In case you missed the video of car ferry  Badger‘s arrival one day in late June, it’s here.

Rainy weather had caused a lot of runoff, turning the water two shades of Lake Michigan.  And once I got thinking about weather, and the word got stuck in my brain along with this absurd video clip called “badger song” from my early days on the internet, my downward spiral began, like …

badger,

truckers,

tankers,

trucker, tanker, and forester,

camper and forester,

runner  (vehicles are driven off Badger by these shore crew who run from one car to the next),

more runners (from my 2012 trip and these taken in Ludington, with Spartan in the background),

camper (I hope you’ve caught the pattern by now),

trailers,

charger . . .   (by this time I realized fighting the spiral had become hopeless . . .)

Oh well, maybe you had to have been there to catch my giddiness . . .

But!  In an attempt to resurrect my reputation as a sane blogger, you might have noticed that in the first sentence of this post, I referred to Badger as a “car” ferry.  Like me, you might have thought of  four-wheeled rubber tired vehicles, but–in the manner of Detroit River ferry called Detroit in this wonderful SHORPY image–

Badger and sister ship Spartan had different origins, used to have rails built into the deck . . .  as you can see here.

Industries come and go, as does supply chain and people-moving  infrastructure . . .  Here’s more, and I’m not going to turn political here, but this is context .  . . .  Click here for more SHORPY car ferry photos.

Here’s the post I did after visit to Badger from 2012.  And here’s a more recent one showing her underwater layout.