A Local's Year on Lake Wisconsin: The Ferry, the Duck, and the Restaurant Wait Nobody Skips

Ask someone who has never lived here about the Merrimac Ferry and you get the postcard version: a free boat, a seven-minute glide across the Wisconsin River, ice cream on both landings. Ask someone who actually lives along that Merrimac-Okee crossing and needs to get to a job or an appointment on the other bank, and you get a different answer entirely. The first question isn't where to eat after the crossing. It's whether the ferry is running at all.

That gap between how Lake Wisconsin gets marketed and how it actually gets lived in is the real story here. The ferry that shows up in every travel write-up as a scenic novelty is, for residents on either bank, working infrastructure with real downtime, and planning around that downtime is just part of the week. The same is true of the town's social calendar, which runs less on lake views than on a chamber of commerce that gave a duck a board seat.

Is the Ferry Running?

The Colsac III, Wisconsin's only free ferry, connects Merrimac in Sauk County to Okee in Columbia County on State Highway 113, and it typically runs from April through November. In 2026 it reopened for the season on March 24, and as of this writing it's still shuttling traffic 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A single crossing takes about seven minutes, a round trip closer to fourteen.

None of that changes the fact that the ferry closes every Wednesday from 9 to 10 a.m. for refueling, a detail that never makes it into the tourism copy but matters a great deal if you've scheduled a mid-morning appointment across the river. It also closes without much notice when winter arrives early. Last season it halted service on November 29 after cold weather made the crossing unsafe, and it never reopened before spring. In that 2025 season, the ferry logged 39,734 crossings and carried 208,823 vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians combined, with daily traffic sometimes topping 1,200 vehicles and wait times stretching to 50 minutes at peak.

Those aren't sightseeing numbers. They're commuter numbers, for a route with no bridge and no real detour once the weather turns.

If you live on one side of the lake and work, shop, or see family on the other, the ferry schedule is closer to a bus schedule than a boat tour, and it's worth checking the Wisconsin DOT's ferry status page before you plan a Wednesday morning crossing.

The Duck With a Board Seat

Lake Wisconsin's civic life doesn't happen on the water. It happens at the Lodi & Lake Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, which held its annual banquet and awards ceremony at Lodi's Waddle Inn in February 2026. About 100 members turned out, and the chamber's leadership list for the year included a director of fun, a title held, officially, by Susie the Duck.

That's not a throwaway detail. Susie the Duck Day is an actual early-August tradition in Lodi, complete with a parade, live music, and a beer garden, and the chamber has built the duck into its own governance structure rather than treating it as a one-day mascot appearance. It's a small sign of how tightly this town's identity is wound around its own institutions rather than around the lake as a backdrop.

The 2025 award winners, announced at that February banquet, tell you something about which businesses are actually gaining traction here:

• New and Emerging Business of the Year, Wisconsin Barrel Company
• Small Business of the Year, Los Hernandez Latin Market and Mexican Food
• Medium Business of the Year, Lodi Sausage and Meat Company
• Citizen of the Year, Jill Roessler, recognized for running the Bar Buddies Lodi sober ride program along with youth soccer coaching, Cub Scouts volunteering, and service on the Ouisconsing School board

The chamber also reported a membership of 202, with 25 new members added over the year, which its executive director framed as a real growth marker rather than routine turnover. For a town this size, that's the kind of number that shows up in local reporting and nowhere else.

Where the Wait Is Worth Making

Lake Wisconsin's dining options split cleanly by what you're actually doing that day, and locals treat the three main spots as different tools rather than competitors.

Ferry X-ing Bar & Grill sits right at the ferry landing, and it earns its reputation the hard way: Friday fish fry, Saturday prime rib, and a deck that faces the lake directly. On summer weekends the wait can run 45 minutes, and the standing advice from regulars is to skip the host stand and sit at the bar instead.

Fitz's On The Lake, between Lodi and the ferry crossing, runs a Sunday brunch buffet from Memorial Day to Labor Day only, pairing traditional breakfast fare with a prime rib carving station. It's also a working boater's stop, with gas at the dock and a salad bar that's gotten harder to find at comparable places. Live music is a regular fixture, not an event night special.

Fish Tales Restaurant, open since 2000, is the choice when you want the supper club experience without the wait. It's open seven nights a week with a menu that runs from prime rib and filet mignon to roasted duck and seafood penne pesto, plus a Sunday schedule that stretches from breakfast at 9 a.m. through dinner service.

None of these are competing for the same meal. Ferry X-ing is where you land after crossing the river. Fitz's is where you tie up the boat. Fish Tales is where you make a reservation.

The Trail That Starts at the Landing

Past the restaurant patios, the Ice Age Trail's Merrimac Segment links the ferry crossing directly to Devil's Lake, roughly 9.5 miles of mostly wooded ridgeline. You don't need to walk the whole thing to get the point of it. Even a short out-and-back gives a sense of why people drive across the state just to hike this stretch, and for locals it functions as the quiet counterpart to a ferry landing that can get loud and slow on a July Saturday.

What's Changing Off the Water

A few smaller threads are worth tracking if you're paying attention to how the area is developing beyond its shoreline. The Friends of the Lodi Dog Park announced early this year that they'd hit their fundraising goal, moving the project into property negotiation, a step that puts an actual dog park within reach for a town that hasn't had one. Separately, a new lease agreement with the Town of Lodi is letting the Lakeland Aero Club pursue renovation and expansion at Lodi Lakeland Airport, a small but concrete signal about local infrastructure investment.

For golfers, the split is straightforward: Lake Wisconsin Country Club offers an 18-hole waterfront layout with clubhouse dining, while Lodi Golf Course is the more casual 9-hole public option in town. Neither is new, but both are part of the same pattern running through everything else here: the amenities that get top billing in outside coverage aren't necessarily the ones that structure a resident's actual week.

That's the throughline. The ferry that reads as a scenic curiosity to a day-tripper is a scheduling constraint to the person who lives on the other bank. The duck that reads as a cute local mascot to a visitor holds an actual board title in the organization that runs the town's business awards. And the restaurants that show up identically on every generic list serve three completely different functions depending on whether you just got off the boat, tied up at the dock, or made a reservation three days ago. Living here means knowing which is which. Visiting here means reading about all three as if they're interchangeable.

If you're thinking about what it actually takes to settle into a rhythm like this, whether you're already nearby or considering a move to the Lake Wisconsin corridor, Your Local Real Estate Group works this stretch of Sauk and Columbia County every day. Let's talk about your next move.