JOHN & PAT’S CANOE TRIP
DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
Trip Reports
Hi all,
This is the first report from our Mississippi River
canoe trip. We have been out for eight
days and traveled about 210 miles so far.
We started at River Mile 814 which is just south of Lock #2 in
Hastings. We are now just a few miles
south of Cassville, WI. The travel is a
little slower than we originally planned but we had no frame of reference to
use in guesstimating what we could do daily.
The two biggest factors in our slower than expected pace are: the head
winds and the time we spend at Locks.
Typically our best time to get through a lock so far has been about 15
minutes. Our worst time so far has been
2 hours and 45 minutes. We got stuck
behind two 15-barge tows and just hung out until they got through. It is not practical to try to portage around
the locks for various reasons including how we housed our gear for the
trip. We are using Tote type bins that
have latching lids to keep our stuff dry instead of using Duluth Packs as we
would normally do if we planned to portage.
So far we have had 5 rain free days. Two days 50% rain and one day of
steady rain all day. The scenery has
been great!! We have seen many Tow Boats and many with up to 15 barges (3 wide
and 5 long), many Great Blue Herons, Bald Eagles, a couple deer, three water
snakes and many, many turtles sunning themselves on rocks and limbs down in the
water. We are pleasantly surprised by
how well we are handling the wake from the tows as our cargo including us is
about 650 pounds. The wake on the large
(18-30 foot) pleasure craft is much worse than the tow boats. We have been camping each night on sand bars
and islands made from dredging the river.
The bugs have been from completely unbearable to nonexistent, it just
depends on the area. Last evening I sat
out until 9 pm and was not bothered at all. This evening they are driving me
crazy. Pat and I are both fine but
still dealing with sour muscles that have not canoed for a while. We expect that in the next couple hundred
miles our conditioning will improve.
For those who have sent us email, we will get to them as we can, please
be patient. Our cell coverage that we
need to deal with email has been very unpredictable and spotty. More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
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Report #2 (6/12/03):
Hi all. We
have received several emails asking about what kind of equipment we have and
what our day is like, etc. So I thought I would attempt to respond to some of
the questions. If I miss yours, let me
know and I will answer it next time.
Our canoe is an 18 foot fiberglass canoe made by
Mohawk and it is a Jensen design. It
weighs about 65 pounds. We use wide
blade, bent shaft paddles which seem to be a little more efficient than the
regular straight blade paddles.
All of our equipment which includes, tent, pots and
pans, sleeping bags, clothes, food, stove, tarps, electronics, etc is housed in
4 Sterilite Ultra 25 gallon tote bins with latching covers. The bines are
removable from the canoe but are strapped into the canoe when we are traveling.
The bins provide rain protection for the equipment as well as providing
additional buoyancy for the canoe. We
do occasionally take on water from large wind waves or the wake from large
boats or Tows. We have an Attwood hand
operated bilge pump that is very useful to pump out large quantities of water
quickly when needed.
We carry a Uniden Atlantis marine radio to use if we
ever get into serious trouble. In addition
to containing the ability to get the National Weather service weather reports
on the Atlantis, we can talk to the locks, tow boats and other boaters with a
radio. To date, we have only used the
radio to get weather reports and talk to the locks when there is a lot of tow
traffic at the lock when we approach.
If there is no traffic at the lock, we may or may not use the
radio. There is a pull cord at the
outer wall of the locks that can be used by small craft to signal the lock
master that lockage is desired.
We have a Garmin Etrex Legend hand held GPS that we
use to keep track of our speed, average speed, distance traveled, etc. We really do not require it for navigation
as the River charts that we have are very good, not to mention that the main
channel is marked by buoys so it is very difficult to get lost unless you are
trying to take short cuts through some of the island channels off the main
channel.
Pat keeps a journal each evening using a Compaq IPaq
3765 PDA with foldable keyboard. We have
AOL client software on the PDA so by hooking it to our Sprint cell phone, we
can send and receive email. I can also
receive email on the cell phone directly but it is very cumbersome to reply. Cell service has been a problem in that we
are seldom in a service area. All of
our electronic equipment is rechargeable or operates on "AA"
batteries. We have a Powerline 4 Watt
Solar Panel that we use to recharge the items or the "AA" batteries
that power them. We have had good luck
with the panel since it does not need bright sun light to work effectively.
With all of
our equipment, we are fully self contained.
We can go for about 4 days before we need to re-supply water and we
carry about 10 days of food.
Typically we get up at 6 am and have cereal or granola
so we do not have to spend time cooking or doing many dishes in the
morning. We can eat, get ready, pack
and be on our way by 7:15-7:30. We
paddle for about 1.5-2.0 hours and have a morning snack and break. We usually stop around 11:30 for lunch which
generally consists of peanut butter and jelly, bagels, fruit and/or fruit
cocktail, pudding cups, and trail mix.
