The Joys Of The Madeline Island Ferry🤗
Also, Seasickness And How Not To Die On A Ferry 🛥️💀
I’ve always wanted a boat. Not a big boat. A boat that’s just big enough to putter around the harbor in. Maybe go upriver.
But in reality, there’s one problem with my boat dreams…
I get seasick.
REALLY seasick.
And not just any ordinary kind of seasickness. It’s more of a spinning, head over heels kind of dizziness. Falling down and crying in the corner of the boat kind of seasick. Praying for the sweet embrace of the angel of death to claim my soul kind of seasickness.
Don’t ever ask me to go deep-sea fishing or even canoeing down a little creek.
My brother has a pontoon, and I will come up with just about any excuse NOT to go on the boat with him. “Oh, no, I can’t go on your super nice new pontoon, I have an inner-ear disorder today,” or “I need to see a guy about a horse.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever get my sea legs without a massive medical intervention. The chances aren’t good, so my dreams of a boat are probably not going to happen.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been ON a boat.
Ferry Experiences
Back in Wisconsin, there’s a mythical place called “Madeline Island.” It’s one of the Apostle Islands off the north shore of Wisconsin in Lake Superior. I have no idea why it’s called the “Apostle Islands” since there are 22 islands. I’m no Biblical scholar, but I’m pretty sure there were only 12 Apostles. Maybe Dan Brown knows something I don’t.
I LOVE going to Madeline Island. Except for the ferry ride, as you can imagine. If I still lived in Wisconsin, I’d be on Madeline Island right now.
My wife, K.L. Rockwell, once brought me on a surprise trip to the island for my birthday. It was great! Perfect weather. Whatta’ island! There’s so little to do on Madeline Island I could spend the rest of my life there.
Getting To Madeline Island Via THE FERRY
The only way to get out to Madeline Island is by ferry.
The horror!
You can also get there by airplane, if you’re super fancy and rich, which of course, I AM, but I choose the ferry to be with the people.
The Madeline Island Ferry is a pretty small ferry, so on summer days there can be a bit of a line. Like… hours. The line is sometimes worse than the seasickness.
They can cram over twenty cars on the Madeline Island ferry.
On our return trip, luckily, the water was incredibly still. It was a nice little twenty-five minute passage from the island to the mainland. There’s a little cabin you can sit in with the other passengers and watch the scenery go by.
When the ferry landed and we drove off the ferry ramp, something was amiss. Did we contract food poisoning from the smoked salmon dealer? We felt like it, but no.
We were ferry sick.
We had to pull the car over next to an ice cream stand and lay in the grass for about an hour before we got our land legs back. Luckily, ice cream seemed to help us adjust back to life on land.
But, that was a nice calm ride. A few years earlier, I had anything but a nice calm ferry ride going out to Madeline Island.
The Not-Nice And Calm Ferry Ride A Few Years Earlier
A few years earlier I was in college at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. That’s a little city in Northern(ish) Wisconsin. Everybody called it “The Harvard Of Wisconsin.”
Aside: Harvard University has demanded we stop calling UWEC “The Harvard Of Wisconsin.” Fine. It’s The Princeton of Wisconsin now!
I lived off-campus with a couple of friends at the time. One seemingly normal November afternoon the three of us were sitting around drinking Leinenkugel Bock Beer, as one does in Wisconsin, while we considered what to do for the weekend. Usually, we’d head down to the casino and lose all of their money.
My roommate’s father had given him an open invite to visit anytime, and he had just moved to Madeline Island! He didn’t say he couldn’t bring friends.
So, on a moment’s notice, we piled into my Ford Tempo and headed north.
It was late in the day in mid-November, but there hadn’t been much snow. So driving was easy.
The drive to Bayfield (home of the Madeline Island Ferry) is about three and a half hours from Eau Claire. Of course, drinking Bock Beer makes the drive a lot more enjoyable! (Not that I would have ever done something as irresponsible as that in my youth)
By the time we pulled up to the Ferry Waiting Zone, I had become a bit apprehensive. A storm was bearing down on us and the clouds had turned an ominous grey. And let’s just say there were some big waves out there.
