By Pat Miller • Co-Chair, Building Electrification Committee
I and my husband, Steve, had the opportunity in July to sail all five of the Great Lakes, from Toronto to Chicago. We decided this was the year to vacation entirely without air travel and see a huge swath of the Midwest up close.
We traveled by NJ Transit from our home to New York City, then rode Amtrak to Toronto, crossing the Canadian border at Niagara Falls. There, we got off the train with our luggage, walked through the customs building with passports in hand, and reboarded the train after inspection. In Toronto we boarded the Victory 1, a 190-passenger Victory Cruise Lines ship. Our return trip from Chicago to New York was in an overnight Amtrak sleeper car.
The Great Lakes are part of a shipping route from the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence River to the busiest midwestern ports of Cleveland, on Lake Erie, and Duluth, on the western tip of Lake Superior. Wherever the lake elevations differ, passage of ships between them is via locks.
After we boarded the ship in Toronto, near the southwestern tip of Lake Ontario, we went through our first lock at dinnertime, and then we passed through seven more locks during the night before reaching our first port, Niagara Falls, the next morning.
Our excursion that day was to ride the Maid of the Mist below and between the Canadian and American falls, getting soaked in the process. We saw the huge buildings on both sides of the falls that house the hydroelectric turbine generators there. Later, we reboarded our ship on Lake Erie.
We spent nine nights aboard Victory 1. Our days also included motor coach excursions, onboard lectures, outstanding nightly entertainment—mostly pop music from across the decades by an in-house, three-piece band and singing combo. The food was excellent—they even catered to us vegans.
Major port cities between Toronto and Chicago included Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. All these five, formerly industrial cities, suffered greatly when manufacturing jobs and population plummeted starting around the 1970s, although the city guides gushed about the revivals that have taken place since then. Tall, new skyscrapers were everywhere, as well as sparkling clean and safe public transit.
We rode the metro in both Toronto and Chicago. Also, in Toronto there were public ferries (which signs said would soon be electrified) to Toronto Island, a half hour away, where we had a lovely outdoor meal with live bluegrass music. Other highlights were visiting Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Detroit’s Henry Ford Museum.
Lake Huron was a “sea day” for us with no port until we reached Sault Ste. Marie, a small city in Michigan that boasted ownership of the Soo Locks at the mouth of Lake Superior. Our only venture into Lake Superior was to sail upstream through the locks, turn around and come back down into Lake Michigan.
We disembarked in Chicago and encountered the worst of the July wildfire smoke, and we had to wear masks when outside. The highlight of our Chicago visit was taking the Metra commuter rail system to the Obama Presidential Center.
Environmental fun fact: The flow of the Chicago River was reversed in 1900 to carry Chicago’s sewage and meat-packing industry waste west toward St. Louis. Workers accomplished that by digging a canal deep enough to drain the river away from nearby Lake Michigan and toward the Mississippi. Missouri sued but lost in the Supreme Court. The river still flows west, but Chicago has cleaned up its waste.
The overnight, 20-hour Amtrak ride home was surprisingly pleasant. We slept well all night and arrived in New York City on time the following evening.