Complete Mississippi River Cruise - Day 4

Photos

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

I was up just before sunrise again and woke Clay with the bathroom light. We were sitting still when I got up. Shortly after that the side thrusters started and next time I looked we were creeping into a lock. It is very chilly out this morning and our windows are all steamed over!

Clay went out with his camera and said it was lock #18. So we went through 16-17 last night and slept right through it again! I guess that is a good thing, but neither of us actually thought we were that sound of sleepers before. It seemed right past the lock was a fancy new suspension bridge and then we could see the Port of Burlington. We were arriving at our 12:30pm port before 7am. They turned the boat around again today and docked on the port side facing upriver. There must be some reason they do that but we don’t know why. Anyway, it looked like maybe the local rope catcher wasn’t on duty or something because we didn’t actually get tied up until after breakfast.

There were no dead little flies in the shower this morning, so I have my fingers crossed that it was some bizarre convergence of fly life and breeding cycle that we were caught in for the past 2 days. Our balcony door does not close fully or properly and the bugs get in here whether we are in and out a lot or not. I have reported that and the broken hall entry door exterior frame piece to housekeeping and management and they have all been in and taken looks and notes and we are assured it will all be taken care of today. When I walked up to the office to let them know about our cabin problems, the chef was in there telling the others that corporate had contacted him and told him ACL would not sail north on the MS River again. Not north of St. Louis, that this was it, Queen of the Mississippi would not be back upriver and that he could sever his supplier arrangements because he wouldn’t need them again. I guess time will tell if that happens.

I had another self-made mocha this morning from the Paddlewheel Lounge and we went to breakfast at 7:30am. Clay had his usual. I had another delicious raspberry/granola/yogurt parfait and pancakes with applesauce and apple cider syrup with bacon. It was interesting. I ate it all.

After breakfast, they had the gangway out and we could see all of downtown Burlington so we went out walking. Queen of the Mississippi provided city maps for the last 2 towns that we either had no free time or they were a mile+ walk away. Here we are 4 hours early and staying until 6am tomorrow and no maps or any orientation information of any kind. How annoying is that? I can only assume it is because this port was not on the original itinerary and maybe they haven't been here before and so don't have any maps or other literature. We tried to find one online and we failed, so I guess the office here couldn't find one either, since they have provided those kind of printouts for some ports too. 

We walked around to the front of the Port of Burlington building where there were signs for the Iowa Store and the Iowa Welcome Center, but both were closed due to flood damage. We walked the majority of downtown and back in about 30 minutes. Like Dubuque, there are a lot of churches. Not a lot else. We were back onboard in time to attend The American Experience reception. They gave red lap blankets to the repeat cruisers, up to 6 cruises. The woman who had 7 past cruises got an umbrella as well as a lap blanket. (Clay is obsessed with the red lap blankets. He says he has to have one since I plan to pack my own on Oceania Insignia's world cruise because the category cabin we booked is too lowly, read O is too cheap, to have its own lap blanket. Somehow he believes that O management will learn of another cruise line's logoed blanket in their balcony cabin for 6 months and be shamed into changing their policy. Really? So Clay says!) They asked each person or couple what their favorite past ACL cruise and while there were a few other favorites, the number one favorite by a long margin was the Columbia and Snake Rivers. I am still unclear about the Eagle Society. I thought I had understood from Davina, our CD, that for the next segment we would get new name tags because they would put stars on showing we had past cruises and were Eagle Society members. So, I thought membership was automatic and involuntary. During the little film, they instructed us to join by filling out a card in our cabins in the folder and mail it in from home. There is nothing like that in there. The only card to be filled out is with a request for booking information with onboard booking benefits, though it does mention immediate Eagle Society enrollment. That does not sound like the same thing. Oh well, if they don’t enroll us automatically then it is not likely to happen. I don’t remember if I mentioned that there was an ACL tote bag on our bed when we arrived. So even as first timers, we got a gift. They told us that they have launched and are finishing the top 2 floors of a larger sister ship to Queen of the Mississippi that will only do the lower Mississippi River starting in 2015. It will be much larger and yet add only 10 passengers by moving passengers up to deck 5 and staff down to deck 1 so all passengers will have balconies. I understand that to mean that our cabin category would now become the lowest priced on the boat instead of the 2nd lowest. They have not named it yet and are soliciting us for suggestions. The man, Mr. Robinson, or Roberson, or Robertson (Gerardo said something different every time!)  who owns ACL is starting a new line flagged out of the Marshall Islands that will do international cruises which looked to mean Canada and the Caribbean. These will all be new build small ocean-going ships of about 200 passengers. It will be Pearl Seas Cruise I think they said. (Ah, Robertson.)