We have cookies, hard candy, baby carrots and the like to snack on while
we paddle. We generally stop for the
day between 3-4 PM depending on how tired we are. Our evening meal generally consists of some canned meat (
chicken, turkey, salmon, tuna, etc), a canned vegetable and carbos (pasta,
stuffing, instant mashed potatoes). We
are usually in the tent by 8 PM as the bugs, if they are out at that site, tend
to get bad at about that time.
We have been averaging about 26 miles per day and our
average speed ranges from about 4.1 to 6.1 miles per hour depending on wind and
current. The maximum speed that we have
hit so far is 6.6 miles per hour even though our total load in the boat is
about 650 pounds.
We have been canoeing every day since we left, rain or
shine. We plan on paddling every day unless the head winds are outrageous or
there is lightning in our area.
More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
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Report #3 (6/16/03):
This is day 15 of the Canoe Trip down the Mississippi
River. We have just completed a little
over 400 miles as of this date. We are
currently about 5 miles North of Burlington, IA. We have had a few good days of favorable wind but the high
temperatures and full sun take their toll by mid afternoon. The last couple of
days we went a little over 30 miles each day so we are making up a little of
the time we lost early on. We set a new max speed record of 7.6 miles per hour.
We have been fairly lucky with the locks the last couple of days as far as the
time we have had to wait. We have had a
few exciting moments exiting locks with large Tows parked at the down steam
entrance waiting to lock up steam. We
got caught in a strange situation where the dam was spilling a lot of water and
between the Tow and pleasure craft there were 2-2.5 foot waves as we exited the
lock. We took on a little water and
after we pulled over to the shore and I revived Pat, we continued on our way.
We get to stop in some interesting towns along the way
to pick up groceries. Each town has its
own story but the one I found most interesting so far is the story about
Oquawka, IL. It seems in 1972 the
circus came to town and as they were preparing to put on a show for the town,
their elephant (named Norma Jean) was struck by lightning and killed. The town folks buried the elephant in the
center of town and erected a monument in its honor. We picked up a couple post cards of the monument and I will scan
them and make the picture available to all.
It is a nice monument and interesting story. We also managed to survive our second weekend on the River. It is impossible to describe how many
recreational boats there are on the river after about 11 am Saturday and
Sundays and how crazy the boaters are.
They keep the river so riled up that it is very difficult to paddle
through all the wake. There is every
make and model and type of water craft that exists on the river. Many of them are trolling with their kids on
tubes, knee boards, skis, etc behind the boat darting in and out amongst the
other boaters, tows, and us!!! One of their
most fun games is to head straight for us and then veer off at the last moment
and attempt to communicate their apologies via weird charade gestures.
One sand bar we passed had 35 boats beached and the
party was going strong. Unfortunately
we see the remnants of some of their previous parties when we stop for the
night. To date we camped out each night. Two nights we were in campgrounds and the
rest of the nights we were on sand bars or dredge islands. Where we are camped
this evening is about 1.5 miles south of Lock 18. The upstream tow traffic has been so heavy today that as we
exited lock 18, there was a tow at the entrance and three more behind it
waiting to lock upstream. As I am
finishing this note, I still see one waiting to lock and it has been about 3
hours and it will take him an hour after he is allowed to begin the lock
process.
More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
Report #4 (6/19/03):
I have received several questions about the amount of
weight we are carrying so I thought I would provide some clarification. The weight varies greatly on how much water
we have at any given time and how many days of food we have before resupply but
here is a rough breakdown after a full resupply.
Pat and I weigh 290 pounds. Pat said she would stop paddling if I provided any more detail in
this category.
We have anywhere from 20 to 80 pounds of water
depending how accessible it is. We have
pretty much settled in on carrying between 40 and 60 pounds in this section of
the trip as water is quite accessible. We have four 2.5 gallon (10 liter) collapsible
containers for water plus our camelbacks that are 100 oz each.
The tent, stove, pots pans, frying pan, tarps, fuel,
entrenching tool, ropes, duct tape, fiber glass repair kit, sleeping bags,
sleeping pads, paddles, life jackets, paper products, water filter, lawn
chairs, etc and carrying containers are about 120 pounds.
The electronics pack that contains several waterproof
containers within it to house the PDA, Cell Phone, Marine Radio, Solar Panel,
battery charger, extra batteries, numerous cables, River Maps, day pack (sun
tan lotion, more paper products, snacks, first aid kit, etc.) and our rain
suites weighs about 40-45 pounds.
