Complete Mississippi River Cruise Trip - Precruise Day 1 to 3

Photos

Wednesday, August, 6, 2014 through Friday, August 8, 2014

Sorry I am so delayed in getting these posts up. I am slow! Worse, we did not have a wonderful trip and I hate to have to write anything negative, so I have been loathe to work on this trip's journal. However, there is so little information online about the American Cruise Lines experience or about the Queen of the Mississippi that I finally forced myself to it. So it begins here...

As I type this in the Holiday Inn in downtown St. Paul, MN, it is the evening of Friday, August 8, 2014. We flew from RDU to Rapid City, SD on Wednesday, August 6. I have been up to almost 11pm every night since Tuesday and up every morning between 4 and 6am. I am exhausted. This trip was ill conceived and poorly planned. I am not saying everything that could have gone wrong has, but it feels like it. I have been trying to just roll with the punches and try to enjoy what comes, but Clay and I have both had a bad trip.

I guess I won’t have much to say because there is no advice here for anyone to take from us. No one would want to duplicate this trip. I don’t want to list all the negatives. We are here because we booked a MS river cruise to take with Mom & Judy. We booked it back in January along with our flights, etc. Clay & I booked the Complete Mississippi with American Cruise Lines on the Queen of the Mississippi and Mom & Judy booked only the 2^nd leg. So we are starting here in St. Paul (more on that later!) and Mom & Judy are joining us on the boat in St. Louis the following Saturday. We all nervously watched the river water levels (Flooded!) for the past month and the altered itineraries as we tracked the boat. The levels looked like they were about right before we left and it was still raining and the levels were falling as we left home. ACL called on Tuesday before we left and said we were expected in St. Paul this weekend. OK, even though the ship’s locater transponder was either stuck in Alton, IL or had been turned off there last weekend. I reconfirmed with the caller that we would be flying to Rapid City all day Wednesday and driving to St. Paul all day Thursday and be at the Holiday Inn the night before embarkation. On Wednesday as we were flying to Rapid City, ACL left a message on our home phone saying they needed to speak to us that day urgently. We didn’t get that message until after 10pm and couldn’t call back since no one was answering until after 8:30am the next day. That was when we were told ACL could not sail the Queen of the Mississippi to St. Paul because the water levels were too LOW! We were emailed a voucher to print out and take to the Crowne Plaza in downtown St. Paul by 9 am on Saturday morning to be bused to La Crosse, WI. That would have been our port on Sunday. There was no mention of how they would accommodate the missed port of Red Wing, MN or the eagle watching excursion that was included there. I guess we’ll find out. (Spoiler alert: ACL would do nothing to make things up to those of us on this abbreviated cruise.) But I have skipped ahead to the headline of my cautionary tale. Let me just say here that in my experience river cruises only sail about 50% of their itineraries because water is either too low or too high to allow navigation or there is a lock jammed or broken or closed for repair, etc. So, starting from there and add Clay’s half-baked idea of starting 3 days early in Rapid City. He booked the flights almost immediately after booking the cruise without much, if any, research at all. We wound up only eventually finding an over $200/night Sleep Inn for one night on arrival. Why? The 74^th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Week was August 4-10, 2014. We were lucky to find one night’s room. Clay’s stated goal was seeing Mt. Rushmore. Mission accomplished but little else for a half week of crazy travel and exhaustion. Mt. Rushmore is crazy anyway! What is up with that? I mean I’ve seen the PBS documentaries about the making of Mt. Rushmore, but I still don’t get it. Crazy or inspired? I have to go with crazy. Since I can’t come up with anything positive to say let me at least try to be constructive. Choice Hotels: what is up with those little pillows? 5 little square pillows. What are 2 people supposed to do with 5 little pillows? Where do they even buy standard size pillows that have been cut in half? Are they just naked living room throw pillows? And they don’t have pillowcases that size. They have to wrap the little square pillows in a full size pillow case, but now they have to launder 5 of them instead of 2 and they are worried about me reusing a towel to save the planet and their profit margin. Really? WTH? At the end of their lives, no one has ever said I wish I’d spent more time at work and at the end of a long travel day, no one ever said I wish I had a little half-size pillow. No, they said I want a big fluffy pillow! I am still out of sorts after a long overdue, but short sleep riding herd trying to wrangle 3 little square pillows in to some comfortable order on Wednesday night. I still hurt all over, my hips, my back, my neck and I’m still taking anti-inflammatories trying to get back right. Take a memo, until you hear Choice Hotels chain has returned to normal pillows, AVOID! Holiday Inn has wonderful big fluffy pillows, 4 of them for 2 people. PERFECT.  Also on the 2^nd night I noticed as I was turning the pillow bellies to the outside edges of the bed that each hem had a word embroidered on it. There were 2 firms and 2 softs. I asked Clay about it and he said he thought his were pretty soft last night, so tonight we took one of each and you know what? Even better! Now, back to the beginning in Rapid City…