It is a slow morning here with everyone just laying around in the public spaces because it is chilly and windy and brightly sunny and no one knows what to do here. But, to get your cabin cleaned you have to be out of it. There are 2 tours today but both are at 2pm so everyone is just hanging out waiting. There were 2 Riverlorian lectures today, but interest seemed limited. Mike was completing his subject lecture about the formation of the Mississippi River since this was part 2 or 3, I guess interest has waned. His wife was to talk about birds and the Mississippi which I might have been interested in but not enough to sit through the last of the river formation subject to catch hers.  The last talk today is on deck 4 at 4:15pm about how Muscatine, IA became the pearl button capital of the world. That is not one of our stops and since they never handed out or made available any kind of overview map of our route, or the region through which we are traveling, I have no idea where Muscatine is or if we have passed it or will. So, kind of strange. Not sure if I’ll try to make that one either. I guess it depends on how long the 2pm tour goes. So far they seem to try to make them in 2 hour increments. Given what we’ve already seen, they will have to go some to give us a 2-hour Burlington City Tour. We’ll see. So far this seems like another pretty weak day and evidently Burlington is our replacement port for skipping Red Wing and LaCrosse and St. Paul. (You'd have thought we were owed some port charges refunded at the least, right?) Since they got here early and we’re here overnight, it is too bad they didn’t either pick a better place or learn more about this one to put more on for us here. Kind of a disappointment. It just kind of seems that the staff and crew are too young and are overwhelmed. They are mostly pleasant and enthusiastic, they just seem kind of clueless though. Also, I will say in hindsight from this cruise to the next that most of the staff and crew just seemed to be avoiding the passengers and I have to assume because they were afraid of having to account for our experience vs. what we paid for. Again, not what one expects at the per diem ACL charges. I guess they have been having a rough summer on Queen of the Mississippi though with altered itineraries and lots of busing passengers here and there and I guess they just haven’t gotten their heads back in the game yet. Not that there are any excuses for this, just theorizing based on my experiences.

At lunchtime we found they had finally put out maps. As they were announcing the buses for afternoon tours during lunch, one of the entertainers was announcing that the local tourism people were going table to table in the dining room with information and to answer questions. The dining room was already half empty and when they announced that half the people who signed up for the City Tour would have to wait until 3:30pm for the one bus they hired to come back and unload and get a second load it really emptied in a rush. What a bumble.

Lunch today was first, cheese soup or summer salad. Second, shrimp salad or pulled pork sandwich. Dessert was chocolate banana pie (which was actually a tiny tart that I found just bizarre and rather nasty tasting) or ice cream. The menu actually said Key Lime Pie or ice cream and the waitress had to come back to the table after taking the orders so she could go around again since there was no Key Lime Pie. Clay noted as we were leaving, and people were still eating, that their pork sandwiches had BBQ sauce of some kind on them while ours were just bland naked meat.  I told him I had noticed that while dining, but that at least today we had quick service and I guessed that was the tradeoff.

So, even taking our time, we did make it onto the 2pm bus. One of the highlights of the described tours was a visit to Bangert Gardens which unfortunately we did not do. We drove through Crapo Park which wasn’t listed on the tour and I don’t know whose error this was. The guide’s or the person who wrote the tour description. Anyway, it went from 2 to 3:15pm and it was like listening to paint dry. The one thing we were interested in Snake Alley, the crookedest street in the world we couldn’t see from the bus because she only had him park at the top while she droned on about her real estate and civic activities. Maybe the people on the right side could see down the steep hillside but we saw nothing and she didn’t have the bus drive past the bottom on the other side so the left side could see it, or offer to let us out while she yammered on there for several minutes. I am sorry to say that she put me to sleep and I am keenly interested in history and old homes. There are 26K people in Burlington, IA. It is the oldest town in IA and was once the capital of WI and then IA. (That doesn’t sound right, but I’m sure that is what she told us.) The railroad runs 58 coal trains through town every day! This also seems unbelievable. There is a grain elevator visible across the river on the other side of the fancy new bridge and it has been filling barges all day. There are possibly dozens of barges filled and empty stacked up along the sides of the river that we can see either waiting to be filled or shipped on. So while it seems like a pretty dead old town, there is a certain bustle going on. Between the first cruise (Northern half) and the 2nd (southern half), I have to say that the Northern or Upper half was much more interesting. I guess because of all the dams and locks there is more population along the river and thus more to see. Of course, that is just one person's impression and your mileage may vary.

