Complete Mississippi River - Day 3

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Monday, August 11, 2014

I was awake around 4am with a leg cramp. I went to the bathroom and looked out the window on the way back. We weren’t moving. We were expected to arrive in Davenport, IA at 8:30am. I tried to go back to sleep but about 5am I looked out again, and we were in the same place. I laid back down and soon there was a big jolt, like we had bumped into the side of something. It was us docking on the port side. I got up for good then about 5:30am and my turning on the bathroom light woke Clay. He got up and dressed and headed out hoping to get a good sunrise. There wasn’t one.

As I was doing my BIG exercises, I thought I saw a swan swimming outside our window that Clay missed on the front of deck 3. I got out there with him in time to hear reveille played from the Rock Island Arsenal across the river. There is a riverwalk/bike trail alongside us again and Clay went out to walk it. I put a piece in the jigsaw puzzle and made myself a mocha from the Paddlewheel Lounge. Hopefully, that will keep me from being cranky if there is another 45 minute wait for breakfast this morning. Enjoyed my quiet time. We will meet back up for breakfast.

Oh, Clay said he saw them raise the steamship-looking stacks with the metal scrollwork saying Q of M this morning. Either they just lay it down when sailing or else for low bridges, but it moves up and down. It is forward on the top deck and that is crew only so we don’t really know how it works. But, we both thought that was interesting. The one real complaint we have about QoM (other than my peeve about the little pillows and the abysmal dining room service) is that everything outside on the boat is covered with spiderwebs and dead bugs. Even the rocking chairs. Why wouldn’t they be wiping down all the railing and chairs every single day? It is kind of disgusting and certainly looks bad and makes walking or standing or sitting around outdoors rather unpleasant. What is up with that? Neither of us can think of any boat or ship we have ever been on before where you didn’t see people constantly cleaning outside until now. They must leave the spider webs to catch some of the little flies!

Oh, I have forgotten to say specifically that Internet is included on Queen of the Mississippi. There is free Wi-Fi as well as each deck with cabins (except maybe deck 1) has a little nook next to the elevator with a laptop for public use. The little nook on our deck 2 also has a printer that is free to use. That like the complimentary washer and dryer and included drinks and tours are a nice touch, but don't overcome the inexperienced staff/crew.

So outside of the regularly scheduled meals and snacks, we have 2 tours scheduled today. We are on the 9am John Hauberg Indian Museum and the 2pm John Deere Pavilion. We are scheduled to sail at 5:30pm so that would make all aboard at 5pm. We are docked about 1.2 miles from downtown Davenport, so not sure with any free time we have if we’ll make it there. We are less than a mile from the water taxi to Illinois landing. I was watching to see if maybe workers commute to work that way, but never saw one. Clay didn’t notice the mileage/directions sign when he went for his walk and didn’t go that far so he didn’t see it either. I am not sure what the explanation is for docking further than easy walking distance from Davenport, IA as a port and the only tours offered are in in Illinois. I am sure there must be some reason. We heard later that quite a few passengers did make the round trip walk to Davenport and that it was a pleasant town. Others walked the other way to a small commercial area on the edge of East Davenport and they too enjoyed their lunch out. I think it says a lot when people will walk miles to avoid sitting through a meal for which they have already paid a high price.

Evidently, we traversed locks 13-14 overnight. We didn’t hear a thing and slept right through that. That is a good thing! But, we picked up the map printout for today of Davenport, IA and saw that next up is lock 15.  We thought we were downstream of Lock #15 as we could see it behind the boat. We were confused all day because the boat is turned upstream every time we dock, but we weren't awake to see that so we didn't know until we left and headed downstream to lock #15. The other thing confounding us is that we are on a section of the Mississippi River that flows from East to West instead of North to South.

Breakfast was another fiasco. It only took 40 minutes today for food to arrive after ordering. Unfortunately, the first woman they served and then I refused our plates. The menu said the feature was poached eggs on English muffins with oskar hollandaise. I asked the waitress 2 questions before ordering. One, what is oskar hollandaise to which she replied it is the same as the Eggs Benedict yesterday, they just wanted to call it something different. Two, is there real maple syrup served with the vanilla malted waffle. She didn’t know and asked if she should go ask the chef. Yes, she should. She said she thought the answer would be no and I gave her a hard stare and she walked off. She came back and said no they did not have real maple syrup. So, I answered that if the feature was Eggs Benedict like yesterday that I would have that. Now the plates that were refused had English muffins with big scoops of some kind of shredded meat under a poached egg covered with hollandaise. The first woman simply refused it after the waitress assured her she ordered it and she showed her the menu description and assured her she did not. I got the plate next and asked what that shredded stuff was, the waitress didn’t know and asked a waiter. Clay reached over and pinched off a bite and said, it is crabmeat, she won’t eat that. The waiter said the featured dish comes with crab today. He was right and she was wrong, at this point on many levels. Since 4 of the 6 of us at the table didn’t want coffee, I won’t even go into the struggle the other 2 had to get and keep coffee in their cups. That was before the lid came off the pepper shaker on the poor guy who couldn’t get coffee.

