On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Elma
In 2017, I took a small ship (50 passengers) cruise of the Greek Isles. One thing that really impressed me were the ferries that sailed between the islands and the main land. They were fast and efficient, and HUGE. I honestly don’t remember which of the several islands we visited I was on when I took these pics. The most interesting ferry I ever saw was a little hand operated one on the Rio Grande in Texas. There was a border patrol kiosk with a very bored agent on the US side. I can find lots of my other pics of the river from that trip but not one of that little ferry!?!
And closer to home, here is the USS Badger in Manitowoc Wisconsin, getting ready to sail out into Lake Michigan, headed for Ludington MI. She is the last coal fired car ferry operating on the Great Lakes; a source of pride for some people and disgust for others. She used to carry railroad cars across the Lake, but these days it is tourist traffic and only in the summer months.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
One thing about Greek ferries in the last twenty years or so is that they’ve stopped using inspiring, evocative names for the ships. Instead, you get names like “Highspeed 1”, “Superfast 3”, “Super Jet”, and the like. At least the Blue Star Line ships use island names like “Blue Star Paros”, “Blue Star Naxos”, and the like.
The bigger, slower ships are much more comfortable. Going in a high-speed ferry like a catamaran is a bit like being in an oversized airplane, with airplane seats throughout the passenger cabin. I prefer the slower ships with lounges and snack bars and outside deck space and maybe even cabins.
marklar
What a really cool series!
Thanks for sharing.
Dan B
When we lived in Arkansas in 1960 we encountered several “ferries” in the middle of nowhere. They were mostly a pontoon platform tied to a single wire with a rudder that was aimed to use the river current to carry it and us across.
In the 80’s we took a ferry from England to Ireland. It was, like these Greek ferries, huge. Semi’s were loaded in to the six story hold. It was very Blade Runner with rust. There was a restaurant that had managed to coat all the windows with grease. We were glad to get to Ireland.
Your Greek ships look very nice. Let me repeat: very nice!
Jerry
I’ve taken the Mackinac Island ferry a few times in my life; there was one in Amsterdam that we had to take all the time to get from the part of the city that we were staying in to central city; and the one that takes you from Hatteras Island to Ocracoke Island here in North Carolina. That last one is the only one that I’ve taken that you could drive onto.
frosty
In the 70s on my only trip to Greece I took a ferry out to one of the smaller islands. Passengers only, no cars. IIRC it was a hydrofoil and very fast. I wonder if they’re still running those.
oldster
My wife and I were biking north out of Amsterdam a few years ago and encountered a hand-crank ferry across a canal. It was big enough for our bikes and us, and probably would have fit ten people standing comfortably. And the canal was no more than 40-50 feet across.
Very clever system of chains that allowed any user to take it across and leave it ready for the next user.
Little finds like that are a delight in travel.
dimmsdale
Thanks for the thread, WG! Recovering from hand surgery, with a menu of daily therapeutic exercises to do, I got hooked on a couple of YouTube channels. One is of the port at Trelleborg, Norway, which is a main ferry terminal. At any point during the day you can see several ferry slips, the mouth of the port itself, and watch several gigantic ferries entering the harbor, pirouetting via stern and bow thrusters, snugging up to the ferry slips, and taking on and disgorging trucks and presumably human cargo. It’s a long-distance view, but if you jack the playback speed up to 2x normal, there’s plenty to see, and you can back up to any point in the previous 13 hours. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIxsG6j0Pjw
This led me to several explanatory YT channels that show how the ferries are loaded. Fascinating stuff, it’s all a kind of ballet involving huge machinery moving with a high degree of precision. It is also oddly relaxing.
HeartlandLiberal
Really cool pictures, illustrating how ferries become an essential infrastructure when you have inhabited islands along a coast. Never been to Greece, but same experience along the coast of Sweden, when we visited there in 2015. LOTS of ferries carry vehicles, cars, trucks, etc, from the mainland to the islands and back. The largest ferry we ever traveled on thought was the on our train from Denmark to Germany DROVE ONTO, was carried across to Germany, then drove by back off on the German rail system. That was a bucket list item. Last of breed, and if not already retired, scheduled to be soon by bridge and tunnel system between Denmark and Germany.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@frosty: There are still a few of the hydrofoils running around the Greek islands, but the high-speed services have mostly gone over to catamaran-hull boats, some passenger-only, some with garage decks. It’s a matter of economy, I suppose: the cat-hulls can carry more people than the hydrofoils. Same logic that had airlines embrace wide-body planes.
Taken4Granite
Ferries are a crucial part of the transportation infrastructure in the Puget Sound region of Washington state and coastal British Columbia. My mother lives within walking distance of a WSF terminal; that ferry serves a fair amount of commuter traffic between the Kitsap peninsula and Seattle as well as weekend/holiday traffic between the Seattle area and the Olympic peninsula. These ferries save several hours of driving when driving is even possible, and some areas (including Vashon Island and the San Juans in Washington, Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast in BC) are accessible only by ferry. The WSF runs are generally short: Anacortes to Friday Harbor in the San Juans is a little over an hour, and most crossings are shorter. BC Ferries has some longer runs to places further up the coast, which I haven’t done; I’ve only taken their Sunshine Coast services. There is also a privately run ferry operating between Port Angeles, WA, and Victoria, BC, which I have taken.
The most recent ferry ride I took was the Steamship Authority route between Hyannis and Nantucket, a couple of years ago. The regular ferries, which take cars and operate year round, take 2h15 each way; there is a seasonal passenger-only service on a high-speed ferry which covers the distance in an hour (we took the former).
