La Crosse, WI: We saw a bit of La Crosse today, it is a university town, with a branch of UW located here. The town is old, with many large old homes mostly lovingly maintained.
I slept through a poorly delivered lecture on the process of converting a mighty river into a watery highway of commerce. Having been a cruise ship lecturer I have a high standard for such efforts, the one today was lame.
Later we took a bus tour of the city, narrated by a lady who moved here as a young wife and raised her children here. She wasn’t bad but the town isn’t intrinsically fascinating so she didn’t have a whole lot with which to work. There is a nice city riverside park, a feature I expect to be common along the river.
This far upstream there isn’t lot of river traffic, in an hour I saw maybe 5 small pleasure craft and absolutely zero commercial vessels. I expect to see more barge traffic farther south. There were barge pushers and barges moored up near St. Paul but I don’t see them here. There is plenty of water for navigation but hereabouts it is underutilized.
At supper tonight we were talking about how this ship and the firm that operates it is delivering a very high standard of guest service. It is clear they are trying to outdo Viking.
As the other DrC has written, there is food on offer somewhere almost constantly. Particularly notable are freshly baked cookies mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Coming back from our bus tour there was “whisky lemonade” on offer, which tastes better than it sounds - quite good actually.
The firm has its own buses and drivers which follow the ship downriver. We chatted up the driver who is based in New Orleans. The ship starts north and the bus follows along and takes guests around each town where we stop. As soon as the touring ends for the day, the buses and drivers head for the next stop and grab a motel. Then they’re ready for our arrival the next day. There are a lot of moving pieces in this operation.
