The Canadian Locks and Rapids at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada; and Sunset on Lake Superior

After spending the morning on the Soo Locks Boat Tour and spending time at the visitors center in Michigan, I drove across the bridge to Canada and walked around the Canadian locks I had passed through earlier in the day on the tour boat.

There was no boat in the locks when I walked across the gate to the trail leading to the St Marys river rapids. 

The trail took me over a couple of foot bridges to the other side of an island, where I had a good view of the rapids. One of the bridges crossed over some water where beavers had obviously been at work building dams. This is Canada, so beavers and dams are nothing new, right?

The rapids are between the American and Canadian locks, and the locks save the ships from having to pass through the rapids.

As I hiked along the trail, I kept hearing birds but couldn't see them, so I opened the "Merlin Bird ID" app on my phone and recorded the bird sounds. The app correctly identified the bird sounds as belonging to a Black-Capped Chicadee. Soon after Merlin gave me its identification, I saw a couple of the birds land on a wood platform. Merlin had correctly identified them!

When I got back to the locks, another tour boat had already arrived. I watched from downstream as the water level inside the locks was lowered. From this perspective, I could see the surface churning as the water emptied downstream from the tunnels below. 

Then the gates opened and the tour boat continued on its way, just as our boat had done earlier in the day.

By this time, it was getting late in the day. I wanted to take a small hike and sit on some bluffs on the shores of Lake Superior, so I drove west of Sault Ste Marie to the Gros Cap Bluffs. A trail lead me to the top of the bluffs, where I watched the sunset over the water.

The sun was red, but it didn't quite look as other-worldly as the color shown below -- even though this is the image my cellphone camera captured...

A Canadian couple brought a floating mattress and went into the water. I didn't want to change into a swimsuit and get in, but the water temperature was comfortable enough, so I rolled up my pants and got my feet wet. The water felt good.

It was dark by the time I crossed the bridge back into the United States. I spent the night in the Meijer supermarket parking lot again. When I happened to wake up at 2 am, I took a short drive to see if I could see any northern lights, as I heard there was a chance they would be visible in northern Michigan tonight. I saw stars, but no northern lights, so I drove back to the parking lot and went back to sleep.