Take a Ride on the Lake Express - Lake Michigan's high speed ferry.

Ferries have been around longer than many of our forms of transportation that we rely so heavily upon today. We just finished watching “The Fellowship of the Ring” again last night and I was reminded how ferries are really timeless. We didn’t need technology to figure out that if we tie some logs together and find a long stick, we can push a whole group of ourselves across a small body of water without getting wet. Think of all the fantasy movies, books set in medieval times, even mythology uses ferries for transporting souls from this life to the next.

But ferries have evolved over the years until we have gotten to these faster ferries that can take you across one of our great lakes (over seventy miles) in just two and a half hours. Not bad for ferries that can carry up to 46 vehicles and 12 motorcycles as well as 248 passengers This is a long ways from our primitive 12 logs tied together with a long pole. Now we have 4 or more diesel engines at 12,000 or more horsepower. Technology is always progressing in the ferry industry making ferries better and faster.

I have had the opportunity to travel on ferries in the United States on several occasions from Duluth, Minnesota; Outer Banks, North Carolina; and Seattle Washington. None of these ferries in the US compares to the ferries over in Britain. Having viewed several videos of the ferries traveling between the UK and Ireland and the European continent, our ferries are like riding coach verses a private jetliner (like the British ferries). Their ferries are like having a hotel and a shopping mall on your ferry. I am sure that not all of the ferries over there are like this and that we probably have some ferries here that may be like this, I just haven’t seen any here in the US.

I love the romantic feelings that the ferries evoke in me. I don’t know why that is. Is it the concept of crossing over to somewhere that I can’t get to any other way? Or is it just the crossing over the water itself and the amazing feat that it is for a huge metal boat weighing tons and full of hundreds of people and cars, etc. floating on water. Or maybe it’s the many stories, both fiction and non fiction, of lovers or strangers-soon-to-be-lovers that exist out there both in books and movies. Whatever the reason, I love the ferries and have enjoyed all of our trips, “coach” class though they were.

So if you ever are in the vicinity of a ferry, take the time to take a ride and see where it takes you.