BUT, we were twenty-year-olds and didn’t really care much about the weather or the possibility of seasickness or even… death.
When the Maritime Vessel LaPointe pulled into the docks, we were ready to go! Big storm? No biggie. We didn’t care.
The boat was shimmying in the wind as I drove my little Ford Tempo onto the deck.
After we parked the car we got out and stood around smoking cigarettes that we’d hand rolled. Yeah, we did that.
The ferryman said, “Hey, WTF are you doing? You can’t smoke on a Ferry!” (this was the before times when people usually didn’t care if you smoked)
So, we said, “Screw you, man!” put out the cigarettes and headed up to the passenger cabin on the second level. It wasn’t long before we headed out to sea. Well, out to lake that is. But it was Lake Superior. The biggest lake in the WORLD!! (what would I do without the Guinness Book of World Records)
The ferry shook in wind and waves. We probably didn’t care because we were still beer buzzed and American Spirit buzzed.
After a few minutes, the ferry was out in the open water and I couldn’t sit still in the passenger cabin any longer. My friends were discussing something along the lines of card counting (as usual), so I decided to go on a little walk on the little boat.
This boat was ROCKING.
Lake Superior can get pretty violent, especially in the winter months. Honestly, I don’t know how I was allowed to just roam around the vessel. But, I know better now. Not that I’m ever going on a tiny ferry like that ever again.
I headed down the stairs to my car. There were about fifteen cars on the deck in a nice line. Mine was in the middle of the pack by the side railing.
Some people were just sitting in their cars staring forward. Very psychotic, but I suppose they were locals living on a remote island. Plus, this was before cellphones, like 1995.
The ferrymen didn’t seem to care whether I was walking about the vessel. All three were probably up in the wheelhouse holding the helm of the ship at the same time while I was stupidly wandering around.
Nobody stopped me from walking over to my car. I’d seen other people do it too. Why not me? I had a pack of gum to go get. SO… in the raging sea with the snow coming down, I made my way over to the car.
The car was positioned next to the side of the ship. A wave could’ve washed me right over the side. But, like I said, I was no seaman. What did I know? I was just a buzzed flatlander who should’ve stayed in the cabin.
I sat in the car for a few minutes chewing gum, staring blankly forward as the sea undulated below me. I became bored again. I mean, how the hell did we live before smart phones!
I decided to head back up to the passenger cabin.
The boat was rocking and rolling by this point. I had to hold onto the cars as I walked between them to get back to the stairs up to the passenger cabin.
Just as I emerged from the vehicle area to the ship’s ad hoc sidewalk, we hit what must’ve been a monster wave. Honestly, I had no clue waves got that big in Lake Superior, but I won’t deny the fact that I’d heard the song The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald a number of times.
I should’ve known better.
We hit another massive wave head on. The boat lurched straight up into the air as we crossed over the wave. It was like intense crab fishing off the coast of Alaska.
And then BAM. Something gave. We must’ve hit some pivot point because all of the cars suddenly slid backward, smashing into one another like dominoes.
It was as if fifteen car wrecks happened all at the same time. Like when the I-5 in Portland gets half an inch of snow.
That’s when I realized that if I’d just been standing between the cars where I had been just a few seconds earlier, I’d be dead and you wouldn’t be reading this now. Lucky you!
After the cars came to rest haphazardly around the deck of the ferry, here’s the really weird thing:
Nobody said a word. It was like this was a common occurrence and the locals just shook it off. Heck, they didn’t even shake it off. They didn’t even mention it.
Obviously I haven’t shaken it off and that was like 30 year ago!
So here’s my advice if you’re ever on a small ferry traversing a dangerous passageway in Lake Superior during a storm in November:
Don’t.
PS: Strangely, I didn’t get seasick on my near death ferry ride. I don’t know why. Must’ve been the bock beer. Thanks, Leinenkugel’s!!
*Marc Buehler, "Bees in cosmos bipinnatus," Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_buehler/3900018463, CC BY-SA 2.0.
That's some ferry ride! Was Gordon Lightfoot anywhere near that ferry? :-)
Wow. I’m surprised you would ever get on a ferry again. Do you have nightmares about that experience?