Our clothes and toiletries are packed in our biking
panniers for waterproofing. Combined
they weigh about 50 pounds.
The remaining approximate 70 pounds is food and the
tote bins to carry the food. The food consists of canned goods, pasta, granola,
fresh fruit (when we can get it) bagels, cookies (lots of cookies), trail mix,
peanut butter, jelly, etc.
Total when fully supplied for about 12 days including
Pat and me is about 650 pounds.
For those who have requested Longitude and Latitude of
our stops each night, find them below.
We started just south of Lock #2 in Hastings, MN and are about 5 miles
north of Quincy, IL tonight. I will
continue providing the locations of our future stops in future updates. Here are the locations to date:
June 19 N39, 59.523 W-91, 27.895
June 18 N40, 22.950 W-91, 23.088
June 17 N40, 43.676 W-91, 6.850
June 16 N40, 51.655 W-91, 3.073
June 15 N41, 13.551 W-91, 5.527
June 14 N41, 26.998 W-90, 43.329
June 13 N41, 41.560 W-90, 19.245
June 12 N41, 57.481 W-90, 7.062
June 11 N42, 15.144 W-90, 25.163
June 10 N42, 28.107 W-90, 37.625
June 09 N42, 41.264 W-90, 57.442
June 08 N43, 04.887 W-91, 10.438
June 07 N43, 23.797 W-91, 12.017
June 06 N43, 40.109 W-91, 15.397
June 05 N43, 59.281 W-91, 25.812
June 04 N44, 08.377 W-91, 45.858
June 03 N44, 25.082 W-92, 06.481
June 02 N44, 33.711 W-92, 25.952
Start N44,
44.792 W-92, 50.902
There have been some questions about locks and tows,
etc. The "tow" is the name
for a very large boat that pushes the barges around on the river. I have yet to figure out why it is called
tow when it "pushes" the barges?
Go figure! When I find out, I
will let you know. Generally the
largest "loads" that the tows can transport on this section of the
river is 15 barges arranged in a 3 wide by 5 deep configuration that are pushed
by the tows. The restriction is not in
the power of the tow but in the size of the locks. With a couple exceptions, of the 27 locks on the upper
Mississippi River, most can only accommodate up to 9 barges at a time. So when a 15 barge tow reaches the lock, it
first pushes the front 9 barges into the lock where they are decoupled and secured
in the lock. The tow with the remaining
6 barges still connected, backs out of the lock so the lock doors can be closed
and the chamber flooded or drained depending on the direction of travel. When the 9 barges reach the exit level in
the lock, a winch is used to winch the barges out of the lock and they are
secured to the lock wall outside of the lock chamber. The chamber is then flooded or drained as appropriate and the tow
with its still attached 6 barges enters the chamber and the level is again
drained or flooded as appropriate and the tow and its six attached barges exit
the lock and move forward to recouple the 9 barges that were locked through
first. When all is secured, the tow is on its way. The entire process takes about 1-1.5 hours. In some cases, a 16th barge can be connected
on the side of the tow and the width of the tow and a single barge is roughly
the same width of 3 barges.
We finally got past Iowa on June 18th and are now
between IL and MO. Pat and I are fine
but ready for a break. Early next week,
we will be stopping in St Louis for a couple days to visit my sister Ellie and
her clan and we are looking forward to seeing them and getting off the river
for a couple days.
More to follow later.
If you have questions, feel free to send them directly to me if you wish
at jrdpad@aol.com
John and Pat Dickinson
Report #5 (6/27/03):
We are back on the river again after taking a three
day rest at my sister Ellie’s house in O’Fallon, MO (northwest of St. Louis). We
were treated to home cooked meals and waited on hand and foot. It was hard to
leave but we had a great time and got to see Ellie’s two girls Shelley and
Jenny and their husbands Clay and Steve and Ellie’s four grandchildren (Shelley
and Clays children: Jacque, Emily and Bryanna & Jenny and Steve’s daughter
Ashleigh). We have been fully resupplied and the canoe is again riding low in
the water. We by-passed the last two locks in the St Louis area to avoid the
tow congestion that accumulates especially at lock 27 which has to service all
the traffic coming up the Mississippi River from the south, headed for the
Missouri or Illinois Rivers, as well as that traffic that is continuing on up
the Mississippi River, in addition to the traffic from the three rivers that is
heading south. After some searching, we found a boat ramp that Ellie and Jenny
dropped us off at this morning to continue our journey south. Pat has had
enough excitement at the locks and very much enjoyed being able to bypass the
last two. All of our stuff did not fit into Ellie’s car so Jenny was recruited
to drive as well to carry the remainder of our equipment. We have a couple
pictures of our 18 foot canoe on Ellie’s little Saturn. We sure got a bunch of
strange looks as we were flying down I-270 to the boat ramp. All was well and
we made it without incident. We launched about 10 miles north of downtown St.
