BOUTIQUE CRUISING Into the


The Blount Adventures Way Heart of


America


Yvonne Horn investigates an American waterways voyage from Rhode Island to Chicago with a unique cruise line


I


t is daybreak and I have the Sun Deck prom- enade of Blount’s Grande Mariner to myself. Sometime during the night we’d made our way through Lake St Clair, passing the big- city lights of Detroit. Now, as we traverse the passage between lakes St Clair and Huron, night birds wing their way home, flapping silhouettes in the soft mists rising from the river. Our watery path, herringbone patterned by


the ship’s pulsing engines, turns from steel gray to silver to soft rose to deep salmon as we pass shore-side cottages and grand houses, stretches of


woodlands and tiny settlements. Seventeen laps equal a mile; 34 times around completes my rather dizzying daily, two-mile re- gime aboard the small ship. With my last circuit, I relinquish sole claim to the 360-degree view. Yawning passengers clutching cups of coffee have joined me on deck; the scent of baking cinnamon buns wafts from the galley below. It is day 11 of a 16-day itinerary into the heart


of America. One might say the “real” America; where the history of the United States was born; the America of small-town charm and delight-


 Spring 2012 I WORLD OF CRUISING 89


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