Click on any photo to see a larger view
In 1999, we crossed a cold river in British Columbia on a small ferry boat designed to haul several cars back and forth across the river. It was a quick trip, river was at most 100 yards across, but apparently there was not a bridge anywhere close. It was a fine looking ferry – it was pulled back and forth across the river by cables, the ferry bottom was made of wood planks and the ramps on both sides of the river were wood.
This was around Kamloops, British Columbia. I looked it up on the Internet and it is the McLure Ferry on Highway 5 crossing the North Thompson River. Ferry capacity is 2 vehicles and 12 passengers max. I remember that we had a very remote cabin booked north of Kamloops, this must have been on the way to that cabin.
In 2013, we drove up to north Australia to look at the Daintree Rainforest National Park. This is a really wet area and the rainforest runs out of the mountains and right down to the beach. It is the one point in Australia where the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef meet. We drove further up to Cape Tribulation where Captain Cook ran his ship onto a coral reef. After he ran aground, he went a little further north to what is now Cooktown, the oldest town in Australia.
To get to Cape Tribulation, we took a cable pulled vehicle ferry boat across the very wide, swollen river Daintree River. The Daintree Ferry crosses the Daintree River about 5 miles from the ocean. The ferry held about 20 cars and crossed the river about 4 times an hour. The road is paved up to Cape Tribulation, it is unpassable for 2WD vehicles north of Cape Tribulation.
The rental car company had warned us not to drive through rivers. There were plenty of Toyota trucks and SUVs that had snorkels and drove across the rivers where there were no bridges.