Wapiti
@Taken4Granite: A recent modernization of the WA State ferries: passengers can now make reservations online, rather than just showing up and hoping the line isn’t too long. WSF opens the spaces up in 1/3s, so the reservations aren’t all gobbled up at the beginning of the season. We recently went to Orcas Island and the pre-book made it pretty easy.
J R in WV
Wife and I have done several large ferries, biggest were in the Puget sound area back in about 1987 or ’88. We by sheer luck took the last major ferry over the lower Mississippi River from MS into Louisaina, which is gone now, we saw the beginning of the construction of the giant bridge to replace the big ferry.
I have taken a tiny ferry across the Ohio River from near Marion KY to Cave-in-Rock, Il, room for a single delivery truck and a couple of cars, tops. When the wind is up they close the ferry down, it’s too small to handle white-caps on the big river.
I like ferries…
On one of our last drives back from AZ to WV we drove up to Pueblo CO, and then east on country roads as much as possible. After we got to St Louis we drove south just west of the Mississippi River, and crossed it on an old, old bridge, to Cairo, Il and then crossed an even older bridge to the Paducah KY area. Two narrow lanes, with big trucks coming at you just across the double yellow lines. It shook under us, a ferry would have been really preferable!!
Origuy
The CalMac ferries in Scotland are great. I got an excursion out of Oban that started with a ferry to Craignure on Mull, then a bus to Fionnphort on the other side of Mull. We met a smaller boat that took us to Staffa, where Fingal’s Cave is. After a couple of hours there, a boat picked us up and took us to Iona to see where Celtic Christianity developed. Another ferry picked us up and took us back to Oban.
JaneE
They also had ferries in Hong Kong when we were there. The tour had a dinner at some restaurant at a glorified rock in the bay. We had a nice slow ride across the bay, but halfway through our trip the captain all but stopped and turned the prow so we would not get swamped by the wake of one of the catamaran types on its way to Macao. It was very very fast, and the people standing at the rail on the top deck of our boat got drenched when we hit that wake, even almost stopped. Our captain said all the captains of the slower boats had copies of the schedules for the catamaran ferries, so they could be ready when their paths crossed.
Ksmiami
@JaneE: I lived there in the 90s- loved the ferry system except during typhoon season… my favorite ferries though are the ones that serve the Dalmatian coast… awesome
Bill Dunlap
Before Lake Powell filled, there was an old ferry across the Dirty Devil River at Hite in southern Utah. Power came from an old Model T or similar car frame mounted on a small barge with a cable wrapped around the wheel hub. When the barge hung up on a sandbar the old codger who ran it would drizzle sand on the hub. A real adventure.
Bob7094
We went across Lake Michigan on the ferry while on a family vacation in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. You could get wet standing at the bow. I don’t know if it was SS Badger, or not. A very surprising thing was that it had White and Colored restrooms, something I have never seen anywhere else; I may not have been aware during an earlier vacation trip to Florida.
Munira
I went to Alaska from Bellingham, WA, several times. Great trip. I had a cabin, the food was fine, but mostly I enjoyed sitting in the observation lounge, which was never too crowded, just watching the beautiful scenery go by. You can also camp on the upper deck if you want – I might have done that when I was younger, but at this age, prefer the cabin.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
On my trip to Greece in 2018, we took a ferry catamaran from Santorini to Crete. I had imagined some romantic ferry, and instead got what Elma has pictured in #5 and #6 – HUGE, with lots of cars and levels. I was glad it was fast, since it wasn’t fun. It was a gigantic people and cars mover, no romance involved. But obviously necessary, with all the traffic between the Greek islands. I never used to understand the news reports of hundreds of people dying when a “ferry” sank in Indonesia or Scandinavia and now I do. My idea of a ferry was is what we have on the SF Bay and that I see in movies.
On the other hand, I recently visited a friend in Portland, OR, and we drove up to see Mt. St. Helens, and went out of our way to take a small ferry, which was fun. When I say “small’, it could hold maybe 6 cars; we and our car were the only passengers for our trip across the small river, which took about 5 minutes. Fun!
Elma
@Bob7094: There used to be several ferries, running out of Milwaukee, Manitowoc and Kewaunee. The first time I was on one, was in the 1970’s. I don’t remember the segregated bathrooms from that time.
PortlandSuburbia
The trade routes between the UK and mainland Europe (now severely disrupted due to Brexit) rely heavily on huge ferries that run across the English Channel.
By far the busiest route is between Dover* and Calais. The large ferries that ply that route can accommodate 200 semi trucks, as well as a large number of cars and passengers. Daily volume is something like 5,000 semi trucks in each direction.
*I’m British, since relocated to Oregon. My wife’s family are from an area near Dover.
Comrade Colette
Thanks for the pix! I love ferries, even the prosaic ones. In 1986 I took a high-speed ferry down the Danube from Vienna to Budapest, which was a lot less scenic than you’d expect because most of the view is of high river banks. The most memorable part of the trip was the Hasidic man who kept trying to get me and my mother to give up our seats so he wouldn’t have to sit next to a woman. (We ignored him.) But coming into Budapest via river is spectacular.
Monsieur Colette and I took a small ferry from the western tip of Brittany out to the Île d’Ouessant 20 or so years ago, and that was a pretty wild ride. I love a good roller coaster and never get motion sickness, so I was thoroughly enjoying the boat plunging up and down in the waves. I turned to him and said “isn’t this great!” just when he was a particularly virulent shade of green. You know those photos of old lighthouses way out in the sea with huge waves crashing halfway up them? It was like that. We even went past a couple of those lighthouses..