We left Madison on June 21 and headed north to Sault Saint Marie, MI, where we stopped for the night. We found a nice campground on the St. Mary's River, which flows from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, and is the border between the U.S. and Canada. It was just downstream from the Soo locks where the lake freighters pass through on their way into, or out of, Lake Superior. Our campsite was one row back from the shore. After dinner we sat out in front of our Roadtrek reading the paper; the people camped right on the shore in front of us invited us to bring our chairs and sit on their shoreline so we could see the view better, which we did. After a while they built a fire and invited us to join them and then served us strawberry shortcake. They were from Michigan and their hospitality improved my opinion of Michigan considerably.
Sault Saint Marie, St. Mary's River, and the bridge connecting the US and
Canada. Taken from near our campsite. No freighters were passing through that
night.
The next morning we saw several freighters passing by. The freighters range
in lengths up to 1000 feet, which is the longest that can pass through the
locks.
We crossed the border and then spent the next day and a half driving across Ontario to Montreal. Nancy wanted to visit some of the villages that her her French Canadian ancestors lived in before they migrated to Kankakee, IL. We visited a couple of the villages, St. Valentin and Chambly.
St. Valentin is a very small community
south of Montreal and close to the US border. We were disappointed to find
that the church where they worshipped had been replaced by a more modern
building.
Chambly is much closer to Montreal and is much larger than St. Valentin. It
borders on the Richelieu River. It had a resort feel to it, with kayakers and
boaters in the river, and cyclists pedaling along the shore.
Chambly is the location of Fort Chambly, which is a National Historic Park.
This fort was built by the French in 1711 on the site of earlier wooden
forts. It controlled traffic along the Richelieu River, which was the water
route to the Albany, NY. It played an important role in the battles between
France, England, and the U.S. and in subduing the Indian tribes in the area.
There is a very nice museum inside the fort that describes its history and the area.
Inside the museum, Nancy discovered a reference to one of her ancestors, who
was a blacksmith in Chambly at the time the fort was active.
St. Joseph de Chambly church, where some of Nancy's ancestors were
baptized, married, and buried. However, the current building is more recent
(1881).