Ferries...

[WAYNO]

I posted a similar photo sometime back, but when I had to take this little ferry to get to the gun club today, I wondered just how many people in this country have occasion to use a ferry regularly?

The price was recently raised to 4-bucks per crossing, which was cheaper than the gas I'd use to drive the long way around when gas was $4 per gallon, but when gas is two bucks a gallon, it's cheaper to drive to the next bridge.

The stretch of the Willamette River between Oregon City and Salem is very rural, and there are three of these ferries operating.





WAYNO.

 

[rugerjunkie]

Cool! There is one back home in Merrimac Wi that is part of the state highway and crosses the Wisconsin River. It stays open for most of the year and is free.

 

[737tdi]

Wayno, very cool. A question, they take six holidays a year? Saw it on the sign. Must be rich folks, we guys in the airlines don't get any of those days. :shock: . A crossing gets days off??? I surely don't understand that. As you say though there is another way. There used to be ferry crossings here, across the Trinity River, but bridges replaced them all.

Karl

 

[WAYNO]

Wayno, very cool. A question, they take six holidays a year? Saw it on the sign. Must be rich folks, we guys in the airlines don't get any of those days. :shock: . A crossing gets days off??? I surely don't understand that. As you say though there is another way. There used to be ferry crossings here, across the Trinity River, but bridges replaced them all.

Karl

Ya know, I never paid attention to that. Guess most of the folks crossing are going to work, and if work is closed for a holiday, there just must not be enough traffic to pay wages for the day. The other folks using the bridge are local farmers. But I suppose the ferry operators don't much care that farmers have to go the long way around.

And crossing the river at the point of the ferry via using bridges instead, adds 26 miles.

WAYNO.

 

[Cape Cod Terry]

I drive a truck on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard from Cape Cod every monday and a another trip to Nantucket every Thursday. I joke that my work truck probably has more sea miles than land miles on it. Lots of ice and rough seas coming back from Nantucket yesterday. I will post some pictures this weekend when I have some time. I have been on Nantucket trips that were so rough they had to chain the trucks to the deck. Round trip from Hyannis to Nantucket on a 34' straight truck with driver is $575, the Vineyard about half that much!
Cape Cod Terry

 

[Kevin]

Wayno that looks like fun. Even if gas were cheaper I'd still be tempted to take the ferry.

 

[Mega Twin]

We have a free ferry at Peel,Arkansas,run by the hwy dept.Day light hours only,don't know if it is open on holidays or not.
Good motorcycling roads on either side of it,so we enjoy it fairly often.
Hiway 125,if anyone is headed that way.

 

[Spencer]

We take the ferry when we go to Canada every year. NY to Wolf Island, drive across the island and get on another ferry that takes you to Kingston Ontario Canada. Not long, lot of fun. We were actually on the ferry with a team of horses and a carriage. they live on the island and do carriage rides in Kingston.

 

[FastEd]

The biggest ferry I rode was in Seattle over to Bremerton.
A giant ship that was like a luxury cruise.

The trip across Lake Erie from Canada to Pelee Island and on to Sandusky was a nice trip until a storm blew up and it got pretty rough.

 

[Bob Wright]

If possible I never pass up a chance to ride a ferry. We used to take a drive up to Clifton, Tennessee and cross the Tennessee River there just for the drive. They have since built a bridge there. At one time during the erecting of the bridge, they were hoisting a span into place and the entire span fell and dropped into the river. Gave the ferry a few months more life.

My brother lived up in Port Angeles, Washington in the mid-'Fifties and rode three ferries to get to work. We could sit on the side of one mountain and look across and see a boat load of automobiles driving along the road on the other side.

One of the ferries there was retired and moved to Alaska for awhile. It fell into disuse and was retrieved and brought to Seattle and is now a restaurant, I believe.

There's just something adventuresome about riding a ferry.

Bob Wright

 

[Ale-8(1)]

This one still runs every day except Christmas . . .

http://www.andersonferry.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Ferry

. . . unless the river's frozen over, of course.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

Ferry Boats!!! Dang I knew there were a lot of those people, But I didn't know they had their own Navy.
Did anyone notice the days the OP ferry doesn't run. Out of those 6 days I never had 3 of them off. Only in the Government Veterans Day, MLK, and President Day:wink:

Ed , Since Son was stationed in Bremerton we made quite a few trips on the ferries around Seattle. They were pretty nice. Park at the farriers in Bremerton , walk on then ride the buses around Seattle. Also drove on quite a few times.

The free Boliver Ferry at Galveston.

The Port Aransas Ferry System provides FREE marine transportation service seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The ride connects Mustang Island and Port Aransas with the mainland via Aransas Pass. There are six operational ferries in Port Aransas, each carrying 20 regular passenger vehicles on each trip.

