Complete Mississippi River Cruise - Day 9

Photos

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Clay was up first this morning. I finally got up a little after 6am. It is getting lighter later the further south we go. Today was a sailing day. It stormed terribly overnight with lightning and thunder. It was close, hot and muggy all day and in the afternoon there was another ominous storm. It looked like tornados forming off the back of the boat and then a heavy rain blew across from starboard to port in a wall. So, at one point half the boat was dry and the other was drenched before it went all the way across whipping up waves in the Mississippi River.

I hope all this weather gets cleared out and we have a nice day for touring in Memphis. We booked our Graceland tickets for Monday afternoon with Mom’s AAA discount. It was harder than you might think because you have to buy timed tickets and with our complimentary morning city tour and lunch (which we all finally voted to just skip!) and getting a taxi out to Graceland, we weren't sure what time to try for to allow time to tour and safely get back before sailing time. (In the original itinerary, we were docked here in Memphis at the foot of Beale Street. That would have been awesome, but it is no longer on the itinerary!) ACL did offer a Graceland tour, but it was $65 each and we did better than that sharing 4 in cab both ways and buying our tickets directly. We were probably out around $50 each with cab, AAA discount, Mansion Tour and lunch. The Graceland did a terrible job of describing what to buy based on time allotted. We picked the tight schedule tickets of Mansion Tour only if you had 1 to 1/5 hours, but we were called and searched and allowed into an hour long line for a shuttle over to the Mansion at our ticket time. If you wait an hour for a shuttle ride, there is no way you can complete the tour in 1.5 hours. Just saying. Since ACL's tour bus left the ship at 2pm and they were arriving as we were departing, I think they must have somehow bypassed standing in the shuttle queue, otherwise we would have sailed late. So, the extra charge may have been worth something, but that is hindsight.

We had breakfast at 7:30am. Eggs Benedict. On my endorsement from last week, all 3 ladies had the Eggs Benedict. It was good. Relief!

We were to have a lecture on Vicksburg: The Gibraltar of the South at 9:30am, but Mike our Riverlorian heard they were having church then back in the Paddlewheel Lounge and he refused to go head to head and sent everyone out to return at 10am. Then he talked…Squirrel! About whatever crossed his mind and said Vicksburg about 100 times. I have no idea why Gibraltar of the South as he never spoke the term.

Lunch was first course, shrimp cakes or salad. Main course was Cobb Salad or fried catfish. Dessert was lemon meringue pie or ice cream. I had another PB&J with chips and no dessert today.

After lunch, we all sat out on our balcony and wildlife watched. Judy had asked earlier about seeing deer or something besides birds. We hadn’t. But, after lunch I spotted 2 deer and then a deer with some wild turkeys. Clay was in the bathroom, so although my hands shake enough that I don't usually try to use it, I grabbed up his camera and started trying to get a focused photo. He came out as I was giving up because the last deer had run off and he asked if I got the wild turkeys. Huh!?! I was working so hard to get the deer that I didn't even see the turkeys. Clay shot some more photos of just turkeys and it turned out there were at least 4 of them out on a sandy beach. I asked him to check the camera for deer. I was afraid they were just big tan dogs or something since I picked up his camera instead of binoculars. No, it was a deer. (It was a good thing I did this because it turned out those were the only deer photos we got!) So I went and tracked down Mom & Judy and we sat and watched. We only saw one more deer, then we crossed an incoming river and didn’t see anymore. We did see Bald Eagles, Egrets and Herons. It is funny that at some point we got out of the range of American White Pelicans because we haven’t seen anymore.

We had a 3pm cooking demo with Chef James. He made a roux for gumbo. Then he got distracted so, he also held an impromptu kitchen tour. The kitchen was small, but not the smallest boat kitchen we’ve toured. He said they do about ½ of the baking they serve. He said that all the service staff work both steward and wait staff duty and work in 12 weeks increments. (This concurs with what Mike told us about 12 weeks on and 6 months off.) He said most of them have no experience or training. They go through a one-week training session and then they are thrown in and it is considered a kind of hospitality training program. Well that explains a whole lot. It fits with our experience. What does not fit is why ACL would think that at the per diems they are charging that we are interested in funding their student work experiences program. There is nothing in the literature or on their website to explain that this is the experience we should expect and certainly the prices don’t reflect all staff in training.  What is really amazing is that it isn’t actually worse than it is. They served rum-rich Hurricanes and slices of sweet potato pie.

The ladies went up to the Sky Lounge at 4pm for Classic Movie Trivia and we had no winners. My best was 7 out of 10 and my worst was 3 out of 10.

Cocktail hour followed by dinner. First course was feta house salad or chicken & Andouille gumbo. Main course was BBQ flank steak or pasta St. Charles or roast Cornish hen. Dessert was chocolate bread pudding (not as good or the same as last week’s) or carrot cake or ice cream.

No one went to tonight’s entertainment. It was Silk Pajamas again and Mom & Judy didn’t like them last night. We took apart the puzzle we finished this morning (after Mom got Robert’s permission) and we started a new puzzle in a different corner of the room against the window. Hopefully the light will be better there. You will notice in the photo from this morning that there are 2 missing pieces. We checked the whole room thoroughly for those missing pieces, but when we tore it apart this evening there was only one missing piece. You have to wonder!

We should be in Memphis at 6am and have a full day of touring ahead of us. The weather has been awful today and we hope we are out of it or it has blown by Memphis by tomorrow.

Photos