A river dinner cruise

A while back hubby and I went to lunch at a nice restaurant on the river. While we were there, he told me that he'd never eaten on a boat. He said it while looking longingly at the paddleboats docked just down river from the restaurant. At that moment I recalled several times he wanted to go on dinner cruises (Washington DC, Duluth, MN and others..) and it clicked -- this was one of those, "I want to do ______ in my life" kinds of things.

Last night we had dinner on a boat. A big paddlewheeler... the food was so-so, but the scenery was great.

We boarded about 5:45, it was about 80 degrees and breezy. We found a table on the top deck near the AC compressors. At 6:15 on the nose we left the dock, made a couple of huge circles in the river and then went under the lift bridge on the up-stream part of our cruise.

Going under a lift-bridge is neat... especially one like this where they lift the actual road-bed up in one chunk, as opposed to breaking it in half and rotating the halves up to let the tall stuff go under.

Eventually they told us dinner was ready -- we ate chicken, prime rib and some overcooked baked potatoes (didn't think that was possible, but they were nearly liquid they were so mushy.. ick) while really pretty scenery passed by.

After the cruise, I want a smallish boat that can get us to campsites only accessible by boat. They were amazing -- I could see spending some serious relaxation time there.... reading a book, hanging out on our own little beach etc...

Hubby and I talked about getting a houseboat. His only requirement is that we have access to the internet. I suppose it is possible with the internet equivalent of a cell phone and, if we could afford a houseboat we could afford the internet as well... then we started to imagine living on a houseboat. We'd cruise the rivers, ending up in the south over the winter, as far north as we could get in the summer etc...

All was wonderful and peaceful in our imaginations until we imagined living on a houseboat with three cats. Even the nicest houseboat is stil smaller than our apartment -- and cats don't like motion OR water, so it isn't as if they'd be all tranquil and accepting of the move to the houseboat. We decided that a vacation place on the river would be a better idea.

As the sun fell in the sky, we made the turn and went downstream for a while. On the way up we saw the Minnesota side, on the way back the Wisconsin side -- not that there is much difference :).

Dusk settled onto the river as we docked. We came home, turned on the AC and went to bed.