We are in the Soo - as the locals call the town of Sault Ste Marie - famous for the shipping locks between Lakes Superior and Huron. It seems to be our turn for electrical problems. We arrived here yesterday (25 July) because the batteries in the camper have low voltage and we thought a good 12 hour charge at a commercial camp ground would do the trick. Before settling in for the night we drove into the town center of Sault Ste Marie to look at the locks and find The River of History Museum. Suddenly all the shops are dark, the traffic signals are blank and within minutes police and fire officers are out directing traffic through intersections - the power is out. We learned later that the town had a power outage a few days ago also.

Fortunately the campground still had power so we connected with the hope that an overnight charge would revive our house batteries. Unfortunately that was not to be. This morning (26th July) they were still showing a low voltage. The next step, another day in the campground plugged into power and a process called equalization (heavy charging of the batteries to "remove sulphate from the plates"). Since this process cannot be interrupted we had the day without a vehicle. This afternoon we walked down to the locks and watched a couple of large ore carriers go through the procedure and then returned to talk to a number of campground residents about our highly conspicuous vehicle.

Before arriving in Soo yesterday we took a detour south along I-75 as I could not resist driving over the famous Mackinac Bridge (for puzzled Australians the name is pronounced Mackinaw). The weather did not cooperate as it was overcast with intermittent rain so did not get great photos. It also proved to be an expensive detour as the toll on the bridge was $10 each way. Despite rain, cost and lane closures in both directions it was worth seeing. The Mackinac is one of the great bridges of the world.

Paul Rambo for Sheriff this is a genuine election add. I must say I wondered whether having Rambo as a name was an election asset or liability.

By the way the equalization process did NOT work. There is more to come on this saga.

Just to add to our mechanical misery the truck is developing an exhaust leak that will eventually require a new section of exhaust pipe and the carafe (pot) in my automatic coffee maker has developed a leak.

Maybe I should not have thought of this trip as proving trials