Immediately after we got back to the cabin and found the repairs yet undone, Clay said he was walking to Snake Alley. I had figured he would since we had only been a block short of it this morning, but didn’t know what to look for or where and it was listed on our 2pm tour description so we weren’t too worried about finding it then. I said I would take a nap and Clay went to get a CF Diet Coke. When someone knocked on the door, I figured it was him, but it was the mate wanting to repair our balcony door. He had told Clay he was going to Home Depot for parts but he said it had been too hectic and he didn’t get there. He stuck some lengths of rope behind the plastic insulation to fill the gaps and used WD-40 on the door latch and showed me how to hit both inside and outside handles at the same time to make it pop out without sticking a finger in it. He said he hoped it would hold for 4 more days and I told him we needed a fix through New Orleans. He was feeling the pressure now! He said when he came back from Home Depot with weather stripping that he would try to come during dinner so he wouldn’t disturb us again. He also told us that last week instead of the little flies we had, that they had a 24-hour period of big mayflies completely coating the outside of the boat and that it was like something out of a science fiction film. He also told us that as they were making the decision not to take the boat to St. Paul to end that cruise and pick us up that one argument was that the Mississippi Queen had already gone up a day ahead. The other argument was that yes, but would they make it back down and they haven’t. They are stuck up there and their passengers are doing bus tours. We all agreed that ACL had made the right decision.

They just came on the loudspeaker with the announcement of the pearl button lecture. I will definitely take my nap now.

Clay came back and I woke up. I didn’t get much of a nap. I didn’t really have my heart in it. We went to get drinks during cocktail hour. I went in and put a piece in the difficult jigsaw puzzle and then we sat on the balcony and watched an hour of boat, train and car traffic.

Dinner was first course, garden greens or blackened catfish gumbo. Clay really liked the blackened catfish gumbo and had it both weeks and thought it was one of the best dishes of the cruise each time. Go figure! Main was swordfish, mushroom penne pasta, or chicken breast. Dessert was red velvet cake or apple-cinnamon upside down cake or ice cream.

After dinner, Clay picked up a DVD and we got in bed. Tomorrow we set sail for Hannibal, MO at 6am and we should arrive at 6am the following day. So we have a full 24 hours of sailing before us. I don’t know if it is just ACL or just our sailing, but they never say anything about what we’re seeing. They don’t have any literature out about what to look for between locks or anything. It is the first time for us on a boat or ship of any size (or even a bus or train trip) that they haven’t let you know about what you’re seeing or what you should be looking for. I am certain there must be such a document or publication because there are mile markers along the river. The information void is disconcerting. Good night.

Photos

Complete Mississippi River - Day 3

Photos

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.

Photos

Complete Mississippi - Day 2

Photos

Sunday, August 10, 2014



We slept until the sun woke us. We were still up and about before breakfast and toured the ship then took a walk along the Dubuque river walk. We walked only within sight of the boat in the end. We walked down to the Star Brewery and Shot Tower and the walkway ended in stairs there at the railroad bridge. The walkway left the levee and went under the railroad tracks. We could see that the walkway did continue on the other side of the tracks. As we were discussing it, we realized that the swinging bridge had closed and from beside the tracks we could see a hole in the bluff across the river where a train was coming onto the bridge. We were stunned. We had seen the trains going along beside the far shore of the river but either couldn't see or hadn't realized that there was a railroad tunnel coming out onto the bridge over there. Also, we had not seen the bridge close since our arrival and it looked so old that we assumed it did not close. Surprise!

When docked Queen of the Mississippi has a deckhand at the stage or gangway and you just give them your cabin number when you come and go. The stage is what they call the long walkway off the front of the boat. Of course, you also have to be wearing your lanyard/nametag. Clay & I have also been keeping our keycards in that plastic nametag pocket.

Full breakfast was at 7:30am today and was extensive! They have a table of cold things set up as you enter the door and they ask you to stop there first and pick up what you want before going to take a seat. I had perfect Eggs Benedict this morning after a perfect raspberry/granola parfait. Good thing it was so perfect because it didn’t arrive until more than 45 minutes after we had ordered it, which seems an excessive wait.

