For the river cruise curious

For the first time, Mrs Notthat and I took a river cruise. We chose the American Cruise Lines seven day/six night Columbia River cruise that (sort of) starts in Portland, Oregon. Two other couples Mrs Notthat knows were also on the cruise, which was nice since we would get together and go over the day's adventures.

Executive Summary

Since this is going to be long, I thought I'd start with a section explaining what makes river cruises different than ocean cruises. (Note that this all applies to American Cruise Lines - I assume most of their river cruises are similar, but it's likely that other companies, particularly those river cruises in Europe, are very different.)

Boat size

The boats (or ships - we had a fierce discussion about what the difference is, and it seemed to stall on "ships can carry a boat," which frankly is very unsatisfying) on river cruises are WAY smaller. You won't find water slides, swimming pools, massive buffets, or casinos on them (there was a fitness center though, and several places to lay out in the sun if that was your thing). Ours had a capacity of 180 guests (and likely around 40 or so support people). That's fewer people than is on one floor of an ocean cruise.

I loved the smaller size. Nothing feels overwhelming and you do tend to see the same people a lot, which is generally a good thing. One thing that surprised me a little bit is that you are pretty unlikely to see any kids on board. There was one person I saw that might have been under 21 - the vast majority were retired like us. There were a fair number of canes, walkers, and a few wheelchairs. (Note that this boat had elevators - there were six floors, and not having elevators would have made this a dealbreaker for many, including me at this point. If that's a dealbreaker for you, be sure to check what your boat has since not all have elevators.)

We were on the 4th deck, which turned out to be conveniently located close to the two lounges.

I'm prone to motion sickness, especially on boats, but when I took an ocean cruise many years ago, I had no issues. But since this was a smaller boat, I was a bit worried that I might have issues, but again, there were none. There were times that the water was pretty rough, but the boat always stayed calm.

No massive buffets? How do you eat?

Actually, you eat very well. There is a proper sit-down dining area that covers the three main meals and a cafe that has quicker, simpler options (burgers, hot dogs, breakfast sandwiches, and such) for breakfast and lunch. And there are two lounges that at happy hour have snack type foods, one of which has quick breakfast options and a small fridge with sodas and such and a couple small racks with snack type items (chips, trail mix, and that sort of thing) that are available 24 hours. 

The dining area has open seating and a menu. There are waitstaff that take your order and are wildly polite and patient. The menu options for lunch and dinner usually involved three or four main course options (one was often vegetarian) and two or three dessert options (including a variety of ice cream flavors). For dinner, there were also options for appetizers - a soup and a salad of some sort.

The food was almost always very good. The portions were not huge, but generally were just right. And if you wanted a bit more, you just had to ask. It was actually surprising how you could request special items and customize your meal. It wouldn't always turn out quite correct, but most of the time it worked out well.

Happy hour? How expensive is alcohol on these things?

Sit down. If you've been on an ocean cruise, this is likely going to be a huge surprise - all alcohol is free (well, included in the price). For lunch, dinner, happy hour, and just about any other time, you can choose from a wide variety of adult beverage options. I was a bit shocked - I expected there to be pretty specific locations and times where you could get a drink, but you could almost always get what you wanted. 

What about entertainment?

There were a number of onboard lectures and such. There was a couple, Llib and Arual (not their real names), who both provided happy hour music and gave several lectures on cruise related bits, including the Lewis and Clark expedition, and local history and town orientation. 

Every night at 8:30 there was some form of entertainment, and the entertainment was always, well, very entertaining. For the first and second nights, we had Oiram (not his real name) who was ridiculously good at playing the piano and throwing in a lot of humor.

Oiram playing the piano with one hand and a trumpet with the other. At one other point, he put a cover on the piano and played a pretty complicated song with the keys all hidden. Pretty wild!

The third night was a guy in a cowboy hat and a guitar who played lots of shortened country songs and was also very funny. The fourth night was another guy with a guitar (no cowboy hat) who was also very entertaining and funny. The fifth (and last) night, we had a guy, Kram (not his real name), doing lots of physical things (juggling and such) while making us laugh. 

The entertainment was all very good and a perfect way to end the day. 

Ah, but river cruises are a lot more expensive, right?

