Looking back into the plethora of archive photos is like going on a U.P. tour just about every day. Today we're going to start out in Sault Ste. Marie at the Soo Locks. Laura Ann Kowalczyk took us with her there in 2003. It looks like a freighter is headed to the lock off in the distance a bit.

Heading west in the U.P., we make a stop at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to check out Miners Castle with Deb Simons in 2009. I like this angle of the view, as you can see the observation deck, too. Deb snapped this one while on the boat tour out of Munising.

A bit further west, actually southwest of our last stop, is Iron River, where Jeff Dennis and family, took us to see the Cardiff Iron Mine in 2015. From what I could find online, this iron mine opened in 1919 and operated through 1923. Then sometime after 1941 it was worked again through 1969. The Cardiff Mine originally featured one shaft with workings to 530 feet depth, but later was extended to a depth of 1130 feet.

As an added bonus to our touring today, we have a video taken at Miners Castle three years ago. My favorite part is watching the wave action splashing in and out of the opening below the Castle rocks.

MinersCastle...one of my favorite memories as a kid. There was no platform at that time, so you where able to walk out on the rock. I can remember my dad hanging me over the edge to get a better look at the water down below and it made me wonder; "Does he had a life insurance policy on me?" :-)

The man must not drink of the running streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to have all nature reborn in him--to suckle monsters.

____THOREAU, August 1851 journal

That hole under Miner's Castle looks about twice as big as it used to be. I suppose in years to
come it'll wash out and the whole thing will cave
in. Remember when there were two turrets on top of it?

Nice pictures again today!!