One of these days, I will be able to spend a weekend or more up here at the moominbeach without having to do a bunch of business type stuff or schlep cosmic debris around or whatever. That’s not this weekend. I won’t even begin to try to describe today’s business but there was a bit of in-between time during which we were at loose ends in Sault Ste. Siberia. The Commander’s house is almost completely empty now so there really wasn’t much point in spending a lot of time there. So we headed over to Ashmun Bay, where we encountered this vista:
That’s the John B. Aird in the background, for future reference. We had about an hour and a half to kill and a bit of euphoria to deal with (at least on my part) and I eyeballed the John B. Aird coming down and the Presque Isle waiting to go through the Poe Lock and I said, “Let’s go walk around the locks!” Bingo. That was the ticket!
We watched my new fav-o-rite boat Baby Blue (aka the Ken Boothe Sr) go up via the Poe Lock.
Remember the John B. Aird? Here it is coming downbound into the MacArthur Lock. I am on the observation deck and it looks stormy to the west but all we got was some garden-variety rain. But we needed that. I was ecstatic!
Here’s a closeup of the Aird entering the lock.
I have been going to the locks all my life. I remember when the worst thing you had to endure when entering the locks was the ladies who bombarded you with tourist pamphlets. (Errr, I grew up here, don’t need that…). These days, you have to submit to a cursory search upon entering the locks park, although today, for whatever reason, nobody (security guards or pamphlet ladies) was around when we entered. And then, I was walking around texting my daughter when a cute perky young female security person approached me with, “TEXTING IS NOT ALLOWED HERE!” Meeeee, being a rule-follower [except when I am not], quickly stopped texting and asked (in horror), “Really?”. She laughed and told me that she was just kidding. I laughed too and we parted as friends but I can’t help thinking what kind of a society we Americans have talked ourselves into. My knee-jerk reaction was to think I was doing something wrong. Even though probably 75% of the folks up on the observation deck were taking photooos and texting, emailing, or posting them to facebook or instragram or wherever…
August 24th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
I love the locks too. We have some in Ballard. (Seattle)