I don't have enough experience to do a deep dive into this, but the simple answer is "sort of."

The upfront cost is significantly higher for a river cruise, which makes it seem like a bad deal, but once you factor in that just about everything is included in that price, like drinks, onboard wifi, transfers, and tips, it evens out a bit. Maybe even works out to about the same cost. On the one ocean cruise I took, the cost for these "extra" things was pretty shocking. I personally prefer just having all that stuff included.

The only extras were some of the excursions. There were always some included excursions that gave you free entry into a variety of museums and such. We bought a couple of the bonus excursions and enjoyed them (details later). 

The only other thing to mention is that they do try to get you to sign up for another cruise, offering you a discount (15% in our case). You can easily ignore these attempts - they were not like a high-pressure timeshare sale - so it wasn't a big deal. (Mrs Notthat is not one to miss a deal though, so we are now signed up for an Alaska cruise next summer.)

And now for the details about our trip

Map showing the various important bits of the cruise. (You should be able to double-tap or double-click the map to see it larger.)

One thing I found a bit odd, but is likely normal for these sorts of things, is that the first night of the cruise was actually at an Embassy Suites near Portland's airport. You were on your own for dinner that first night (there was a happy hour with a lot of finger food, but you had to buy your drinks, although we were all given coupons for two free drinks) and breakfast the next day was the standard hotel included breakfast, which was plenty good. 

Doing it this way makes it easy to deal with people flying in from all over. We arrived at the hotel by about 2 PM and were able to check in to our room early. We then grabbed lunch - there wasn't much to do in that immediate area, so we just hung out and met up with the others.

Note: Due to the current airport chaos, we considered driving to Portland, but we had already booked our flights long ago, and it would have meant having to pay for parking the whole time. It turned out the airports worked out fine and flying was the best way to do this, but man - I hate flying so I would have been happy to do the 10-12 hour drive and figure out the parking.

The next morning, we loaded up in busses to go to the boat, with a stop along the way to see Multnomah Falls. (The actual embarkation/debarkation point was in Stevenson, Washington, which is about 40 miles upriver from the airport and, importantly, on the other side of Bonneville Dam, which I'll talk about later). 

Multnomah Falls - if you look VERY hard you can see Mrs Notthat on that bridge. I would have loved to join her, but my hip was not having it.

Once we got on the boat, we got to see our room, and it was very nice. There was a nice balcony with a table and chairs (sadly it was almost always too cold to sit out there), a king size bed, and a functional bathroom. 

Getting onto the boat for the first time.

We then had our first meal on the boat then sat through a safety presentation (which was mostly just telling us about the various options on the boat - I don't remember seeing any lifeboats, but we did have life vests in our room). At around 2:30 PM, we left the dock and headed upriver to The Dalles (where we arrived at around 7:00 PM).

Looking out our sliding door onto our balcony and the view.

The Dalles

First of all, that really is the name of the town, including the "The." It was a very interesting place, and we would have happily spent the day exploring its various museums and such (not to be missed was the National Neon Museum - I missed it but Mrs Notthat loved it). 

Mrs Notthat and I signed up for the e-bike excursion in the afternoon. It turned out there was only one other couple that had singed up, and they were pretty nervous about the e-bike concept. (Mrs and I had no previous e-bike experience, but learned the basics pretty fast and had a blast. One of the other two really struggled with there being two modes of getting power, and I was really afraid she was going to bail on the trip, but she stuck it out and seemed to eventually work out how the bike worked. It didn't help that the bikes would turn themselves off when we paused for a view.) 

Much of the trail was shaded. It was loosely along the Columbia river, with lots of amazing views.

An example of the view. 

Heading into the tunnel bit.

For those of you that want to know more about the specific area we rode.

The paved trail we were on was five miles of an old highway, including a few tunnels and some hills, that we went out and back on. On a normal bike, my hip would have been very unhappy, but man, the e-bikes made this a breeze. 

We left The Dalles (man that's still weird to type) at 5:30 PM to head to Kalama - we went from the cruise's furthest upstream point to the furthest downstream point over night. And at about 10:00 PM, we started the process of going through the Bonneville Dam lock.