For the per diem ACL charges, there is no excuse for inexperienced and untrained servers working with no supervision or management that we can see and no incentive to work hard because there is no future for them here and for not having real maple syrup.

I guess I have never said what our per diem was. If you are curious, of course you can always check the American Cruise Lines website. But, I'll tell you what we paid. We paid $9,760 for each of our 2 weeks. That included a $200 pp early booking discount for each cruise and a $500 port charges and fees for each cruise. There was no monetary incentive for booking the cruises back to back. We also paid ACL's recommended tips for each cruise of $125pp for a 7-night cruise. So, we paid $19,520 up front for the 14-day cruise and we paid $500 in tips for the 14-day cruise for a total of $20,020. That is $715 per person per day. It is $1430 USD for the 2 of us everyday. You could take a lot of really awesome, spectacular vacations for that kind of money right here in America. This was not one of those kind of vacations. We enjoyed most of our cruise with ACL, but they did not deliver anything close to the kind of value they are charging. Also, keep in mind that we were in the 2nd from the cheapest cabin category onboard. There are 5 categories that were more expensive than ours.

Back from The Indian Museum tour. That was kind of a bust. We drove 30 minutes through East Davenport and Bettendorf, IA across the bridge to Moline, East Moline and Rock Island, IL to reach the Black Hawk State Historic Site. It was a big park on land the government killed and ran off the Sauk tribe to get. It was the home of an amusement park in the 1800’s and then the CCC built the park that exists today. The museum was well done, but it was one big room in the lodge building and there was another big room about the CCC project, the other big room was where the guide opened up for us a Monday when they are normally closed. She talked about the history of Black Hawk and the Sauk. By 10:15am, I think everyone had seen it all and used the restrooms. We were told that the buses would leave at 11:30am. It was a big park with lots of trails but we didn’t have a map of them. We saw one the wall but didn’t have context to memorize it and there weren't any in handout or brochure form that we could take with us. We left the building and hiked down to the Rock River. Then since we didn’t know where we were going, we backtracked up the 80 some stairs to find Robert, the assistant CD waving us down saying that we would load the buses at 11:15am. It was 20 of 11am. It was very buggy and I keep forgetting to put Off in my purse! We drove back the same way. Someone asked on the bus and the John Deere Pavilion is not in Davenport either, they say it is in Moline. We’ll see. So, I guess we are officially docked within Davenport’s city limits but since we are just over a mile downstream of it, we’ll never see it. (This was wrong! We sailed past Davenport on our way downstream!) We are docked in front of the Water Bar and a new apartment building and just downstream (upstream!) from the Hostess factory. (I would have loved to tour the Hostess Factory!) By the way, we were told that here where the Rock River joins the Mississippi is the only place where the MS flows from East to West.

I am skipping lunch entirely today. There was not a single thing of the 4 choices that I would eat. There are plenty of nabs and pretzels and Ritz bits, etc in the Paddlewheel lounge so that and a Coke will do. Clay will go to lunch alone because I don’t want to sit there and not eat or order and waste food. Back from getting my lunch from the lounge and I am not the only one who balked at lunch today! I wouldn’t complain about it because I know I am a picky eater, but I got an earful! Clay brought back a menu from lunch so here it is. First, mushroom caramelized onion & goat cheese salad or tomato salad w/bleu cheese and chive dressing. Second, spinach salad or lake trout. Dessert, apple pie or ice cream. There was a lot of grumbling this morning and at lunch among the passengers to the staff about the bugs and bugs caught in spider webs. The wind really picked up while Clay was at lunch and some hitherto unnoticed spider webs covering one of our windows filled with little flies and it was macabre and view-blocking. Clay burst out laughing when he came in and saw it and told me it was the lunch table topic. Before we left for the 2pm tour, the deck hands started opening the partitions between balconies and hosing the windows and rails in what looked like an effort to blast away the spider webs. I guess someone got someone’s attention. Note: I did not know then that you can order whatever you like, not just what's on the menu! They will try to get what you want and if you handwrite it on your order menu they are even more sure of filling your custom order. I did not find this out until the last night of our first week's cruise. But, the next week I ordered peanut butter and jelly 3 times and grilled cheese once. I really enjoyed those sandwiches and never skipped another meal. With the small kitchen and staff in there, I have to give them credit for allowing custom ordering, on the other hand at the per diem it is expected.