Last night we were offered a choice of 2 tours this morning in Dubuque. Either a self-guided walk through the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium (about a $15 value) or a bus tour of historic Dubuque & visit to Eagle Point Park with a view of Lock & Dam #11. This morning as it was time to report to your 9am tours at 8:45am, they announced that you could do both. The bus would return at 10:30am and if you had chosen the aquarium at 9am that you could finish up early and take the bus tour, or if you were on the early bus tour that you could walk on into the aquarium and be back onboard at 12:30pm for 1pm sailing. That worked for everyone and was a good thing. Though the consensus from those who did both was that we all could have spent more time at the Museum & Aquarium.

We had to pre-request all our complimentary tours for the week today. (If there are any non-complimentary I haven’t heard about them with the exception of they would go online and book for you St. Louis arch tickets if you wanted. Clay looked and could save $3 each with his parks pass so we are doing that Saturday morning on our own.) The rest of the week then we have booked 8/11 9am Davenport IA John Hauberg  Indian Museum 2pm John Deere Pavilion. 8/12 2 tours at 2pm are Old Fort Madison Tour or Burlington IA City Tour, we chose Burlington City. 8/14 9am Hannibal, MO 9am Trolley tour with Rockcliffe Mansion and 2pm Mark Twain Boyhood Home. 8/15 2pm Discover St. Louis tour.

Today on our city tour we learned that there are 24 locks between St. Paul and St. Louis. We rode to the overlook for #11, so we will have to traverse the other 13 to get to St. Louis. I guess that must be what we do all day on the 13^th! As I am typing this, we are entering our first lock so I need to go! More later. This is lock #12 at Bellevue, IA. We are getting lower as we pass each dam and lock on our way downstream. Clay tells me the next lock is in 34 miles. I am not sure now why we are sailing for a solid 24 hours without a stop on the 13^th. Comparing our original itinerary with our revised one, they have added a port at Burlington, IA. Otherwise, they are not substituting or replacing the 2 ports we missed at the beginning of our trip in Red Wing and LaCrosse (and no I don’t consider lunch at the Radisson as a port day in LaCrosse!). Also, we also lost our first morning in St. Paul as well. (We don't consider that a loss since we had a full day here by coming in early.) Oh, well. It is what it is. When you buy a cruise, you are going wherever they take you and that is the deal you make. It would have been good customer service policy for ACL to do, say or offer something in compensation for the lost first 3 days of our itinerary, but they decided not.

Lunch today was at 12:30am and we sailed at 1pm. It took an hour and a ½ to be served lunch which definitely seems excessive so we were at the table when we sailed. Lunch choices were corn chowder or mixed lettuce for 1^st. 2^nd choices were chicken summer salad or cornmeal crusted catfish. I had the chicken salad and liked it since it was cold slices of chicken with iceberg lettuce. Clay had the corn chowder and the catfish. Dessert was blueberry streusel pie or ice cream. It was good but 1.5 hours for lunch is crazy. It seems we’ll spend as much time in the dining room as on shore each day. There were chocolate chip cookies at 10am. Afternoon tea is at 3:30pm and cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at 5:30pm. (I didn't make a note and so I don't remember the details, but I do know that I looked and the dinnerware was made in America. A nice touch.)

They had the following this afternoon while sailing: tours presentation, crew introduction, old gospel sing-along on top deck with the calliope (I didn’t go but my Grandpa would have loved that!) and the Riverlorian lectured on the formation of the MS River. We didn’t even go to cocktail hour except Clay got a Bass Ale and drank it on the balcony and later he scored some scallops. I got a glass of Riesling and we went up front on deck 3 and sat in rockers with a forward view. It was nice. It was a perfect view, it was shady and the wind kept the bugs off. (These little flies are thick on the boat inside and outside. You can’t leave the balcony door open any longer than necessary and even then they fill the cabin.) We didn’t spot it (I don’t know how we missed it!) but we heard the people below us yelling about an eagle nest and there it was on the port side. There was one bald eagle in the dead tree with the nest and then a 2^nd one landed with it. Exciting!

Dinner tonight is at 6:30pm. First course is a choice of field salad or gumbo. Second choices are lamb shank, pasta with shrimp & sausage, or breast of chicken. I should point out that ACL served airline breasts when the menu said chicken breast. This is a chicken breast that has a piece of bone and a piece of skin. If you are used to boneless/skinless chicken breasts, this is not going to make you happy. Dessert is chocolate bread pudding or blueberry-cornmeal cake.

Entertainment is usually some kind of live musical performance as far as I can tell. It has been for 2 nights now, so after dinner we went to the room with a DVD we borrowed from the jigsaw puzzle lounge on Deck 2 beside the elevator. The DVD just quit playing before the end of the movie but Clay was already asleep and it turned out to be a documentary that we had seen before anyway. Lights out a little after 9pm.