The Bonneville Dam lock

There are a number of dams across the Columbia River. These provide electrical power, flood control, and a bit unexpectedly (to me), a way to deal with rapids and small waterfalls by basically just drowning them, making much more of the river navigable than would otherwise be available. If a goal is to let relatively large boats through, you needed to provide a way to go around the dam, and that's done with locks that're similar to those in the Panama Canal.

Shortly after the night's entertainment wrapped up, many of us went out on the front deck to watch as we navigated the lock. It was pretty great that this happened at night at a time we could watch it.

As we got close, two large spotlights came on.

The lock lane is getting closer. We are going pretty slow at this point.

Getting closer to the lock's "dam."

At this point, we are tied up to the side of the lock. At the top of the photo, you can see the lights from the river level side of the lock. We are basically sitting on an elevator made of water that will lower us about 70 feet.

Mrs Notthat supervising the process.

The water is being drained from the lock and we are dropping!

We are now at river level, and the gates are opening.

Open wide!

And we are off! The whole process took about 45 minutes (including the slow crawl in and out of the lock). 

We actually went through this lock again a couple nights later, on our way from Kalama to Hood River. This time, it would be at about 2:00 AM, and even though it would be the opposite process - raising the boat to lake level - there was no way we were going to stay up for that.

Kalama - gateway to Mt St Helens

We arrived at Kalama at about 4:00 AM. This was the first night that the boat was moving as we slept. I think most slept well, but some of us struggled a bit. You could hear the muffled sound of the engines, and if they had been a constant drone, it would have been fine. However, once in a while there would be a surge of noise and a bit of vibration. This was all pretty minor and most slept through it, but I struggled a bit. 

At one point we went past Portland. I was awoken by what felt like strobe lights. When we closed our blackout curtain, there was a small slit left and the lights of Portland managed to squeeze through just briefly, but Portland has a lot of lights, so it was like flash bulbs going off.

At Kalama, Mrs Notthat and I had singed up for a "dot painting" class. In the afternoon, there was a free Mt St Helens tour that was an hour bus ride to some interesting sounding visitor centers and such, but we were a bit tired, especially after staying up for Lockapalooza, so we stayed on the boat for the afternoon. 

Dot painting? Seriously?

Just off the dock at Kalama was a small mall of sorts, called the Mountain Timber Market, with a number of restaurants, breweries, gift shops, and other things. One of those other things was something called the Dot Painting Gallery, where they hold classes primarily aimed at the cruise ships. (I believe American River Cruises has around six boats running up and down this river - some go further than others, but each of these towns has areas that cater to the passengers.)

There were eight of us in the dot painting class, and you will likely not be surprised to learn I was the only guy there. I'm pretty sure some in the back row expected me to start eating the paint before we got very far. Our instructor, Anitsirhc (not her real name, but she is apparently internet famous), nervously kept her eye on me, just in case.

Our tools and starting canvas. The web-like pattern is to provide a guide to help us stay symmetrical - once you are done you can wash the pattern off after the paint dries. 

We were creating a geometric design called a "mandala" (Canadian for "lines are boring"). The tools included several different sizes of glass rods and several smaller tools with different size balls on their ends. By the end, that nice white napkin on the left became quite a mess.

My start. We were given prompts on what colors to use (which a lot of us ignored) and which tool would produce the best results (which most of us paid attention to, at least in the beginning).

By now it's really starting to look like something. We learned to "walk the dot" (making those progressively smaller dot trails) and to "drag the dot" (making those small teardrop shaped things - this was a skill that I really struggle with).

My final result, after the lines have been washed off. There was a point where we were told to go for it and add whatever elements we wanted. The instructor can't be blamed for this result.

Mrs Notthat's final result. We were all using the same colors, but she decided to completely ignore the red. I really thought they both came out very nice!

Mrs Notthat bought me a kit to play with during my upcoming surgery recuperation. And yes, Princess the Wonder Dog should be a bit worried that I might decide to see how she would look with dots all over. 

Wrapping up Kalama

We spent a bit of time looking at the totem poles near the dock - there was a very large one that could no longer safely stand, so they decided to lay it down, floating above the center of the mall where we did the dot painting.

A very big totem pole laying down in the mall. 

