September 18, 2014

     First, let me add a word or two about accessibility. A cruise on this boat will work for all sorts of walkers and rollators and wheelchairs and transport chairs. It will probably work fine for a power chair if you get a handicapped cabin with enough room for it. It would not be good for an electric scooter as there are a number of tight turns and narrow spaces on board. As for on shore, if you are able to get off the boat and to where the American Queen's own buses load, you can certainly ride the hop-on hop-off bus around any of the cities and towns visited. These buses have wheelchair lifts which is excellent.

     River cruising, at least on the Mississippi, is not like ocean cruising. Between the man-made bridges and Mother Nature's control of the water level and the weather, it's often difficult for a river boat to keep to an exact schedule. For example, we're traveling at a high water time and last night ran into a major amount of fog to the point where the Captain had to just pull over and wait it out. This put us 7 hours behind schedule. As a result, we will not be stopping at LaCrosse, and will only make a brief stop at one of the locks for some new entertainment to come aboard. Meanwhile the entertainers already on board whipped up an extra event for this afternoon. Heaven forbid there should be a time when there was nothing for the passengers to do but read or nap!

     So what did the 6 of us do but spend the morning talking about future travel possibilities. Hah! At this point, with the world cruise coming up this coming January through April, I refuse to make travel plans beyond next July 4th. That, however, doesn't mean I can't discuss it. 

     In the afternoon Dave and George and I won at team trivia, but we also learned some new trivia that we had missed. We all then spent the rest of the afternoon out on deck enjoying the sunshine and watching for eagles.

     The new entertainment was a group that does cowboy songs. It took most of us back to our childhood when we played cowboys and indians and went to see Roy Rogers and other cowboy heroes when the rodeo came to town.