Louis so we have some pictures of the Arch as we paddled by. We encountered a
surprising amount of tow activity and were amazed at the number of barges that
were staged (parked) along both sides of the river. In some cases there were as
many as nine barges wide and six barges long in a single cluster all tied
together waiting to be broken up and moved up river. There was a big storm in
the St. Louis area a couple days ago and there is still a lot of debris
floating down stream that washed into the river from the storm. The current is
faster than we have seen before and we have set a new speed record of 9.5 miles
per hour with an average of 6.2 mph for the time we were moving. We only
traveled about 25 miles today as we got a late start and took it easy the first
day out after our 3 day rest. Currently we are about 15 miles south of the Arch
and on a sandy dredge island on the IL side of the river looking across the
river at some monster mansions on the bluffs of the MO side of the river. More
to follow later. .... John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat since last update:
June 27 N38, 25.004 W-90, 18.135
June 23-June 26 at Ellie’s house:
N38,
47.563 W-90, 43.996
June 22 N39, 06.443 W-90, 40.941
June 21 N39, 22.328 W-90, 53.688
June 20 n39, 38.711 W-91,
15.849
Report #6 (6/30/03):
We are currently at River Mile 72 on the Northern
portion of the trip. We are about 105 miles south of St. Louis and about 40
miles north of Cape Girardeau, MO. We encountered our first day of rain today
in about two weeks. It rained mainly during the day after we got started and
stopped long enough for us to set up camp. We actually like those kind of rain
days as it does not impact us while we are paddling and keeps the temperatures
down. We have been encountering many more towboats and most are pushing between
25 and 35 barges (5 wide and 7 deep). The largest tow we have seen to date had
42 barges (6 wide and 7 deep). It is a very impressive sight seeing something
that big coming at you. That one was traveling upstream and left the river
riled up for about 1.5 to 2 miles behind it. Some of the waves in the wake were
3.5 to
4.5 feet high. Fortunately those very large waves are
spaced far enough apart that the canoe just rides up and down the other side.
It is the 1.5 to 2.5 foot waves that are spaced very close together that create
the most problems for us and we end up taking on water. The bilge pump broke so
now we are back to the old fashion way of bailing by hand. The current has been
strong for the last few days so even with a strong head wind, we are easily
able to average about 6 miles per hour and it makes for shorter days of
paddling. AOL has been having major problems with their wireless service so the
status reports are starting to stack up. Hopefully they will have the problem
resolved soon and you will be getting these reports. More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat since last report:
June 30 N37, 31.956 W-89, 30.583
June 29 N37, 50.137 W-89, 43.468
June 28 N38, 04.520 W-90,
10.746
Report #7 (7/7/03):
We made it through the 4th of July weekend without any
excitement. This section of the River which is about 250 to 350 miles south of
St Louis does not have the recreational boaters that the sections north of St
Louis did. We see a few fishermen and an occasional pleasure boat but not the
jet skis, water skiers and the like. We saw a few fireworks on the night of the
4th and heard quite a few off in the distance. We were about 3 miles north of
Hickman, KY on the night of the 4th. Currently we are about 7 miles north of
Caruthersville, MO. We have traveled about 914 miles to date and are a little
over half way to New Orleans. We are estimating about 860 miles remain to our
destination in New Orleans. The current is stronger in this section of the
River and if there are no towboats around we travel in the channel and are
easily averaging about 6 mph in spite of persistent headwinds. We set a new max
speed of 9.6 mph. It is amazing how a towboat pushing 35 barges can inspire one
to paddle fast to get out of the way. Days of the week seem to be blurring. We
recall days by the events that marked them. One day was deer day, we saw 15 of
them at various spots during the day. One day was turkey day as a wild turkey
paid us a visit in our campsite that morning as we were getting up. One day was
towboat day as we encountered 4 boats going downstream and 4 boats going up
stream all within the first couple hours of the day. There were numerous other
boats in both directions during the rest of the day as well. There was a quite
day. The wind was light and the river was flat. We did not encounter any tows
until early afternoon. The river was so quite and peaceful that day. Ol’ Miss
is a very beautiful river even with the loud and thrashing towboats. As a
canoeist, your view of a towboat is considerably different than someone in a
large powered boat or an observer from shore. Nonetheless, they are operated by
professionals and if you know the rules, you can easily stay out of their way.
With the extreme heat we have been experiencing the
last week or so, we have been getting an early start and getting to our daily
stopping point by early afternoon. If no natural shade is available, I set up a
tarp so we can get out of the afternoon sun.
