ST. PAUL, Minn. – High atop the American Queen, Richard and Marilyn Jensen sat on deck chairs outside their stateroom, holding each other’s wrinkled hands. Beyond the railing, the bluffs of southern Minnesota, tinged with fall colors, slid by. A distant sound drifted from the big boat’s paddlewheel, which slapped at the Mississippi to propel us at a mere 10 miles per hour.

The quiet mood altered only when Richard got up to snap a photograph of the evening sky as it shifted to violet, rimmed with the same brilliant orange of the cap he wore to ward off the chill of autumn.

“We were glad when the American Queen started running again,” he told me after I stepped outside my stateroom door beside them.