And here we go again

After the last visit to USA and Canada, we were pondering on where we should go on the next one, next (now this) year. We had really enjoyed Canada and getting to see the parts of the Great Loop that we missed on Loopy Kiwi had us hungering for more. The cruise was disappointing in a way as, typical of most cruises, it was all about the Ports of call rather than the journey and we didn't see as much as we would have liked (particularly the St Lawrence Seaway) because most of the travel was at night. I was favouring a road trip through the midwest to see many of the states that we had not yet visited and was beginning to "rough out" an itinerary. However, Carolyn noticed an advertisement in the local paper for a cruise on the inland waterways from New York to Montreal in a small purpose built cruise ship:

The problem was, when I looked it up on the Agencies website, the itinerary was pretty much what we had done just the previous month - even though the cruise followed a different route. However, with a bit of Googling around, I soon found the website of the cruise line and found that they did a bunch of cruises on the inland waterways, including one that goes from New York to Chicago, via the Hudson River, Erie, Oswego and Welland Canals, 37 locks, and Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and Michigan - in other words a substantial part of the Great Loop and much of it we would have travelled on in Loopy Kiwi.

I won't go on about the cruise line, Blount Small Ship Adventures, because it is all on their website at  https://www.blountsmallshipadventures.com/ so you can look it up. We were looking at the "Great American Waterways" cruise. It so happened that our friends, Dennis and Kathy, had seen the same advert in the paper, so when I told them about the NY - Chicago cruise they decided they would like to join us. Since there was a special discount for bringing a friend (which they got too!), and another for booking before the end of August, we decided to go for it and chose the one leaving NY on June 10th.

It was then a matter of arranging flights to suit and, sure enough a month or so later, Air NZ came out with some specials to the USA. We booked to fly to Houston and spend a couple of days, then on to New York for four days of sightseeing before catching the cruise. I still wanted to do some of the mid-west, so we decided to fly to Denver from Chicago at the end of the cruise, pick up a rental car and drive around Colorado (CO), Wyoming (WY), Montana (MT) and Sth Dakota (SD) looking at the sights, before flying to LA and home.

Here's a close up of the road trip, with the major sights numbered, ie

1. Plains Interpretive Centre, Casper WY (something like the one we visited in Utah a couple of years ago.)

2. Cody WY. Where Buffalo Bill came from. Has a night rodeo that we intend to go to.

3. Yellowstone National Park, WY. That says it all

4. Little Big Horn N.P, MT - where Custer tossed in his chips

5. Devils Tower N.P, WY. Made famous by "Close encounters of he third kind"

6. Deadwood, SD. Old famous cowboy town.

7. Keystone SD. Mt Rushmore with sculpted Presidents

8. Crazy Horse Monument. A bit like Mt Rushmore, but bigger and not finished yet.

9. Bear Tooth Pass, WY. This was added late as a detour to our original route, recommended by a fellow boatie. It is an alternative exit road from Yellowstone N.P and climbs to almost 12000ft. It is supposed to be the most spectacular scenic road in the USA.

We will also visit Molly Brown's Museum in Denver and I will probably go to Wings over the Rockies museum there as well.

Booking that far out has led to a few interesting happenings and our itinerary has been subject to many changes in detail. Air NZ changed their schedules and we had to stay an extra day in Houston; both United and American Airlines have changed their flight numbers, departure times and have even cancelled flights for our US internal travel; and our hotel in New York that we booked in September advised us earlier this month that it had cancelled our reservation because it wouldn't be open in time. We were advised just a couple of days ago that there were changes to our Houston flight again because of the current Boeing 787 Dreamliner/Rolls Royce engine debacle, but that turned out to be a false alarm. Hopefully nothing else will impact on the itinerary in the remaining 40 days before we leave.

Blount also do a cruise up the ICW from Savannah (where we shipped Loopy Kiwi to New Zealand from) to Baltimore (almost New York). If this cruise goes well, we will look at doing that segment next year - which means I will have (almost) completed the entire Loop - although not in sequence!