Two western river cruises aboard the Queen of the West, American West Steamboat Company's sternwheeler, are being discounted by $400 a person.
Delaware North Companies recently acquired all three ships, and the Mississippi Queen resumed service May 7. The Delta Queen, built in 1926 with wood-paneled staterooms, antiques and stained glass, is scheduled to resume sailing Aug. 26; the American Queen, an opulent sternwheeler built in 1995, Jan . 18
We wandered about the six-deck, 418-foot-long sternwheeler, charmed by its bright brasswork, cut-glass doors and the abundance of chandeliers (which Mark Twain, referring to a long-ago paddlewheeler, described as "an April shower of glittering glass-drops").
Farther along the sternwheeler ride, we passed lavish, gargantuan homes ("little summer cottages," the tour guide called them) that have emerged beside the old summer cottages in recent years, creating yet another of this town's many contradictions.
Jamie and Norma Donohue converted the Winnie Mae, a 1936 sternwheeler that had previously pushed sand barges in the Pittsburgh area, into a bed-and-breakfast after living aboard it for a decade near Louisville, Ky.
So after renaming the sternwheeler after his wife as a Christmas present, Mr. Huffman set about reconstructing the boat's paddlewheel in situ.
From £1,997pp with nine nights' B&B accommodation, rail travel, a domestic flight, and activities such as a Sternwheeler riverboat tour.
NORTHWEST BY STERNWHEELER -- The American West Steamboat Company is deploying its new 235-passenger Empress of the North on cruises through the Pacific Northwest.