We were a little late arriving in RAP because they had a problem with their radar and the runways were briefly closed while we looped far away. Then there was some confusion about baggage unloading and claim, but thankfully we had not gate checked and expected our bags to be delivered to a carousel. Some came out on one and some came out on two, but the good news is that they only had the 2 carousels. I claimed the bags while Clay went to get the rental car from National and we both accomplished our missions at the same time. The rental cars were right outside baggage claim and couldn’t have been more convenient. We were on our way. Bonus: the previous renter had left a valid $11 parking permit on the windshield for Mt. Rushmore!

Sadly, we had seen the weather turn grayer, hazier and cloudier the closer we flew to RAP and it was about to get really ugly. I made the decision that we should drive directly to Mt. Rushmore instead of checking in to the Sleep Inn and unloading the car first. It was an excellent decision. While we saw Mt. Rushmore in a pretty good rain, we got to watch the clouds roll over the faces instead of trying to see them through the clouds. When the clouds started over the faces we walked back to the parking lot, hoping to get to the Crazy Horse monument before it got covered. It is further south and the weather seemed to be drifting to the south, so we were hopeful. The GPS said it was only 11 miles away. Unfortunately when we got out to the road the Highway Patrol was out there and had set out cones and a roadblock closing the road to Crazy Horse. The visibility going uphill in that direction was almost nil, so I am sure they were being safety conscious, but it would have meant a 60 mile drive around to get to Crazy Horse and still not guarantee that we would find those roads unblocked or be able to see it, so we missed it.

It was about 5pm local time now and we were tired and wet anyway. I had spotted a mannequin or statue of Smokey the Bear in front of a National Forest Ranger Station somewhere between Keystone and Rapid City, so we headed for the Sleep Inn looking for it. We found him holding his shovel and I was more excited than about Mt. Rushmore. Honestly, Mt. Rushmore just struck me more as a massive desecration than anything else. I have been thinking about it and I am still mystified by the whole thing. Miles from anywhere, surrounded by thousands of bikers in the rain staring at 4 huge heads carved out of a monumental rock escarpment…

We had gotten an email before getting on the plane in RDU that Sleep Inn had charged our credit card for the night and we had an email from back in January saying our room was guaranteed to be held for us until 10am the morning following arrival so we weren’t too worried about showing up late. We still got there before dark. There were a lot of motorcycles and motorcycle trailers parked there! The guy checking us in kept asking why we had come for one night (I guess we didn’t look the types. He was even more mystified when Clay explained that we had come to see Mt. Rushmore on our way to a Mississippi River cruise from St. Paul this weekend. Join the club, kid!)