The next tour is 2pm and we are to sail at 5:30pm. Now it is 4:10pm and we are back from the John Deere Pavilion and Store in Moline, IL. It was interesting, free and crowded. Two hours was an excessive amount of time even accounting for the drive back and forth. It was just a giant advertising tool for John Deere. We played the excavator simulator and we both sucked. But I did not cause any damage and Clay damaged all the equipment, so I won. Both the excursions today were not really worthwhile and too much time at each one for the offering. I also don’t understand why we docked in Davenport with maps out by the office of downtown Davenport when it was over a mile in the opposite direction of the tours and we never even laid eyes on it and it was too far to walk in our free time. Too far for most of the passengers to walk even if they spurned the tours. I have to assume it was cheaper to dock here and also that the long drive to cross the bridge 4 times helped eat up some of the time we would otherwise spend bitching about food and spider webs. I guess it has taken our minds off the fact that on the original itinerary we wouldn't even be arriving here for 2 more days!

On the subject of ACL's requested dress code. The last 2 nights people have worn all manner of clothing to dinner with lots of shorts and tees as well as tanks and jeans, flip flops, sneakers. Since the literature and website had the words jacket required at dinner at one point and then jacket requested at dinner at another, we packed clothes to change from touring to dinner as we understood that was what they requesting. But, it is not happening. Clay wore his jacket the first night with I think one other gentleman. Last night no one was in a jacket and if possible the crowd was even more casual than the chaotic night of arrival and late dining. So, it seems clear to me that they don’t intend to enforce a dress code and I don’t blame them, but then they shouldn’t ask us to pack clothes we won’t need either, just as a courtesy. Note: this was true for the entire 2 weeks. People did change more for cocktails and dinner on the 2nd week, but nowhere near the dress requested in the pre-cruise documents.

They were still cleaning/hosing the outside decks when we returned to the boat. The job was pretty hit or miss but I am sure we all appreciated the effort at least and the show they made of cleaning up.

The boat was docked on the port side facing east and upstream all day which had us confused all day. I had seen the same view out the window since the first time I got up at 4am or so which was more than an hour before I felt it bump up against the dock. But, for some reason, they must have turned the boat around to dock it because when we cast off at 5:30pm we turned around before heading to lock # 15. It had been visible all day but we didn’t recognize what it was. There was also a swing bridge there that had to open for us to pass. (Video in photo album for today.) There was a long line of rush hour traffic on it too as people were leaving downtown Davenport for Illinois. Davenport looked bigger and more prosperous than Moline! I saw an Oscar Meyer factory on the far side of town. (I would love to tour that factory as well!)

More people seem to be more dressed for dinner today. I am finally not changing! So, we’ll see how that works out. It was fine, there is still a real mix of clothing but I only saw one man in a sports jacket and he had shorts and a polo shirt untucked with it!

Dinner menu. First course, blended salad or wild rice mushroom soup. Second, fish boil, flank steak or pork tenderloin. Dessert, lemon meringue pie, ginger berry cobbler or ice cream.

We looked for a good sunset, but the trees blocked it. We looked for the supermoon, but it still hadn’t risen by almost 9pm.

Tonight on the bed we had more paper than usual. A form to arrange transportation at the end of the cruise. A card to book another cruise with ACL while onboard to get a 15% discount and port charges and fees waived. An invitation to The American Experience reception to honor past passengers and learn about The Eagle Society for past passengers. That is at 9:30am and we’ll be sailing then, so we might go.

Earlier today we had seen a news headline somewhere about the supermoon. It was also a topic of discussion at dinner and lunch today from people who had either seen it last night or only seen clouds. The talk was that tonight would be clearer and better chances to see it over the river from the boat. I stayed up late and as I was about to give up finally saw it bright and clear directly behind the boat since we are still sailing almost due west. I went back and rousted Clay up out of bed to get dressed and we went out on the back of the boat. It was pretty spectacular viewed over the paddlewheel. (Now why didn't the CD staff or management announce this to the whole boat and arrange a viewing or at least post it in the newsletter? It is the kind of thing that would be included on every boat or ship we’ve ever been aboard. Since they had most of the exterior lights out tonight because of the nightmare of bugs last night, it was quite pleasant and it is so dark out on the river and so few big towns that the stars were amazing. So, even without the moon, they could do stargazing and it wouldn’t cost them anything, yet add a lot.) As we were trying to get back to the cabin, the evening entertainment ended and we were swimming upstream. But that meant I could slip in before the crew cleaned up that lounge and I scored a basket of popcorn. Bonus! Now I have to go brush my teeth again. Good night.

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