Setting Sail with the S.S. Badger

I'm a sucker for nostalgia.  Last summer during one of our camping trips, we ran into a man that told me about the S.S. Badger  and he told me at least once, we should experience it during one of our camping trips to Michigan.  More on the camping later...

The S.S. Badger sails from Manitowoc, WI to Ludington, MI daily and is celebrating their 60th anniversary this year!  It's like a mini cruise, really.  There are viewing decks and lounge chairs.  It was too cold the day we went for outside viewing, but on a hot sunny day I'm sure it would be great. It's about a 4 hour cruise across the lake.

We played bingo.  Boy #2 even won a souvenir glass when he had B.O.!  He didn't understand what B.O. meant when he yelled it out, but he does now!  We watched Hotel Transylvania in the forward movie lounge.  We shopped!  We bought t-shirts, stickers and a blanket for the camper.  We had lunch, burgers, pizza, cookies.  Oh and

the Portside Bar has plenty of drinks!  There are state rooms available too.  We cruised across the lake in the middle of the day so that wasn't really necessary for our trip.  The teenager spent most of his time in the t.v. lounge watching Sports Center.  There is a small museum in the quiet room.  I found it very interesting, shipwrecks and boats of days gone by that sailed the great lakes are very intriguing to me.  The kids weren't interested in that, but I spent about 30 minutes in that room looking at everything.  Boy #2 loved the whole experience and was wishing we could take the boat back to WI on the way home.

We camped in MI for the weekend, so we specifically went out of our way to take the S.S. Badger across the lake.  Our four hour trip turned into almost six hours because the boat was late, so if you're looking for convenience this may not be the way to do it, but it is something to experience once in your lifetime. 

This is the view coming into the Ludington, MI port

What a view!!  That just screams SUMMER to me.