All is going well with the exception of our Sprint cell phone service
and the AOL wireless service. AOL has been down for 2 weeks. I am working with
Nat and Tracey to come up with plan B. More to follow.
John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat for July will
come in the next update.
Report #8: (7/8/03):
Since we have cell service two nights in a row, just a
quick note to bring everyone up to date on the ol’ email status. As most of you
know by now from the reports, AOL’s wireless support using their Hand Held
Computer client software has been down for two weeks. Between that problem and the infrequent Sprint Cell Service in
this area, emails have been spotty at best. Just a word of clarification to those who may have received very
short and cryptic emails from us during the last couple weeks. We use the cell
phone to connect to AOL’s Hand Held Computer email service. With the Hand Held
we have a keyboard and can write long and detailed emails. We also can read our
AOL mail with the cell phone. Since the AOL Hand Held Computer service has been
down for two weeks, we have to read our email on the cell phones browser. The
problem is keying in a response to an email using the buttons on the cell
phone. Those who have cell phones know what a pain it is to have to try to do
that. As a result, the messages from the cell phone are short and sometimes
very cryptic. We can not compile the status reports via the cell phone as there
are not enough hours in the day or week to accomplish that.
We have recently, with Nat’s help, activated an
account on Yahoo to access their remote service so we now can use our Hand Held
Computer to compose long email messages and status reports. That is how we sent
reports 5, 6 and 7 to Nat to forward to you.
We will continue to use our cell phone to monitor
emails sent to our AOL email address and will use yahoo remote service to send
status reports to Nat to forward on to all of you and we will use yahoo to
respond to your email messages to our AOL address when they are too long to
respond via the cell phone keys.
Hope this did not confuse an already confusing
situation. Watch for topics in the next report on the New Madrid earth quake
and juggin.
More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat for July:
July 1 N37, 15.994 W-89, 31.293
July 2 N37, 01.347 W-89, 15.812
July 3 N36, 55.007 W-89, 06.306
July 4 N36, 39.152 W-89, 09.587
July 5 N36, 30.780 W-89, 25.014
July 6 N36, 28.013 W-89, 31.798
July 7 N36, 14.914 W-89, 37.327
July 8 N36, 05.542 W-89, 40.023
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Report #9 (7/15/03):
The weather continues to be our biggest problem. It
has been in the 90s for the last two weeks. We have been consuming large
quantities of water. Some days I have as much as 300 oz. We switched back to
carrying four 2.5 gallon containers of water at each resupply opportunity north
of Memphis and while we were in Memphis, we picked up two more so we are now
carrying 6 which is 120 pounds of water when they are all full. In looking at
the maps, it appears that we will have much greater difficulties after Memphis
in finding drinking water. We have a water filter that we can use but we would
prefer not to if we can find other sources along the way.
As promised, just a short blurb about New Madrid,
MO. New Madrid is a quaint little river
town like many we have encountered. Like most towns in this section of the
river, it is almost all hidden from view behind a large levee. The people are
very nice and curious about our trip and enjoy hearing our adventures. What is
unique about New Madrid is that in 1811 they had a major earth quake. The
locals tell us that if they would have had a Richter Scale at the time, it
would have been an 8 or 9. The tremors were felt 1100 miles away. Some of you
may recall that in the early 1990s they received national attention as some
people were predicting another large quake in that area. Also of interest is
that the New Madrid area was one of the very active sites in the Civil War.
That area was were Grant, Polk and others started on their historic careers.
Also as promised in the last report, I was to tell
everyone about juggin. No John and Chuck, juggin has nothing to do with
drinking although I have heard that they still have some old timers that make
some mighty powerful moonshine around the Kentucky, Tennessee border along the
river. Juggin is a fishing technique that many use on the River in this area.
It gets it name from the fact that the anglers use old milk, soap, bleach,
soda, etc bottles (jugs) to attach a line, sinker, hook and bait and set them a
drift in the channel. It is not uncommon to come upon Juggers with as many as
20-30 jugs floating down the river at a time. They follow along in their boats
and if they see a bottle bouncing up and down, they race after it to land
whatever may have hooked it self. Most often they are fishing for channel
catfish that range from a couple pounds to as large they say as 80 pounds. Pat
and I had the opportunity to float along with some juggers south of New Madrid
and question them on the bait they use, technique etc. While we were with them,
they caught two catfish each about 15 pounds. I asked them how they get a 70-80
pound catfish in the boat. Their answer
was they have to drag it to shore and deal with it there. It is also quite
amusing to see the juggers scurry around collecting their jugs when a towboat
is approaching their fishing area. It appears that to many along the river,
catfish is one of their basic food groups.
