Steamboatin' - The end of an era :-(

[Tamaroa]

For those of you who never had the pleasure of a steam boat cruise down the Mississppi, it looks like you may have missed the oppurtunity of a lifetime. I recently discovered that the three boats most noted for overnite cruises on the river have been laid up. The Delta Queen is wooden and therefore not permitted to carry overnight passengers any more. The Mississppi Queen is being scrapped and the third one, the American Queen also may be headed for the scrap heap soon.

It is a real shame because they were great boats. For my 50th birthday, my wife took me on a Civil War cruise. We went down the Tennessee River, to the Ohio River and thence to the Mississppi. On our way there, we visited, Chicamauga, Chattanooga Battlefield (Known as Chic-chat to those on the cannon ball circuit) Shiloh Corinth Mississppi and finally Fort Pillow.

Every morning at breakfast, a Riverlorian would tell us a story about the section of the river that we were in, The morning hours were filled with Civil War lectures by noted authors and in the afternoons we visited battlefields. We had 4 meals a day. The food was out of this world and the menu was adjusted daily according to what state we were in.

While on the Tennessee River, I experiences something that I'd never done before. We "Locked" through several gates because the river grew shallow as we were heading west.

But there were other cruises too in addition to the Civl War cruises. There was a fall foliage cruise, Mark Twain cruise, a southern plantation cruise, etc. Our cruise was 8 days on the river and it was a vacation I'll never forget. My wife and I are very disappointed because we recently had started making plans to do the Mark Twain cruise then we found out that the line folded.

Bill