 

[BucolicBuffalo]

My wife is from Calhoun county, Illinois. There are three full time ferries and one part time. Two across the Illinois River are DOT and are free at Brussells (Pere Marquette State Park area), and Kampsville. The others are at Golden Eagle and Winfield across the Mississippi River. The Golden Eagle also has a sidewheeler (Oops! Stern Paddlewheel.) they sometimes use for weddings and stuff.

Calhoun Co. is called The Kingdom. It's surrounded mostly by water. Like a moat. One bridge. No railroads. Four ferries. Lot's of limestone bluffs. The finest peaches in the world when not froze off.

 

[WAYNO]

This is all quite cool...Don't know why I'd think otherwise, but looks like there are many ferries in service in this country.

Here's another. Between the Astoria Megler Bridge and the next closest bridge over the Columbia at Longview is 50 miles. This is also a very rural part of Oregon, and the Columbia River is dotted with little settlements on both sides of the river. So this ferry from Westport Oregon to Puget Island Washington gets a fair amount of customers. I've taken this ferry, and it's really quite neat. Leaving the Oregon side, the ferry must navigate a channel out to the main river. The ferry crosses to the Washington side, an island actually, then there's a bridge from the island to the mainland.

And if ya wanna sense just a litle of the ride, click here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spq4R8I3BUk

WAYNO.

 

[Bull Barrel]

The old Golden Eagle ferry was a stern paddlewheel.
And they are still talking about reviving the Grafton ferry.
Yep, we got a few around here.

In southern MO there is the Akers ferry.
And also the Dorena and St. Genevieve ferries on the Mississippi.

 

[BucolicBuffalo]

The old Golden Eagle ferry was a stern paddlewheel.
And they are still talking about reviving the Grafton ferry.
Yep, we got a few around here.

In southern MO there is the Akers ferry.
And also the Dorena and St. Genevieve ferries on the Mississippi.

You are so right. Stern paddlewheel. Not enough coffee this morning.

 

[Colonialgirl]

There USE to be a ferry across Newport Harbor in California; I haven't been there in YEARS, so no idea IF it's still in service.
We went on vacation in Myrtle Beach one year and took US 70 up the coast; In North Carolina, it changed to State Road 12 and ended up at a Ferry terminal. You took the Ferry across to Ocracoke Island where you again picked up state road 12 up the island to the far end where you AGAIN boarded a Ferry across to Hatteras Island and then State Road 12 on up across the other Islands until you could pick up US 158 and through Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk. On that trip, we continued on up and took US 13 across and under the Chesapeake Bay entrance and then on up to US 50 where we could cross the Bay to Washington DC and pick up I-270 to I-70 and home to Hagerstown, MD. It was a GREAT trip and the kids all loved it.
Crossing the Pamlico Sound and driving on Ocracoke was great; Wish I could do it again.

 

[luvmyRugers]

In North Carolina, it changed to State Road 12 and ended up at a Ferry terminal. You took the Ferry across to Ocracoke Island where you again picked up state road 12 up the island to the far end where you AGAIN boarded a Ferry across to Hatteras Island and then State Road 12 on up across the other Islands until you could pick up US 158 and through Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk. It was a GREAT trip and the kids all loved it.
Crossing the Pamlico Sound and driving on Ocracoke was great; Wish I could do it again.

CG ma'am, we have a large number of ferries here in the great state of NC. If you ever get the chance, plan a trip from Southport to Knott's Island and hit all the ferries in between. It is well worth the price of admission to see almost the entire Outer Banks ecosystem of NC!

 

[steveodtw]

There's an almost identical (to Wayno's Willamette) ferry crossing in Ironton, MI, cutting about 200 yards across the northern tip of a long fingerlake extension of Lake Charlevoix. Cost is about the same, but cuts a 15 mile drive to go around the lake to the other side.
At the south end of the lake is the East Jordan Iron Works where many of the nations fire hydrant and manhole cover iron castings still come from.

 

[opos]

San Diego had the "nickle snatcher" for years...it went back and forth across the bay from San Diego to Coronado Island....neat little ferry service...gone now as are most of the simple things...got a huge bridge that is perfect for deranged winos to jump off of on a regular basis...

 

[RKB]

This one still runs every day except Christmas . . .

http://www.andersonferry.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Ferry

. . . unless the river's frozen over, of course.

I've ridden the Anderson Ferry many times, I grew up a few miles downriver on the Ohio side, in Cleves. That was the quick way to get to the airport.
There used to be a wonderful little restaurant on the Ohio side, just up from the ferry on River Road, the Trolley Tavern.
The bad thing about the ferry was the railroad crossing up the hill. Some idiot was always waiting for the ferry, on the tracks (there weren't any gates when I was a kid, just flashing lights and a gong), when the NY Central's 'James Whitcomb Riley' passenger train came through on it's daily run, Chicago-bound and up to full speed after leaving Union Terminal in Cincinnati. There were some horrific wrecks there.

 

[WendyZXZ]

I have never been on a ferry, but it does look like it would be fun to ride one!

 

[RKB]

They are fun, kind of a throwback to a slower, simpler time. I still love them.