We have been encountering some huge sandbars south of
St Louis. They are fewer and farther apart from their northern kin but can be a
couple miles long and up to 3/4 of a mile wide. Interestingly enough, we have
encountered mini sand storms while camping on these large sandbars. With the
high winds, sand blows everywhere. The very fine sand is small enough to pass
through the mosquito netting on our tent. In the morning we often have very
fine sand everywhere inside the tent. It is kind of a nuisance but much better
than the Mississippi River Mud that is like grease.
Speaking of Mississippi River mud, anyone who has been
on or near the Mississippi River has a story about mud. Here is our best (or
worst) to date. Normally when we stop for lunch, we look for a place along the
shore that has some shade. One day we can upon a section of shoreline that had
some very nice shade trees set back from the waters edge behind a narrow strip
of sand. So we unpacked our lawn chairs, drinking water and the day pack with
our lunch stuff and started across the sand strip. Pat was leading the way and
said that the sand was soft and had some mud content. She stopped and I went
off in another direction to find a firmer path to the shade. I proceeded about
40 feet and the path I was traveling gave way out from under me and there I
stood in mud up to my knees with a lawn chair slung over one shoulder, the day
pack over the other and slowly sinking in the mud. I called to Pat to come over
so I could throw the excess baggage to her so I could attempt to work my way
out. Pat was off looking at something else and ignored my initial calls for
assistance so when I started screaming at her she became aware of the fact that
there was a serious problem. Instead of coming over to see what was happening
she rushed toward me and found herself stuck in the mud up to her ankles. The flight response took over and she bolted
from the mud leaving her flip flops behind buried in the mud. I finally managed
to throw the excess baggage I had to a drier area and started the process of
trying to pick my legs up and work my way back to solid ground. I lost one of
my sandals too and was not about to surrender it to the mud without a fight. I
reached down in the footstep hole where I had lost it and fished around up to
my arm pit and finally felt the sandal. All the while I am standing on one leg,
now in the mud up to mid thigh and using the lawn chair as a crutch so as not
to sink farther into the mud. It took all my might but I finally convinced that
stinky greasy demon to surrender my sandal. Since I was now almost completely
covered in mud up to my waist and the front of my shirt and one arm up to my
armpit, I decided I had nothing to loose and went searching in the foot step
holes where Pat had been to find her flip flops. After a few minutes of
searching I was victorious. Once again getting the better of the mud. I felt pretty smug but spent the next 45
minutes trying to clean up the mess. Since then, we have purchased two golf
umbrellas so we can make our own shade for lunch!!!
The current continues to be strong. Friday we paddled
36.8 miles and averaged 6.8 mph with a slight tail wind most of the time. We
set another new speed record of 10.3 mph on Saturday (7/12).
We laid over in Memphis Saturday night, Sunday night
and most of Monday waiting for some faxes that I needed to deal with concerning
Mom’s estate. They were supposed to be there Saturday night but did not arrive
until about 1 pm on Monday. The good news in the whole deal was that it gave us
some time to see Memphis. Originally we
only planned on seeing the Mississippi River Walk and then continue on our way.
Downtown Memphis is very nice. A trolley runs down main street and a good deal
of main street is closed to public autos. It is like one large plaza with many
flowers, statues, fountains, etc. There is a skyway and a tram from the
mainland downtown to Mud Island that has a large stage, marina and the
Mississippi River Walk model.
The Mississippi River Walk is a scale model of the
last 1000 miles of the Mississippi River. The model is 1/2 mile long. Each step
(30 inches) is equal to one river mile. The model is made up of 1746 pre-cast
concrete panels each weighing 8.5 tons. The panels are laid side by side and
show the contour (depth) and surrounding sandbars and shoreline in a vertical
scale of 1 inch to 8 feet. There is water flowing through the model so you can
see where the current is strong, etc. An average of 1,200,000 gallons of water
flows through the model. If you are interested in more information and some
pictures of the model check out www.mudisland.com/riverwalk.asp
We are currently about 40 miles south of Memphis. We
have passed out of Tennessee and now have Mississippi on the East shore and
Arkansas on the West. We are seeing many Tows each day. Many more of them have
the 3 smoke stacks which indicate they are the big brothers of the Tow we saw
up north. The largest Tow we have seen to date had 49 barges arranged in a 7 by
7 configuration. We are also seeing many more Tows whose barges are not
arranged symmetrically as they all were up north. Some may have 3 in the first
couple rows and then 5 or six across in the next few rows. Some will have four across in the front and
then the remaining rows across will only have 2 wide etc. You get the idea.
Quite random to the casual observer. I am sure it must have something to do
with the order in which they are dropped off.