Clay had been waffling over where to eat his dinners and now had to make a final decision to get an address for the GPS. He chose Sanford’s Grub & Pub. It has a dozen or fewer restaurants in maybe a 3 state area here. So a local chain with a Creole flair… Before we left the room, he realized that he had failed to bring the power cord for this Surface. It would not last 3 weeks on this charge. The last time he forgot a computer power supply was for a Thinkpad to Orlando and we just quickly checked email once a day and got through 10 days on the battery, but that also meant we didn’t blog that trip. I insisted he go out and get another cord. It was a challenge but after dinner we did find something at Office Depot that he could carve into a shape to use. But, first dinner. It was a crazy place just packed with random junk and it was huge. They had 70 beers on tap and as you might be thinking, yes it was full of bikers. We were soon seated and had ordered. With all the miles of cattle grazing grass we had flown over, Clay wanted a steak. This place had a chicken fried steak on the menu as well and that was what had decided him on it. So, I had the chicken fried steak and he had a NY strip. We both had enormous platters served to us with enormous portions. Neither of us could eat it all. The steaks were twice the size we could each eat and very tender and flavorful. It was a good choice. We had lamented that in the giant menus there were no desserts, but we didn’t miss them! We couldn’t eat another bite. It was after 11pm before we got to bed and we have to get an early start tomorrow.

Breakfast is included here and it starts at 6:30am so we were not the first ones there. We needed to be not in the car when we called ACL to find out what the emergency was so we called first but no one was there yet. We went on the breakfast. It was good and plentiful and since we thought we had at least a 9 hour drive ahead of us, we each ate about 2 breakfasts! I had eggs, sausage gravy biscuit and a waffle with a sausage. Clay had eggs, toast, sausage, hard boiled eggs, pastry and the last of my waffle. It was a good breakfast and a surprise because we hadn’t seen anything about it until we arrived. I’ve already told you about the ACL call, so carrying on.

We were in the car and rolling before 8:30am. The GPS advised that we would arrive in St. Paul at 9:20pm estimated. We had some stops to make first though. We stopped in Wall, SD and wandered Wall Drug Store and had S’mores ice cream for Clay and a root beer float for me. We were there far too early for lunch and still too full from breakfast. It was a funny place. I sat atop a surprisingly unstable 6 foot tall jackalope! 

At the very next I-90 exit was the entrance to Badlands National Park. We drove along Rte. 240 for about 20 to 30 miles stopping at most of the overlooks and the Visitor’s Center. So while we were in there for at least an hour, we were still traveling in the right direction. The badlands were reminiscent of Bryce in Utah but not as garishly colored. Surprisingly, we saw no wildlife except birds and bugs. The whole thing was surrounded by Buffalo Gap National Grasslands and is supposedly occupied by buffalo and pronghorn but we saw nary a one. BTW, they call them buffalo here, not bison like in Utah and Wyoming. No idea why.

It turns out the Minuteman Missile Silo Museum is just outside the east entrance, but you needed a timed ticket for that so we missed it. We did see the Prairie Homestead from the outside as we passed it though. It was a dug-in sod home. Cool.

We ate protein bars and almonds in the car and drank Coke Zeros that Clay had bought in Rapid City to last him through boarding the boat on Saturday. Otherwise we only stopped once other than for gas or bathrooms. We stopped at Chamberlain, SD and visited the Lewis & Clark information center on a bluff above the Missouri River.

We stopped in Mitchell, SD to see the under construction Corn Palace. More classic Americana. I'm not expert, but curiously, most of the vegetation that was on the building did not appear to be from corn plants.

The GPS routed us off the Interstate at Worthington, MN and it was hard going from then on. There was a lot of single lane traffic due to lots of road construction projects.  (Later we would hear the joke a lot that Minnesota has 2 seasons, winter and road construction. So true evidently.) Thankfully there was not a lot of traffic. We got to the Holiday Inn in downtown St. Paul after 10pm. We had to go in and check in and give a credit card to pay $15.04 per night for parking to get a card to access the parking deck. It was after 11pm before we got to bed. We are in room 805 and have a great view of the river where our boat would have been docked.

