At about the age of eleven, I remember being touched deeply by Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The story of the 29 men that perished on that stormy early November night in 1975 just always touched a nerve for some reason. It still does.

When we were in back in Duluth at the other side of Lake Superior, I started to tease René because she was not even aware of this tragic story and only barely recalled the song.

At that time, I noticed and ad for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, but was disappointed to discover it was on Whitefish Point on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula which was not on our route at the time. After being persuaded by the Schwabenlanders to head North out of Wisconsin instead of South, however, the final resting place for the ship’s bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald became a must on our revised itinerary.

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