Taking the Motor Home on a Ferry Ride--Delaware to New Jersey

We were up early this morning, as we had an appointment to make. We were headed to the lovely port at Lewes, Delaware, to catch the ferry. This ferry ride will take us from Delaware to New Jersey, and save us a considerable amount of driving. So we left our very nice Boondockers Welcome site at 9:00 a.m. Some would say that's not really early, but remember that we are retired and on a whole different time schedule now.

We headed for the harbor for our journey on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. We didn't sail until 10:15, but we were supposed to check in at the station an hour early. We prepaid our $104 ferry ticket when we made our reservation several weeks ago. That's $79 for the motor home and pickup, $20 for two passengers, and a $5 fuel surcharge. When we got to the entrance gate, they measured our motor home and pickup to verify the 59-feet measurement that we used to fill out our on-line reservation. Then they charged us an extra $1 fuel surcharge because of the rising price of diesel.

Being here an hour early gave us time to walk around the Lewes Harbor. They have a nice building with travel information and a grill. We have been struggling with how to pronounce the name of this town since we first saw it in print. Now we know that you say it like "Lewis."

Some of today's passengers drove their vehicles onto the ferry, while others walked on for a day trip. The walk-on passengers entered through the green tinted glass tunnel in the picture below.

The drive-on passengers enter through the back of the boat. We learned from the web site that long vehicles should schedule a time two hours before or after high tide to minimize the steepness of the ramp going onto the ferry. We are here two hours before high tide and the ramp was almost level.

The ferry is bigger than it first appears. It's big enough to have a two-lane row for cars going down the middle of the boat, with more lanes on the outside. Those are two narrow lanes, as it felt like the motor home pretty well filled them up.

We were the third vehicle on the ferry, so we were close to the front.

In fact, we had a great view of the water from our tall seats in the motor home. We could see over the two cars in front of us with an unobstructed view through the windshield.

But passengers aren't required to stay in their vehicles during this 85-minute cruise. So we walked around this big boat as we got under way.

We were up on the second deck when we started seeing the lighthouses that we had tried to see from land two days ago.

Denisa got her best view of the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse from the ferry bridge. The breakwater leading to the lighthouse must be a great place for fishing, as we saw a row of boats anchored there. This lighthouse has been standing guard here since 1908. It's the only lighthouse off Delaware's coast that is still operating.

From our view on the upper deck we could also check the roof of our motor home below us. When we stepped out of the motor home, a voice from the deck above yelled, "Is that a Tiffin 33AA?" That's a question we don't get every day. Not many people know the exact make and model of our motor home!?! The couple asking the question are camping in Lewes in their Tiffin 33AA, so they recognized ours. We spent most of the rest of the ferry ride trading notes and stories about our motor homes.

Denisa can visit with new friends while still taking pictures. She finally got a shot of one of the dolphins playing in the waves in the bay. Our new Tiffin friends are from Florida, where dolphins are common. They don't like seeing a dolphin on their fishing trips, so they weren't as impressed as Denisa with this sighting.

Our perch on the ferry also allowed for a good view of the Breakwater Lighthouse when we passed by.

First lit in 1885, this light house was decommissioned in 1994. But it still stands as a bright red welcome to passengers coming in and out of the Delaware Bay.

Besides visiting with our motor home friends, we also talked to the driver of the pickup next to us. He lives in Cape May and he had advice for us on things to see and do in New Jersey--but that's for the next blog. After 17 miles and 85 minutes, we saw the ferry landing come into view. This ferry ride from Delaware to New Jersey was another interesting part of our journey in the northeast this summer.