The Island Line ferry is a fancy name for a humble pontoon boat that connects two ends of an old railroad causeway, with a gap for boats to pass through. The causeway has been turned into a bike trail, and because of the ferry, a cyclist can zip from Burlington, the biggest city in Vermont, to the Lake Champlain islands without having to take a traffic-filled 15-mile detour. “Without the ferry, you’d have to go all the way around Malletts Bay on a busy road full of trucks,” says Brian Costello, who manages the ferry service. The Caltrans ferries crossing the sloughs of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta on submerged cables take about three minutes. [...] the Island Line ferry could be the shortest ferry ride designed to carry cyclists across an open body of water, and hardly anyone would argue against its being the prettiest. In 1998, the Clinton administration went so far as to designate Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, so local scientists could snag research grants. On a busy summer weekend, cyclists might have to wait in line half an hour for the 90-second ride. The captain did confess, with considerable chagrin, that the boat got lost once in a heavy fog and, instead of steaming to the opposite dock 200 feet away, it wound up returning to the same dock it departed from. Because of the Island Line ferry, bicycling across Lake Champlain turns out to be every bit as memorable as bicycling across the Golden Gate Bridge. The route from Burlington passes beaches, nature reserves, the Winooski River, a 100-year-old boathouse and countless snack stands selling maple creemee soft-serve ice cream cones, apparently the state food of Vermont. After getting off the ferry in South Hero, a cyclist passes more beaches, nature reserves and maple creemees. Another thing to do in South Hero is visit Tie by Night, perhaps the world’s only self-serve fly-fishing store. Just across the border in the province of Quebec, there’s a pretty good cheese factory selling French cheeses with hard-to-pronounce names that you can buy and make a picnic of in a small park across the road. [...] ordinary cyclists with ordinary legs will finish their maple creemees and head back down the causeway trail to the ferry dock for the return 90-second ride and another visit with Molly the dog. Fly-fishing accessories, fly-tying materials, rods and tackle.
Comment on No time to kill time on world’s shortest ferry ride
By Steve Rubenstein, San Francisco Chronicle: Travel
Sun, 02/19/2017 - 7:09am
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