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Complete Mississippi River Cruise, Day 1

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Saturday, August 9, 2014

Last night we ate our kolache pastries from Kramarczuk's and brushed our teeth because we found nothing to watch on TV and went to bed about 8pm. We needed the sleep badly. We both slept well and long and woke up around 6am. This morning, Clay had his sandwich and I had a yogurt and a coffee in the room. So we had an easy morning before we headed off to find our bus ride to La Crosse, Wisconsin at the Crowne Plaza. All things considered, it could be a lot worse. While I still wish I’d been able to see the Queen of the Mississippi out our window (I have a perfect view of where they said it would be!), I am thankful it is only this.  My frame of reference is being ditched in Vienna by Viking Cruises after riding a bus there from Amsterdam (minus the Main-Danube Canal for 4 nights) and not ever being informed where to locate the bus they were planning to drive 3 days to Serbia to meet the next boat below the floating pontoon bridge on the Danube in 2003. So, my standard being that at least it is not a 3-day bus ride to Serbia is not setting the bar that high and we were possibly more laid back about today than some.

We had arranged to have a complimentary Holiday Inn shuttle ride to the Crowne Plaza and he was early as were we so we rode over alone. It was a little further away than would have been a nice walk with luggage. The bus was parked right where the shuttle dropped us and there were already people onboard and the driver was putting luggage underneath. So, we walked right over and asked the driver if it was the bus to the Queen of the Mississippi. He said it was and took our rolling duffels. He saw our bus voucher in my hand and asked me if I had an address he could entered into his GPS. I did, so he borrowed it.

There was a woman on our bus who never did identify herself, but was in charge. We thought from her comments that she might be our Cruise Director, but she isn’t and she isn’t onboard. No one at the bus or the boat ever checked us for our bus voucher or our cruise documents. (Later, Robert one of CDs told me when I asked that they figured anyone willing to ride buses for 5 1/2 hours from St. Paul was entitled to a ride and entry to the boat.) Anyway, she told us that the Queen of the Mississippi couldn’t get to La Crosse, WI where we thought we were meeting it around lunchtime. The story from her and the Riverlorian that we have put together is this. Wisconsin along the Mississippi is the main sand mining area for the fracking industry. That has caused excessive sand erosion into the Mississippi River and the Army Corps of Engineers for this and other reasons of extreme weather (flooding) and budgetary issues has not kept up with dredging. So, the area of the river between Dubuque, IA and St. Paul, MN has been closed to commercial traffic by the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers for the past month or so and just reopened on Friday the 8^th  of August. Meanwhile, there are billions of dollars of goods lining the river’s edges in barges waiting to ship. The Queen of the Mississippi tried to go up to LaCrosse, but at some point spent 12 hours waiting to get into a lock before the decision was made to turn around and go back to Dubuque because if they got to St. Paul, they might have the same kinds of delays trying to get back down again. So, last week's passengers were bused to St. Paul for disembarkation after a wasted last day or so of their cruise. While we had 3 buses full that had been hired to take us to LaCrosse and they did. They said they were trying to arrange touring for us there since it was in our itinerary and then we’d only have missed Red Wing. That didn’t happen. They dropped us at the Radisson where they had a cold salads and lunchmeat buffet for us. They had another bus company bring 3 new buses and moved our luggage over while we ate.

We all got to lunch around noon and the buses left at 1pm, 1:30pm and 2pm. Or so we were told at lunch. We went out to try to catch the end of the farmer’s market along LaCrosse’s Riverwalk and caught some as they were closing down. We bought some flowers and some ice cream cones and saw the 1^st and 2^nd buses leave on schedule. We were onboard the last bus early, but not as early as those who couldn’t get on the earlier ones. The driver told us when we boarded that he had been instructed to leave at 2:30pm instead. By whom, we don’t know. But the Riverlorians were the last 2 people to board this bus and then we left at 2:30pm. 

