This is not your father's sunburn/island-a-day/shop-'til-you-drop/snorkel-and-dive/2000-passenger cruise. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

This is a cruise into history, on a small and very intimate scale, with lots to learn about. There are guides and expert lecturers all along the route to teach and explain, and the number of passengers is so manageable that you can expect to really meet each and every one. This is, most of all, a cruise into the fascinating tale of Western America's discovery.

The Queen of the West's year-'round, seven-day, sternwheeler steamer trips leave from Portland, Oregon. They cruise through ever-changing scenery, terrain, and climate for 1000 miles along the Columbia, Snake, and Willamette Rivers, through eight locks and dams, beside picturesque cities, forts, Indian reservations, forests, waterfalls, gorges, and canyons along the historic Lewis & Clark and Oregon Trail routes.

A hospitable, young, American crew takes care of passenger comforts, while on-board historians/naturalists/lecturers take care of the learning activities. Enthusiastic landside rangers and guides at each attraction and visitor center fill passengers in on their geographic and historic specialties. A fleet of luxury Prevost coaches precedes the ship each night and is waiting when the ship reaches port the following morning. The same well-versed drivers stay with the passengers for the entire week, making for expert tour leadership. TV cameras are trained on the road ahead and transmit pictures to screens in the buses, so passengers may sit anywhere and get a front-seat view.

Daily Tours

Daily tours are included in the tour price. On most cruises, tours visit: The Bonneville Dam, where the generation and distribution of electricity and the use of fish ladders are demonstrated; Multnomah Falls, at 620 feet the second highest waterfall in America and part of the greatest collection of waterfalls in the U. S.; Hells Canyon, where high-speed jet boats whiz by petroglyphs and memorable natural landscape formations; Pendleton, where passengers visit with working cowboys who show how horses and sheep dogs are trained; Maryhill Museum, where Rodin sculptures and drawings, native American carvings and artifacts, and a replica of England's Stonehenge war memorial are on display; Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, which tells the history of the region's Indian population through exhibits, dioramas, dance, and dialogue; Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, which houses a giant working model of part of the Columbia River and displays about the geologic creation of the Gorge; Mount St. Helens, whose visitor center overlooks and explains the spectacular and destructive l980 eruption; and Astoria's Columbia River Maritime Museum, one of the world's leading maritime museums. Additional information regarding the Lewis & Clark expedition permeates each day's travels at virtually every stop, as he history of the 1803 expedition is relived throughout the week's cruise. (CONTINUE...)