Gitche Gumee

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

When the skies of November turn gloomy

.....from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot, 1976

After meeting our new granddaughter, Hazel, in Jackson, we returned to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and cruised north for a short side trip to Lake Superior before continuing the Great Loop. As long as we're this close, we reasoned, we might as well dip our toe in the great lake the Ojibwe Indians called Gitche Gumee, immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Hiawatha" as "the shining Big-Sea-Water."

To reach Superior, Adagio transited the gigantic Soo Locks in Sault Ste Marie, MI that connect Lakes Huron and Superior. From there, we crossed Superior's Whitefish Bay to Whitefish Point. Whitecaps on the bay and Gordon Lightfoot's Edmund Fitzgerald lyrics echoing in our ears made the tiny port at Whitefish Point a welcome sight indeed, despite the fact we were traveling in August and not November. At 729 feet long and 75 feet wide, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on the Great Lakes until she went down filled with iron ore just 17 miles off Whitefish Point during a terrible storm on November 10, 1975. All 29 crew members were lost. The local Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum features the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald and artifacts from numerous other nearby shipwrecks that have earned the area the nickname "Graveyard of Lake Superior."

Soo Locks, Sault Ste Marie, Michigan and Ontario, Canada

( the 2 American locks are on the left, and the 2 Canadian locks

are on the right)

Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, Whitefish Point, Michigan

Edmund Fitzgerald Bell

(Recovered in 530 feet of water off Whitefish Point, 1995)