We left St. Paul on Monday (July 27) and our objective was to make our way to the eastern Michigan town of Ludington. Our route would take us across the state of Wisconsin and across Lake Michigan.
St. Paul to Manitowoc
As you leave St. Paul heading due east, you immediately enter Wisconsin. We drove part of this road a couple of years ago when we went to Chicago and then down to Indiana. But after Eau Claire, it was new territory. I say new but the whole drive looked more or less the same. Lots of farmland, dairies, small towns with fast food and gas stations, etc. The countryside does has a beauty to it, but it’s a lot of the same thing.
After about four hours, Google guided us towards the outskirts of Green Bay. As we were approaching the area, the skies grew darker and the wind picked up. We had been tracking some storms on our phones, and it appeared that things were becoming more menacing by the minute. We were listening to local radio when the first tornado alert was announced. The first alert mentioned the potential of a tornado touching down in the area. A few minutes later they announced that a tornado had touched down not far away. Through looking at the doppler map on the phone and listening to the weather reports on the radio, we could get an idea as to where the storm was headed. By the time we had passed Green Bay, it appeared to have moved southwest of us.
We just kept going since we needed to get to Manitowoc to catch our ferry. Though we were beginning to think that with these violent storms in the area, there was an increasing risk that the ferry might not happen. The dark clouds off to our right had an eerie jagged shape pointing towards the ground that looked like they had the potential to form a funnel cloud.
The weatherman on the radio then announced that there were three confirmed tornadoes that had touched down in the area. We passed through periodic downpours that were so intense that we had to slow to a crawl at times. He began to urge people to stay off the roads and seek proper shelter. We continued on given that it sounded like the worst of the storm was now west of us towards Lake Winnebago. We figured that unless the storm changed directions, we were likely going to avoid the bad stuff. We were still experiencing wind and rain, but not in any danger.
We finally pulled into the town of Manitowoc and made our way to the ferry. It was about an hour before the scheduled departure and there was already a queue of vehicles lined up to board the ship. In spite of the pouring rain, it appeared that they were in the process of loading and we were beginning to think that the ferry was going to happen after all.
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The Ferry
After about 20 minutes in the queue, we reached the front and were guided to park in one of several lines of cars. You leave the keys inside, grab what you need for the ferry ride and leave the vehicle for the drivers to load after you’ve boarded the ship. We had to do this in the wind and rain.
I’ve taken many ferries in Europe and Africa, and I've always driven directly onto the ship. It would be too big of a security risk in most places to have a shipload of unlocked vehicles. I love the fact that you can do this in the US.
We came to learn that this particular ship, the S.S. Badger, is quite famous. It’s a the last coal-fired ferry in the US with a long history going back to 1953. As people filed up the stairs to the multiple passenger levels, the regulars all scurried to their favorite seats. We went to the top level which had a couple cafeterias and afforded nice views of Manitowoc. The rain had stopped by this time and before we pulled up anchor, the sun had appeared. We hoped it would result in a less choppy ride to Michigan. I’ve never been one to suffer from motion sickness, but as I get older it seems to affect me more.
The Badger is loaded with activities including a kids’ play area, bingo, a movie room, etc. They check your bags when you board to make sure you don’t bring on your own food/drink so the bars and cafeterias were doing some good business.
We were soon heading out across the lake. It was actually fun being on the ship and I was glad we opted on this mode of transportation to get to Michigan. It also saves a ton of driving rather than heading around the southern part of the lake through Chicago and back up the eastern lakefront.
The only other time I was on Lake Michigan was over thirty years ago when I joined my brother’s sailing team for a race between Chicago and St. Joseph, MI. That’s a fun story but I’ll refrain from recounting it here. But that was my first encounter with how big this lake really is. Given that the skies had mostly cleared, I was able to observe that you can maintain sight of the Wisconsin shore about a quarter of the way. Then you have no sight of land for about half the voyage before catching sight of the Michigan shore for the last quarter of the trip. Just in case anyone is interested in that sort of thing. Though you do lose cell reception for a while, the ship has wifi so you can stay connected.
It’s convenient that the port of arrival in Ludington is the also the town where we will be spending the next five days. As we approached the harbor, we passed by the lighthouse at the end of the pier. We could see some family gathered and waving. People have been arriving at ports by ship for millennia. Very old school but pretty cool at the same time.
Once on Michigan soil and having greeted the family, we waited for the car. The youngish drivers would pull vehicles off the ship, park the car, leave the keys inside, and jog back in to get the next one. Eventually ours arrived and we were soon on our way to the beach house.
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The Beach House
Last year was our initiation to the beautiful setting of my sister-in-law’s boyfriend’s vacation home. He generously invited the whole family last year and we ended up with about 13 people in the house. This year I think it was 12. The house can absorb it, but it does put a strain on the logistics to support five days together.
Most of the family tend to jump on the opportunity to take part in all that the gated community has to offer. There is golf, pickleball, tennis and other court sports. There are canoes and paddleboards for the water activities. Walks on the beach. Swimming is nice on the river feeding into Lake Michigan, but swimming in the frigid lake itself is only for the brave.
Some of the family were content to spend most of their time on screens and rarely leaving the house. This is unfortunate given that screens are something you can do without making a long drive. I understand that this is the reality for so many people, not only young people, but I do think it’s sad (and not very healthy).
Given that this is the time of year for our four family birthdays, we carved out some time to celebrate. With mine in May, two in July and one in early August, we power through them in about 80 days and are birthday free for the remainder of the year.
The Maritime Museum
I realize that my blog posts can range from the interesting to the rather mundane. It’s basically a log of whatever is happening, whether it’s exciting or not. A maritime museum is significantly less riveting than an Al-Shebab threat, but it deserves a little shout-out, at least in my opinion.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t fully operational on the day we went. They were doing some work on the place and the nice lady at the entrance price was charging half price. There were apparently a couple of cool things that we missed out on like interactive simulation that puts you at the helm of a Great Lakes car ferry in the 1930s. Not necessarily a childhood dream of mine, but it could have been interesting.
The museum is located in a decommissioned Coast Guard station built in 1934 and there are three floors of exhibits. As I said, nothing riveting, just interesting. But it is significant in that maritime activity on Lake Michigan has been a bigger deal than most visitors think. With the beginning of the car ferry industry in the late 1800s, Ludington developed into a major commercial harbor. At one time it had the largest car ferry fleet in the world.
One of the newer exhibits upstairs covered the infamous Armistice Day Storm of 1940, an unanticipated historic winter storm that struck the Great Lakes and the Midwest. Three ships sank on Lake Michigan, all of them just south of Ludington, and a fourth ran aground right on Ludington beach. To be honest, I don’t think I had every heard about it before, but it was crazy. Apparently, it was a relatively nice mid-November day and people were out and about wearing light clothing. Over the course of the day, however, temperatures plummeted by 60 degrees. Roughly two feet of snow fell in less than 24 hours with up to 20 ft. drifts and 80 mph winds. Over 150 people died. It happened so fast that people were unprepared and many were unable to get to shelter. The exhibit had some pretty graphic photos, but overall I think it was well done.
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Unfortunately, the week went by too fast. By the following Saturday, we all loaded up our cars and headed out – most towards southern Indiana, some towards Grand Rapids.
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