More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat since last report:
July 9 N35, 50.064 W-89, 42.936
July 10 N35, 47.300 W-89, 44.708
July 11 N35, 29.420 W-90, 00.498
July 12 N35, 09.004 W-90, 03.396
July 13 Second day in Memphis
July 14 N35, 01.496 W-90, 14.276
July 15 N34, 44.092 W-90, 27.747
-Report #10 (7/25/03):
Hi yall,
Note the greeting, we are so far south that our speech
is starting to be affected. We are now flanked by the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.
People down here talk funny. Pat has a hard time sometimes but I seem to be
doing okay. I spent some time in the south while I was in the Army and learned
a few tips on mastering the language down here. When you have no idea of what
someone is saying, I find it helpful to throw in a few - ‘is that right?’ grunts, smile and nod a
lot. So far so good!
The water in this section (Memphis to Vicksburg) is
between 8-10 feet above normal for this time of the year. We are told it is
from flooding in Indiana that has caused the Ohio River to rise which in turn
affects this portion of the Mississippi. This has created some interesting
situations for us along the way. The biggest impact is that the maps we have
show a lot of peninsulas that are now actually islands because of the high
water. We encountered such a situation when Pat and I hiked about 3/4 of a mile
across a sand bar that was supposed to be connected to the main land at the
River View State Park in Mississippi. We needed to get more water. When we got
within 300 yards of the park, there was a steam flowing between the sandbar and
the park that was about 100 yards wide and about waist deep. The current was
not too bad so I took one water container at a time and forded the steam while
Pat encouraged from the shoreline. I had to hike about a 1/4 mile to get the
jugs filled and then hike back, re-cross the stream and repeat the process
again with the next container. I did
not want to take both containers at the same time as that would be 40 pounds of
water and if stepped into a hole, we may be out both jugs as well as I would
get a chance to see if I could swim against the current. Better to be safe than
sorry.
The rising water also caused a very sleepless night a
few days ago. Pat and I paddled hard all day long against the wind and when we
reached where we thought we would stay for the night, we found that the sand
bar was under water. We had to paddle on for another couple hours and finally
had to settle for a sand bar that was not very high above the water level. As
we routinely do, I put a stick in the sand at the water level so we could keep
track of the level. It was raining around us most of the day and as we settled
in for the night it began raining very hard where we were. I would periodically
poke my head out of the tent door and shine the light on the stick only to see
the stick getting shorter and shorter each time. The water was rising about an
inch every couple hours. The closer it got to the tent the more I would check
it. I do not think I slept more than an hour at a time all night. When morning came it was still raining and
the level was still rising. We packed up all our stuff and moved about 300
yards to higher ground and laid over a day get some rest. The river has since
been going down about 8-10 inches each night.
The weather continues to be the focus of much of our
attention. There have been some really nasty storms that have moved through the
area with golf ball size hail, etc but we have been very lucky and have not
experienced anything that bad. We spend a lot of time listening to our weather
radio. The last couple of days have been a little better. For the previous
week, we were faced with heat advisories every day. The heat index got as high
as 108 a couple days ago. As a result of the extreme heat, Pat and I have
developed a new mode of moving down the river.
We have started to use our umbrellas (where the wind
is cooperating) as sails and get in the center of the channel (when no tows are
present) and let the current and wind carry us down stream. We have hit speeds
up 7.9 mph. The great thing is that we often can use the umbrellas for shade
and sails at the same time. On some days when it is so stifling hot, we will
sit under our umbrellas and let the current carry us for a couple hours during
the day. We will alternate between paddling and coasting to have periods out of
the sun but still making progress down the river. Generally, if in a particular
section of the river, we can drift at round 4 mph or faster we will…otherwise
we paddle. I am not sure how fast the current is moving but we can often drift
between 3.5 to 5.5 mph. Where the river narrows, the current picks up and the fastest
we have drifted without the sails is about 6 mph.
A few days ago we left the river for a few miles to
travel north into Greenville Harbor, also known as Lake Ferguson. We needed to
get water and resupply our food at Greenville, MS. Although the round trip was
only 10 miles, it was in dead water (i.e. no current). We were painfully reminded
of how difficult it is to paddle a fully loaded canoe with no help from the
current. We were glad to return to the river. While we were paddling up to
Greenville, we were entertained by many large (some up to about 3 feet)
spoonbill fish jumping out of the water. They were apparently feeding on
dragonflies, etc above the water and they would leap completely out of the
water to catch them. There were a few so close to the canoe that I thought they
may land in the boat. On occasion, there would be 3 or 4 in the air at the same
time as you looked out ahead across the water.
