The Blough for My Birthday

Like I said in one of my previous posts, I was thinking of going to chase trains.  I changed my mind when I saw that the Blough would be heading upbound and I had a pretty good chance of chasing her up most of the river.

 I ended up catching up to her after I took pictures of the Algoma Guardian.  They were pretty close together.  The Blough was heading up from Conneaut where she was delivering taconite.  I actually thought I had a chance to catch her but you can never be sure.

 If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know that the Blough is my favorite ship and I was excited to catch her on my birthday.

 I think she is a pretty impressive looking ship.  For some reason, she reminds me of either a bulldog or a snapping turtle.

 A shot of her beam.

 What made me even more excited was that I got a brief salute from her.  Even got a wave from one of the crewmembers.  Turns out that crewmember was none other than the Captain himself.  Which makes it cooler.

 A shot of her deckhouse.

 And she continues on the St. Clair River.

 I caught up to her again in Marysville.

 For this set of shots, I decided to leave the big lens on to catch some detail shots.

 But I still had the opportunity for not detail shots.

 A shot of her pilothouse.  The crew gives a perspective on size.

 Another shot of her bow.

 The pilothouse from the side.

 A shot of her anchor and depth to keel numbers.  With the water levels of the Lakes up, they are able to load these behemoths more.

 The Blough has one of the more unique looking stacks on the Lakes.

 A shot of the Stars and Stripes flying proudly in the breeze.

 The Blough uses a fairly unique unloading system.  Only the Cort and the Speer have similar systems.  Because of this, she is limited to Gary and Conneaut.

 A shot of her stern.

 Next stop was one of the parks in Port Huron. 

 Another beam shot.

 And she continues on.

 For my final stop, I stopped at one of the little parks near the Blue Water Bridge.  As I've said before, this is one of my favorite spots on the St. Clair River.

 The background is pretty nice.  Occasionally, you can get the Huron in the shot.

 More importantly, you can get a pretty decent headshot.

 She makes her way into Lake Huron.

 Another shot of her pilothouse and she gave off another salute.

 And she passes under the Blue Water Bridge.

 One more shot of her pilothouse.

And she continues to Lake Huron.  Roughly 24 hours after this picture, she will find herself at the Soo Locks.  Another 24 hours after that, she will find herself at her destination of Two Harbors, Minnesota.