Friday, August 7, 2015
Thankfully last night by dinner time the stabilizers had
been deployed and also the waves had calmed, so it wasn’t too bad in the dining
room. I still have no idea what happened
in the lounge last night. Usually there is a live camera feed with sound from
there on one of our TV channels. It is right alongside the most ridiculous bow
cam feed ever. But, last night there was no broadcast on that channel. I am
assuming that the duo SoulJourn that has been playing every night was playing
last night. The only other thing of note was that we stayed dressed and up
until after 9pm waiting for delivery of today’s program, when it didn’t arrive
we went to shower and to bed with the privacy sign out. Clay was in the shower
and I had put in my eye gel and gone to sleep when I was awoken by knocking. I
finally answered it and they delivered the program, 4 red luggage tags and our
disembarkation instructions. Our luggage needs to be outside by 6am with the
red tags on it. (They are Saint Laurent red plastic disks, so souvenir luggage
ID tags. Nice.) Breakfast is 6:30 to 8:30am. We have to leave on our bus to
O’Hare at 8am. Estimated time of arrival at O’Hare is 8am. Our flight is at
11:55am, so we should be good.
This morning we were awakened at 5am by the side thrusters.
After all Ken’s hedging about the Soo Locks and Lake Superior, we had arrived.
I was slow stirring even though I peeked out and knew we were entering a lock
in the dark. We rose 36 feet according to the water gauge I saw. (21 feet
according to Ken at the port talk.) We sailed on into Lake Superior as far as
Ile Parisienne. There alongside it, we made a big loop and turned around and
headed back. Ken came on the intercom about 8am to announce that we are in Lake
Superior next to Ile Parisienne and headed back to the St. Mary’s River and the
Soo Locks. He said we would expect to lock back through about 10:45am to 11am
to be docked alongside Sault Ste. Marie around 11:30am.
As to breakfast, it looks like we ran out of bananas just as
Clay decided he wanted one today. I expect they won’t re-provision until
Chicago so he should have thought of that earlier. Servy and Edgar seem to have
made up. I don’t know what was going on and I don’t need to but they were
chatting courteously this morning and Edgar seemed happier. So good news. Clay
commented to Edgar that he had a rough night at dinner last night and he did.
His section was filled and with demanding and even ridiculous people. Edgar
rolled his eyes and said the worst was when one of the people asked him for
lobster. He said he can’t just say no so he said he’d go ask chef. He came back
to tell her that the chef said no lobster on this sailing. We missed all that
and I am glad I wasn’t there to see the passenger’s reaction. I don’t care as I
wouldn’t eat lobster anyway, but I have to agree with the passenger that at
this price point it is expected at least once.
Our port talk for today’s stop in Sault Ste. Marie is at
9am. We will also learn about the US Customs clearance of the ship back to the
US there. We will go ashore for our excursion here at 1pm. At 6 to 6:30pm, we
have the Mackinac Island port talk. 6:30 is dinner. 7:30pm is sailing away. 8:30pm
is the lounge showing of the movie “Somewhere in Time”. Clay claims he has
never seen this film. It is a classic romance film so I don’t know how he has
missed it. I suspect he’s actually seen it and just didn’t know the name. We’ll
see and be looking for footage of Mackinac Island since it was filmed there.
Back from the morning port talk. Ken had us pick up
AudioVoxes again. We’ll see if we actually use them today. Ken says we will be
split into our normal color buses and will go to one of 3 places in a rotating
order. At some point we will all visit the viewing platform of Soo Locks and
hopefully watch a ship lock through, then to Museum Ship Valley Camp and a city
tour. We won’t find out our tour order until we board our bus. Customs
clearance will be by deck order sometime after we have docked and the personnel
come aboard. It will happen in the lounge. We will be called by decks 4, 3, 2
and finally 1. They will hand us our passport when we enter the lounge and take
it back when we have finished our interview and exit the lounge. Ken says he
expects everyone to be through the process within 30 minutes of beginning.
There is a woman named Emmy on a Cruise Critic board thread
about this ship and cruise line that lives in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario. She has
posted that she will come to the lock to see us go through and has said she
will wear a pink boa! This will be fun!
Back from lunch. They have just called deck 4 to go clear
USCBP. We are about an hour behind schedule now and they say they will adjust
the afternoon hours accordingly. We’ll see. Anyway, I did spot Emmy with her
pink boa. I was harder to find for sure, but when I finally moved from the
front to the front starboard side off by myself and waved, she responded so I
count that as we connected. It was fun! I laughed out loud when she got her boa
back out after I started waving from the side. Clay got some photos of Emmy in
her pink boa I’m sure.
