The American Queen Steamboat Company has extended the season on the Columbia and Snake Rivers in America’s Pacific Northwest to meet soaring demand for its cruises.

Two extra sailings will depart on November 15 and 22 this year, while a couple of departures have been added from mid-March 2016, starting the season two weeks earlier than usual.

The one-week cruises, sold in the UK by Cambridge-based Light Blue Travel, are on the 223-passenger American Empress, a paddlewheel (but the wheel is for show only) that sails between Portland in Oregon and Clarkston in Washington.

Deep gorges, desert scenery, wineries and waterfalls are among highlights of the trip, while the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-6 to find the Pacific and the early pioneers who braved Indians and starvation as they followed the Oregon Trail out west are a recurrent theme.