American Cruise Lines Encore - Columbia and Snake River Cruise Day 6/10 – Dam, it's a sea...uh...river day
It's going to be a long dam day on the Encore. Today is a sailing day, and we will transit locks at three different dams as we continue upriver on the Columbia River.
First, a note about the rooms on the Encore. They have arguably excellent room-darkening curtains. But the curtains don't extend all the way to the floor or ceiling, so they let in a ton of light. A slight design misfire
So close to being good
We set sail promptly at 7:00 this morning, arriving at The Dalles Lock at 7:30.
The Dalles Lock gave us a rise of roughly 90 feet
The captain, overseeing snugging against the wall and tying up to moorings that rise with the ship
We were close enough to touch the wall
That gave us quite a bit of distance from the opposite wall
The Dalles Dam has a mixed history. When the dam was built, the area that it flooded, which became Lake Celilo, contained Celilo Falls, a sacred Native American place. The falls flooded and were lost, creating lots of tension with the locals, for obvious reasons.
We went and ate breakfast as we made the 90-foot rise and continued sailing to the east.
With today being a sailing day, there were no excursions. ACL compensated by adding some talks about the Lewis & Clark expedition, plus a few games to engage the passengers. The first was a whole-ship scavenger hunt.
The gist of it was that our Cruise Director, Chelsea, lost multiple items, and we had to help her find them by taking photos of the missing items hidden around the ship
The list of items was pretty long
Here are a few examples of what we found.
One of the saqsquatchs
Another in the lower left
The items were tough - this was the hammock
Someone holding a gangway scanner - didn't have to be a crewmember
Doubled up on the fire extinguisher and another Sasquatch
The pants big enough for a bear
A favorite housekeeper
A king and a queen - we scored two of each
Cat & Mouse was tough - we finally found this book
Cruise Director, Chelsea's nametag was even tougher - we found it in this jar in the laundry
The pig confounded us. It turned out that it was in one of the zillion public restrooms that usually don't have art or anything else in them. Since we didn't find that, I got creative.
Bacon comes from pigs - but she didn't allow it
Then I saw this, and based on his sexual exploits while married, he was a pig - we got credit for this one
First team to deliver for the win - with Cruise Director, Chelsea (without her nametag) - our prize would be awarded later tonight
We followed that up with "What is...America?" Jeopardy. It was a Jeopardy-style trivia game that featured categories like Americana, Bettys, Sports Venues, State Foods, and so on. We got a couple of lucky runs through the State Foods and Bettys categories and scored the win, grabbing these spiffy ACL hats.
A winning day continues
We took in the sights as we continued sailing, noting the significant change from heavily forested hills to barren, rocky, or low vegetation.
It was a lovely day with a nice view off the back of the ship - what's that in the distance?
Mt. Hood was nicely visible, showing off about 3" of fresh snowfall
Kite surfers using hydrofoil boards were zipping all over the river
Some of them were just using the current for propulsion
We were approaching the John Day Lock and Dam - the largest lock we would transit. With its massive 113-foot lift, it is the highest single-lift lock in the United States.
Do you see any traditional lock swing doors?
There aren't any - the John Day lock has a guillotine-style door on the downriver side
The door is huge
Sailing under the door, into the lock
Here is a video of our journey into the lock and a partial rise, skipping ahead to our exit at 10X speed.
As we departed the lock, we got an excellent view of the spillway with a fish ladder on the side.
Here is a video of our exit from the John Day Lock.
While we were in the lock, Cruise Director Chelsea ran a Name That Dam Tune contest on the Sun Deck. We had to name 40 songs plus artists, for a total of 80 possible points. We partnered up with another couple, scoring 73/80 and winning for the third time this morning. This time, I scored a different hat, and Arlona got a visor.
The winning "Name That Dam Tune" team - it was a true team effort with everyone contributing to the winning effort
We grabbed a light lunch in the Sky Lounge before returning to the room for some afternoon R&R.
Tonight, we decided to try the happy hour in the Sky Lounge on deck 4 rather than the River Lounge on Deck 1. We wound up talking with a very nice couple from Texas and enjoyed our time up there. We went back to Deck 1 to the Restaurant for dinner.
After dinner, we were approaching our third and final lock for the day, the McNary Lock and Dam, near Umatilla, Oregon. It would provide us with a 75-foot lift so we could continue our journey upriver.
You can see our entry on the far right
Passing under a pair of bridges, one for rail and the other for traffic
The lock, open and waiting for us
Entering the lock
So many signs
Do this, don't do that
This schedule seems more like a suggestion, since we were going upstream at 7:45 pm
At the lock entry - the spillway and fish ladders were to our right
Some pretty good-sized doors there
After we entered the lock and started to rise, we went downstairs to the River Lounge and caught the port information for tomorrow's port, Richland, Washington.
We have a Sunday night tradition of popcorn - it was Sunday night, and they had popcorn, so...
Before the update on tomorrow's onboard activities, Cruise Director Chelsea presented prizes for the top four I Spy On The River winners from this morning's scavenger hunt. The runners-up got luggage tags, playing cards, and coffee mugs. The winners (us) walked out with an ACL tote filled with two ACL waffle-knit bathrobes, a deck of playing cards, and a pair of ACL luggage tags. That's what we call "winning"!
That was way more swag than we expected and was a very pleasant surprise
We returned to the room where we listened to the piano entertainer, Donna's performance, "Carole King & Friends", in the River Theater on the TV. I worked on this blog, and Arlona read a book she's been wanting to read. Lucky for her, she found it on the shelves here on the ship, so she's trying to get it completed before the cruise ends.
As we sailed away from the sunset, we were treated to a spectacular sky over the Columbia River
It was a good and winning day here sailing easterly on the Columbia River. We will dock in Richland, Washington, around midnight tonight. Tomorrow, we will learn about Richland's unintentional involvement in the U.S. Atomic bomb program during World War II.