We had burgers for lunch since the chef’s special today was
Great Lakes Fisherman’s Pie. Edgar said the chef had a backlog for burgers when
we had to wait. We said we’d just wait! Clay had ice cream for dessert and I
can’t remember what I had.
We were delayed going ashore as it took us over an hour to
get docked at Alford Waterside Park and get the gangway in place and load the
CBP agents to come aboard and clear the ship. Our lecturer, Fred Stonehouse,
explained to someone the other day that it can be called a boat because all the
ships on the Great Lakes can be called boats because ships are saltwater
vessels. I’m not sure it works that way because Saint Laurent is doing Cuba
cruises come winter so by his definition then it is a ship. I have been calling
it both, I mean the same thing, a floating vessel. Our group, blue, was the
last to be called. We drove directly to the Museum Ship Valley Camp. It would
have been interesting but we had a young man guiding us for our 1 hour there
and he was barely audible and then he was reading from index cards. It didn’t heighten
interest. He did not get to complete his tour. I am not sure what happened
there but I told him when he had 20 minutes left that our bus was on its way
and it would leave in 20 minutes. He asked me what time it was and what time we
were leaving so I am sure he understood me, but he didn’t alter his course. He
just carried on until a loudspeaker announcement for us to exit the ship, then
he turned and walked us out to the exit sign. Next we spent about an hour
driving around Sault Ste. Marie, MI on a city tour. It was less interesting
with no photo stops. Finally we arrived at the Soo Locks St. Marys Falls Park.
The guide told us we had to be back on the bus here in 1 hour and there was pandemonium.
Half the bus revolted and insisted on being returned to the ship within 30
minutes or immediately. I think he had planned to give us a guided tour here
too, but he sent the bus back with about half the people. Those who wanted to
stay got off the bus and he told us to go on in. We did but then he didn’t
come. So, we headed for the Visitor’s Center and used the restrooms. Since we
didn’t finish the museum ship and get to go out to the gift shop/restroom
building it was our first chance. When we came out, he was looking for people
but when we joined him he left. We went back in to the information desk and found
that the next boat through the lock would be at 5:15pm and that was when we had
to meet the bus again. So, we didn’t get to see a ship lock through. There was
a theater in the visitor’s center and we thought there might be something there
but the guide said no it was only for special events. So, we left and walked
Water St. Clay got a t-shirt and we bought some caramel corn.
Ken was on our bus and told the guide and bus driver that
the next cruise is all Japanese and the one after it is all French. He told us the
day we boarded that the previous cruise was all French. As Clay said how come
we don’t hear about this cruise line when they must be doing some heavy
international marketing. Right? We got back in time to go to Ken’s port talk on
Mackinac Island. It will be our last shore day as we will sail straight through
to Chicago when we leave there. No cars are allowed on the island and we will
be provided horse drawn transportation until 2:30pm. I guess after that we walk.
The ship sails at 5pm. We will take horse drawn carts to visit the horse carriage
museum, the Grand Hotel and the historic fort. We will start leaving the ship
at 9am and I guess the last horse cart back to the ship is at 2:30pm. This is
true whether you are just going for the included excursion described or you
have reserved the optional extra Grand Hotel lunch buffet at $48 per person. We
did not spring for that lunch. Anyway, I was desperate for some caffeine and
was hot from the rainy day we’d just walked through and had big plans for a
Coke Zero. I entered the room to hear Clay ordering a Corona and a white wine.
I told him no, but he confirmed it and then I couldn’t get a Coke Zero. I
barely stayed awake in that stifling room until the cacophony of question time.
I guess no one else could stay awake either since then he repeated everything.
Dinner was OK. It is time for me to go home I think. Clay had
Cobb salad and lamb shank. He raved about the salad and has big plans for his
remaining lunches now. He had German chocolate cake for dessert. I had oxtail
broth and a grilled chicken breast with French fries again. The chicken wasn’t
quite cooked through and I couldn’t stay awake anyway. We got back to the room
too early and the stewardess hadn’t filled the ice bucket. I really like to
have cold water by the bed overnight so I went right before she came back to do
it. Oh well. I told Clay I couldn’t stay awake until past 10pm in that stuffy
lounge so he left and went for a walk ashore. I’ll stop now and try to get this
published. No go. No Internet now for some reason. I’ll try again later or in
the morning. Sigh.
