A Lazy Day on the River
Today was our designated cruising day where we were not in port all day. To keep people occupied the ship offered a morning lecture on Lewis and Clark as well as an afternoon Northwest food tasting. We also had the excitement of traversing two more locks one of which lowered us a total of 127 ft. As I predicted I don’t have too much to report on the day but I’ll do my best to fill up a blog post and I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures, with the overcast rainy weather there weren’t too many picturesque positions.
Amazingly I managed to pull myself out of bed at 8:30 am again, I must be getting ready for waking up for work or something. After a nice breakfast of french toast, eggs, and bacon it was game time with the family followed by an informative lecture about the expedition of Lewis and Clarke. It was an interesting presentation if a bit lengthy, stretching out to an hour and fifteen minutes, but all in all not a bad morning. The only other hiccup of the morning was the loss of one of the ships generators. Thankfully we have three generators on board so it only resulted in a minor power loss and they had technicians ready to fix the generator as soon as we docked in Stevenson, WA.
This post will be a good opportunity to talk about my beer goals for the week. I mentioned it a little bit in my post from yesterday, but one of my favorite parts about the Northwest are the local breweries and micro brews. The ship offers several of these local brews on board and I have been working my way through the selections available on board at lunches and dinners and only have 1 remaining, for those interested here is a list:
–Black Butte Porter – A very smooth full flavored dark beer, normally I’m not a fan of the really dark beers but this porter is quite good.
–Mirror Pond Pale Ale – A decently hoppy pale ale that was quite enjoyable, not overly bitter, and not overly sweet.
–Eye of the Hawk Amber Ale – First of all a cool name for a beer, and also a pretty good beer.
–Kingpin Double Red Ale – A sweeter beer, but still enjoyable. Another cool name as well.
–Lagunitas IPA (Actually from CA) – A strong IPA that had a lot of bitterness to it (which is just how I like them).
–Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen – A sweet and smooth wheat beer that was quite refreshing
I believe the one other beer that I will be trying is the Full Sail Amber and will report on that in another post. Also you can check the gallery below for images of each of these beers that I have listed.
The afternoon found us tating Northwest flavors which apparently translates to Huckleberries. Essentially a small blue berry, the huckleberry has a nice sweet flavor too it and went well in muffins, ice cream, jams, lemonade, and even vodka. If I can find a bottle for sale I’ll bring some of the vodka back to share with all my Texan friends. They also had a local whiskey to try that was fiery but good. Cocktail hour came and went as usual plus thanks to sattelite TV I was able to watch the OKC/Spurs game and then we docked in Stevenson, WA where we will be staying tomorrow for various excursions.
The night ended in a poor round of bingo where I failed to win any of the 6 game types we played even the losers bingo where people are eliminated when a number on there card is called and the last person in wins. However my 97 year old grandmother managed to win 3 of the 6 games, so we’re thinking about stopping by Vegas on the way home. There should be plenty to report on tomorrow, so be sure to check back soon.
