Tour Description

Your package includes deluxe transportation, accommodations, all listed tour fees, and 10 meals.

Fast, elegant and quiet as she slips through the water, passage on the Twilight Riverboat is a journey back in time. As you relax, watching islands and sandbars slide by, you soon realize that here on the river nothing really changes. We will also get to see up-close the bright green and yellow John Deere farm machinery from vintage tractors to modern day mammoth equipment. You will be re-calling memories from the past and making memories for the future on this delightful tour!

Tour pricing could be adjusted at a later date when confirmed

Day 1:

---

We begin our tour with a travel day, so sit back and let the anticipation build as we start our adventure. We will be having lunch in Jefferson City and do a drive-by of our lovely state capitol building on our way to Quincy, Illinois, for our first night’s lodging.

Day 2:

---

Meals: Breakfast
Today will be nostalgic as we travel to Moline, Illinois, to visit the John Deere Pavilion. As we drive up, you will be totally impressed with the outside of the building. Built like an old fashioned barn except with glass walls, giving it a very modern look. The inside is an impressive showcase of vintage and modern-day farm equipment with displays of antique tractors and other farm life implements of American history. Be sure not to miss the 14-minute film “Anthem” about global farming practices, or the John Deere Store, or, just a few steps away, the John Deere Collectors Center. After lunch, we will take a glimpse back in history to a more elegant time as we tour the homes that “Deere” built. We will tour the Deere-Wiman House and the Butterworth Center, two majestic mansions built in the late 1800s by Charles Deere, son of John Deere. He built the beautiful, three-story Victorian Deere-Wiman home in 1872 for himself and his wife. In 1892, Charles Deere built the Butterworth Home as a wedding gift for his daughter and son-in-law, Katherine and William Butterworth. Both homes offer an extraordinary look into the past. Then we’re off for a good night’s rest in Davenport, Iowa.

Day 3:

---

Meals: Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner
The next couple of days are totally awesome! This morning we board the richly appointed Riverboat Twilight for a two-day cruise on the Mississippi River. The Twilight has three decks with comfortable dining salons and sundecks with lounge chairs to sightsee or snooze in the sun. .We will be greeted with coffee, sweet rolls, cereal, fresh fruit and orange juice. We depart north on the Mississippi for Dubuque, Iowa. On-ship activities, entertainment, and food are yours to enjoy as you please or you may prefer to sit back, relax and watch the world go by! Be sure and take time to be deck side as we “lock thru” a couple of lock and dam sites on our way up river. If you have not had the privilege of experiencing one of these, you’ll find that they are totally amazing. We arrive in Dubuque, Iowa after our evening meal and lodge land-side overnight.

Day 4:

---

Meals: Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner
Dubuque is an interesting city to visit and you have until 11:00 AM to explore what it has to offer. We re-board our boat for an 11:30 AM departure beginning the journey back down river. With plenty of activities, food and entertainment along the way, we will return to LeClaire, Iowa, around 7:00 PM and board our coach for the few miles back to Davenport, Iowa.

Day 5:

---

Meals: Breakfast / Dinner
We begin our return trip home, but before we get too far from the Quad Cities, we will drive to the Isabel Bloom Studio for a guided tour with behind the scenes access to every step in the making of each Isabel Bloom sculpture. You will also have the opportunity to purchase exclusive sculptures available only to tour guests. After this delightful tour, we will continue to Hannibal, Missouri, for a nostalgic trip as we refresh our memory on everybody’s favorite childhood characters Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. We will visit the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum and learn how a small boy from Hannibal became America’s most beloved author! The Mark Twain Boyhood Home is a National Historic Landmark. After some free time and dinner on your own, we will take our reserved seats at Planters Barn Theater as Richard Garey portrays Mark Twain in a sentimental stage performance of Mark Twain’s life.

Day 6:

---

Meals: Breakfast
This is our last day together as fellow travelers glimpsing back in time to a more elegant way of life, but the fun isn’t over quite yet. First, we are going to enjoy a real treat. We will stop in Fulton, Missouri, for a tour of the National Churchill Museum. In 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Winston Churchill delivered one of the most significant speeches of his long and illustrious career. The speech entitled The Sinews of Peace is better known as the “Iron Curtain” speech. We will see the church, St. Mary Aldermanbury, which was moved from London in the 1960s. It had stood in London since 1677 and was badly damaged in the Blitz, but was moved stone by stone to Westminster’s campus and rebuilt to Christopher Wren’s original specifications. Through the imaginative and innovative use of technology, the museum brings to life the story of Winston Churchill and the world he knew. You can stand in the midst of a dazzling light and sound show to see and hear what the effects of a London air raid at the height of the Blitz were like. After this short but amazing tour, we return home with many memories of the elegant, fashionable “Life on the Mississippi” as it once was.