know Your Ships, containing tons of information about shipping and ships in our area. I also grabbed a deli sandwich which was very tasty!

Next summer I hope to get up to Sault Ste. Marie to see the locks in action, raising and lowering these huge vessels on their journeys. This may have been my last outing for this year. At 6:30 Friday morning it was 48 degrees! We’ll see—maybe one more heat wave will come our way yet this year.