Why a river cruise at home
Ocean ships anchor offshore or tie up in a freight terminal. River boats dock downtown; you walk off the gangway into Memphis, into Astoria, into Vicksburg. The vessels carry a hundred to a hundred and eighty passengers, everyone is American, nobody needs a passport, and the water is flat.
It is a quieter, older, slower kind of cruising, and for a certain traveler it is much the better one.
The rivers
The Mississippi. The Lower river runs New Orleans to Memphis through the antebellum South, Natchez, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge. The Upper runs Memphis to St. Paul through the Midwest and is the one to book for fall color. Full-length sailings do the whole thing in about three weeks.
The Columbia and Snake. Portland out to Astoria at the Pacific, then east through the Columbia River Gorge and up the Snake as far as Clarkston, retracing Lewis and Clark past Mount Hood and the Palouse. Several days on this route are scenic river cruising rather than port calls, and that is deliberate; the gorge is the attraction.
The Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland. Nashville, Chattanooga, Louisville and the Civil War country between them.
What to know before you book
These are small ships and they sell out early. A hundred and eighty berths against a Caribbean ship’s four thousand; popular fall departures go a year ahead.
There are no interior cabins. Every stateroom on these vessels has a window or a balcony, which is why our price columns for this region show no interior fare, that is a fact about the fleet, not missing data.
Locks are part of the day. The Columbia and Snake route passes through eight of them. Watching a boat rise a hundred feet inside a concrete chamber is oddly compelling, and there is usually coffee on the top deck for it.