A couple of still standing totem poles. There should have been more, but they were out being reconditioned.

I stayed in the boat for the afternoon while the others headed out to explore the town. 

At 10:00 PM, the boat left the dock and headed back up river to our next stop, Hood River. This was going to be an all night trip involving going back through the lock.

Hood River

After the previous night of trying to sleep while the boat was cruising, I was a bit worried about doing that again the next night, especially since this would mean going past Portland's lights again and going through the lock. In the end, we upped our curtain closing game, so the lights were no issue, and the assorted cruising noises, including the lock transition, did not keep me awake at all - I got a very welcome good night's sleep. The boat arrived in Hood River at about 7:30 AM.

There were a number of fun sounding excursions out of Hood River (including the chance to feed and pet an alpaca and another shot at the e-bike thing), but it was not very nice out in the morning. Not a heavy rain, but a drizzle. 

Fun thing - we found out while riding the bus to downtown that there had been a 5K that morning, which explained why there were so many cars in the harbor's lot so early. If we had known about this, Mrs Notthat would have likely ran it, although as it turned out, the actual course was on the paved trail that we had previously done the e-bike ride on, so there would have been a shuttle bus ride to/from the start/finish. And it likely would have been a bit moist out. So maybe it was better that we hadn't known about it.

After going to downtown on the local loop bus (the cruise often had a bus or two that would loop around two or three stops so that we could jump on and off to see a variety of things that would be too far to walk to), Mrs and I spent the afternoon walking out to a museum near the dock. 

The boat stayed put overnight, 

Off to our last stop, back where we started in Stevenson

At 12:30 in the afternoon, we started the short trip from Hood River, OR to Stevenson, WA. Once there, several went off to check out the shopping opportunities. 

The three shoppers returning from downtown Stevenson.

The next morning was going to be pretty early since it was debarkation day. We were told they had 2.5 hours to get the boat ready to head out that afternoon with a whole new bunch of passengers. The rules were we had to set our luggage out in the hallway before going to bed and be out of our room by 7:30 AM at the latest. 

We woke up early on that last day to rain. It had felt like a minor miracle that we had so few issues with rain given the time of year, so having some on that last day was not an issue at all. 

It was about a 60 minute mostly scenic (so many waterfalls!) bus ride from Stevenson to the Portland airport, with a bit of rush hour traffic as we got close, but we still ended up at the airport about five hours before our flight. We could not check our bags into the airline though until four hours before our flight. This gave us a bit of time to do some last minute optimization of the packing. 

The was no Global Entry there (as there had been in San Francisco), so Mrs Notthat was forced to use the same TSA lines as me. And again, as had happened on the way out, I had to go through a pat down. (On the way out, I had left my watch on, but they were sure I had something in my pocket. I didn't.) This time they thought I had something at the bottom of my pants zipper. Weirdly, they said they would be happy if I took my shoes off so they could X-ray them. 

I swear they are just making this stuff up half the time. (They made me collapse my cane both times so it could go through the X-ray machine. Fun thing, when getting to my seat on the plane I asked what I should do with my cane and they said it had to go in the overhead bin unless I had the window seat, which I did. In that case, just put it out of the way next to the window.)

And in conclusion…

This was a fun trip! It would have been a lot more fun if I had a non-cranky hip - there were several excursions we would have taken if I had been able to manage the required exertion. (We booked this cruise long before I knew I had a hip issue that was going to require surgery a week after we got back.) 

I think doing the trip a bit later in the year would be better since it would be warmer and we could better take advantage of our balcony and the sun deck. (The trade off likely would be needing to fight off the bugs though.)

I think a river cruise is not for everybody, but it is perfect for someone like me that doesn't want all the hoopla and wildness of those huge mega-ships. For you runners, maybe you could compare this to running a local 10K vs. the Boston Marathon - two different experiences that attract very different people.

Give me the local 10K any day.

That's it - move along…

PS: I really didn't stress enough how great the crew was on this trip. They all were astonishingly good at what they were doing, and were desperate for us to be having a great time. From the tour of the pilothouse to the dining room to the entertainment - it was rare that we had any doubts about what was going on or what our options were. And I forgot to mention that I got a distant second place in a quiz about the Masters golf tournament!