We had crossed the river to get to LaCrosse and the landscape was completely different after lunch. Before lunch it was just miles of cornfields and not much different than SD or MN. After lunch, it was hilly with rock escarpments visible. According to the Riverlorian, this is because of where there were and were not glaciers a long time ago. This morning we watched a movie on the tablet and the time went quickly. We also with a sense of irony, ate a bag of caramel popcorn that Clay bought at Candyland yesterday evening when he went out alone. We started a second movie as we waited for the half hour delay departing LaCrosse, but once the Riverlorian started broadcasting we gave that up. He would talk very loudly for extended stretches and then be quiet for 15 to 20 minutes and that pattern went on the whole afternoon. It was about 2.5 hours over some very rough roads that we took because the driver had been advised by the earlier buses that the river road was closed at Prairie du Chien for a festival. Thus we got to drive by the Dickeyville Grotto! We had no stops except when the bus A/C stopped working and the driver and the Riverlorian got off and fixed it thankfully.  It seems that there was one last bus from the MSP airport at 12:30pm that stopped for lunch in Rochester and got to the boat about 7:15pm. I guess all things considered ACL did not do a bad job and it certainly wasn't 3 days to Serbia. They had bottled water for everyone on both buses and plenty of alcohol pouring on our arrival at the boat.

They greeted us with the calliope playing and a man singing from the top deck front rail. It was either touching or cheesy. I was going to say either way it was notable, but when I asked Clay what he thought about it, he said he hadn't noticed. So...

Cocktail hour was an hour later than normal as was dinner for the late arrivals' benefit. We had a long wait for dinner after arriving at our table because it seemed they had given our waitress the day off. Once a woman at our table pointed it out, we waited for her to be summoned from her quarters and report. How does that happen? Dinner offerings were first course, tomato-blue cheese napoleon or scallops. Second course, Prime rib or pork tenderloin or salmon. Dessert, cheesecake or sticky toffee pudding or ice cream.  It was neither excellent nor bad, just good. They offer ½ servings but the woman directly across from me ordered the same thing I did in a ½ portion and we both got exactly the same size serving.

The Queen of the Mississippi was built in 2012. I like it. It is not fancy, but it is functional and pleasant. We are in the handicap cabin 206, so our room is larger than normal. We did not ask for this cabin but when we booked in January it was the last cabin on this deck available for the back to back cruises that would make up the Complete Mississippi sailing they were offering so they assigned it to us. That said, it is spacious with lots of storage drawers with little hanging space. The beds are comfortable, but they have 2 little square pillows per person. There is a Keurig and an ice bucket as well as a TV and a telephone. There are a lot of outlets with a nightlight in one. We found a power strip plugged in with only a bedside lamp plugged in behind the nightstand so we moved it over by the desk for electronics. There is a hairdryer in the bathroom cabinet and very nice Judith Jackson Spa toiletries. The other upside of 206 is an extra wide balcony. Ours has 2 windows and a door while the others have one window and one door. (Sadly, 209 that Mom & Judy chose for the 2^nd week is directly across from the office which always seems to have a noisy line out in the hall. I hope their room won’t be too noisy.) We have 2 cabins between us and the Magnolia Lounge. On the other side is a computer and printer nook, the elevator and a small game lounge with a jigsaw puzzle.

There is food and drink available almost all the time in multiple locations. There are 3 lounges on deck 2 (our hallway). Forward is Magnolia where they hold meetings and entertainment as well as cocktail hour. It is about 15 feet forward of our cabin.  That is where our noise is, but it is only from time to time. At the back of the boat is the Paddlewheel Lounge and they have an icemaker there, a coffee pot almost always on with hot water for tea and hot chocolate, pocket-pack snacks or cookies and early riser breakfast (which seems to just be some muffins and juice). Upstairs in the same spot on 4 they have an espresso machine too.

Beer, wine and as far as we can tell mixed drinks are included and available at lunch, dinner and cocktail hour. You order your breakfast the day before if you want room service delivered. You order lunch and dinner at breakfast. The menu in the morning has breakfast on one side and the other is an order form that you fill out and give to the waitperson before you leave breakfast. You do have remember what you ordered!

Entertainment is usually music every evening in the Magnolia Lounge. We never went but we could hear it just fine from our cabin #206 every evening. What we mostly missed by not going was the popcorn, sundaes and root beer floats served every evening. I don't know how anyone could have eaten more but we did see them go by with carts loaded with them every evening. One evening I scored an untouched basket of popcorn after the lounge emptied!

We were docked overnight in Dubuque and so it was a quiet night and we slept very comfortably. Let’s see what else… Oh, on the top deck there are 2 elliptical machines (I think that’s what they are) and an exercise bike and some weight machine and a 2-hole putting green. There is also a complimentary washer and dryer for passenger use! We weren’t expecting that as I hand washed and had a Woolite container failure twice since leaving home.

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Complete Mississippi River Cruise Trip - Precruise Day 1 to 3

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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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