8/7 Soo Locks Boat Tour

I was not sure I was going to take this boat tour of the locks, but I had never done it before, so what the heck.  Not much else going on today!  

The first thing I did was drive into the downtown area, find a parking spot, and visit the locks visitor center.  It's not a terribly impressive building, but the three-story viewing platform behind it really is impressive. 

I guess they were planning on big summer crowds. Nice view, at least, and no charge because this is a federal facility.

A ship I saw going past the campground to the east of the locks was just about ready to leave.  Notice that there are two locks side-by-side.  The one closest to the viewing platform is used by smaller ships, and the one farthest away handles the big, 1000' ships.  

You cannot see it from here, but past the second lock is a big construction area where they are combining two small locks into one big enough to handle a lot of container ships.  It will not be finished until 2030. 

Back towards the campground is one of the two lock tour companies. 

Two of the tour boats.  A third tour boat is out on a tour. 

Nice view of the campground from the tour company dock.

We headed west, past the remnants of the original rapids that caused the locks to be built.  Since there was a ship in the locks at this point, the tour boat headed for an older and smaller lock on the Canadian side.

You can tell you are in Canada when the signs are in English and French. 

This smaller lock is also an older lock, but it easily handles recreational boats, some barges, and the tour boats. 

The lock is filled, the gates are open, so we can leave. 

The tour boat took us under the train and International Vehicle bridge, and then we looped around so we could get into the smaller of the two locks shown in the earlier photo.

There is a ship in the larger lock, but we will be going into the one on the right.

The Joseph L Block is headed downstream and is full, as you can tell by how low it is riding.

We go into the smaller lock.  Note the viewing stand on the right.

Nothing like being a tourist attraction!

The lock is full, so once both gates are closed, water is dumped downstream. 

And the lock is now at Lake Huron level, so we can head back to the tour boat dock.

And here comes the Joseph L Block.