We were in no hurry to get going this morning and we have an easy day planned. The only thing we have to do today is return the rental car to the airport and take bus 54 back downtown. We walked down Seventh St. to Mickey’s Dining Car. We found a statue of Lucy on the way! Charles Schulz was from here. Mickey’s was original and very tiny. We waited several minutes for 2 seats at the counter and then we each ordered one of the early bird breakfast specials which we shared. I had some of Clay’s potatoes and he had one of my pancakes. It was all very good. I had a cup of coffee in the room before we left.

Then we walked up to the Minnesota State Capitol and over to the St. Paul cathedral. We walked back downhill to Rice Park where we expected to find a statue of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Peanuts. We found F but only found Peppermint Patty, Lucy and Woodstock of Peanuts. They were great but we were expecting more. We looked hard all the way around the park. (Clay went out later in the early evening to find me a yogurt for tomorrow’s breakfast and check the only Starbucks we could find online for collectible mugs. He found Charlie & Snoopy and Lucy & Schroeder. The next morning we walked over again from Crowne Plaza and I found Linus & Sally. The majority of the Peanuts characters were next to Landmark Center and cattycorner across from Rice Park, not in Rice Park. That kind of started today’s morning out in a disappointing way.) We had thought to walk the riverside trail, but I was sweaty and miserable and sore and disappointed and ready to go get the car and go to Minneapolis. So, we did.

It was a traffic nightmare and took us close to an hour to get from one downtown to the other. We spent another hour in the Walker ArtCenter Sculpture Garden.  After we had walked around and seen everything, I found 2 shady seats under a wind chimeinstallation in the trees overlooking Claes Oldenburg’s Spoonbridge Cherry. I sent Clay to go back to the car for the other Coke Zero we’d brought along. He got a cup of ice at a hot dog stand and we shared a nice refreshing drink while basking in the sound and art show. I loved that time. I had never realized that Spoonbridge Cherry was a water fountain! It was nice hearing the water too. I guess that is what keeps the cherry so shiny.

We drove downtown to look for the Mary Tyler Moore statue. We glimpsed it, but traffic was still a nightmare and we couldn’t find an inexpensive place to park. We went on to look for Kramarczurk’s, which Clay had picked for dinner. It is Polish food, but cheaper than most of the others he had found. It was because it was a cafeteria line place instead of a regular restaurant. We had a terrible time finding it because it wasn’t where we thought it was and we had turned off the GPS to circle around and around looking for MTM and parking. The restaurant was actually across the river from where we expected it to be. So, we ate an early dinner, which had started out to be a late lunch when we began looking for a parking place and the restaurant. Clay had a Polish sausage sandwich and I had pirogies. We bought desserts to go. We found Surdyk’s on our way out and circled around to go there to look for something to put in the fridge in the room for breakfast tomorrow.  Clay loves the little edition of Surdyk’s at the MSP airport. The big store with its own parking lot was mostly a liquor store with a little corner set aside as a deli. It wasn’t much bigger if at all bigger than the place at the airport! Clay got a sandwich.

We wasted another hour trying to find a gas station near the airport before returning the rental car. By this time we were both nearly in tears with frustration in traffic and finding, or rather not finding things. I hate that bossypants GPS lady and once again, she just kept circling us around, this time around the MSP airport departures area! Obviously there were no gas stations or convenience stores there! I changed her request to gas 2 miles or more from our location and that got us out of the airport at last and while following the new instructions we stopped at the first gas/convenience store we saw. Fortunately eventually it all worked out uneventfully and about an hour after dropping off the car we arrived safely back at the Holiday Inn at 6pm. We went to bed about 8pm since we have to be out and elsewhere by 9am tomorrow with a long ride on a bus before us.

Final photos below are from Clay's evening walk. He found more Peanuts beside Landmark Center near Rice Park.

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