As of the 25th, we have traveled 1321 miles and have
about 353 miles to go.
More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat since last update:
July 16 N34, 23.976 W-90, 36.337
July 17 N34, 09.477 W-90, 56.278
July 18 N33, 50.352 W-91, 03.667
July 19 N33, 50.349 W-91, 03.609
July 20 N33, 39.521 W-91, 11.668
July 21 N33, 23.372 W-91, 06.319
July 22 N33, 18.305 W-91, 09.754
July 23 N32, 57.430 W-91, 06.971
July 24 N32, 38.993 W-91, 08.398
July 25 N32, 21.549 W-90, 59.681
Report #11 (8/6/2003):
Hi again,
We are now flanked on both sides by the state of
Louisiana. The weather continues to be hotter than hot. We have slowed our pace
so as not to arrive in New Orleans before our pickup date of August 11. Our
daughter Tracey and our son-in-law Chad will drive our van down to New Orleans
and we will vacation with them for a few days and all drive back together.
Currently we are traveling about 20-25 miles a day mostly depending on finding
a place to camp for the evening. The
river is becoming more well defined (not many sand bar islands, etc) so if we
find a nice towhead, we will pull up short for the day and camp there and make
up the difference the next day. We have little problem maintaining an average
of 6.5 to 7 mph if we need to with the current as strong as it is.
Since the last update, we have observed two new
records for the size of tows on the same tow. One was for a record length of 8
barges long and the second was for the largest number of barges, which was 50.
He had 6 wide by 8 long and two extra barges nearest the tow on the starboard
(right) side so he was seven wide in the first two rows from the tow and six
wide in the remaining rows which made a total of 50.
We stopped in Vicksburg, MS about a week back and
picked up a few supplies and water. Most of the big cities on the river have
Gambling Boats (Casinos). Interestingly enough some are actually boats, most
sit over the water on built up revetments and are not even close to the water.
Some are on large floating platforms securely anchored in place and move up and
down as the water level changes but by no means are they boats. I guess it just
depends on the local laws as what constitutes a boat so they can get around the
gambling laws. In any event, they work out well for us as we got water from the
one in Vicksburg and had their lunch buffet. I ate so much I could hardly walk.
It was super to have shrimp, baked chicken, baked fish, roast beef, etc. No
pasta for me. I even had seconds from the dessert cart. We stopped in Natchez a
few days ago for what we hope to be our last stop for food. The grocery store
was a mile or so from the river and as always up a monster hill to get over the
levee so we called a cab. We got the you have no other choice inflated rate and
it cost us $18 for the two of us to ride one mile to the store and one mile
back. In retrospect, it was cheap at twice the price since we had about 6 bags
of groceries and would never have made it walking.
On August 3rd we finally saw our first alligators. We
were going to stop at a place called the Oyster Bar for water. I called ahead
to make sure they were there. They would not be open when we were going to pass
by but the lady said they had an outside faucet that we could use. She said we
could come up Bayou Sara about a quarter mile off the river or we could walk
along the road from a ferry crossing that was near by for about the same
distance. She said the water was low and it may be difficult to get up the bank
but we could give it a try if we wanted. So looking for the easy way out and
not having to carry the water as far, we decided to paddle up the creek.
We got about half way there and there was this log
floating in the water. We had been joking for days with each other each time we
would see such a log, we would say look at the alligator, laugh and go on. So
as we approached the log, Pat said look at the alligator jokingly. I laughed
and looked closer and noticed that the log was swimming along with us. I said
that is an alligator! I immediately started paddling backwards as we passed by
it and I wanted to back up to get closer to get a picture. Pat immediately
started paddling in the opposite direction to get back to the river. By the
time I convinced her we would not get too close and got the canoe turned around
and the camera at the ready, it sunk out of sight. After looking around a
little more closely, I spotted a couple more much smaller (2 feet) and took
their pictures. The larger one was about 5 feet long. After that, Pat would
have no part of going up the bayou for water so we went back to the river at
the ferry landing and I walked to the Oyster bar along the road to get the
first two containers of water. As I returned to the ferry landing for the other
two containers, the captain of the ferry figured out what we were up to and
allowed us to fill the remaining two containers from their water supply. We had
a nice chat, as much of it as I could understand and it was time for the ferry
to cross to the other side so we said our good byes and were off down the river
with a full complement of water (15 gallons, the four containers that we just
filled and two containers that we had that were still full).
The following day, I talked Pat into taking a slight
detour to paddle about a quarter mile up Thompson creek in search of more
alligators but we did not see any. I have looked ahead on the maps and see a
couple more creeks that I want to try exploring for more alligators as we have
plenty of time at the current rate we are traveling. We will see how
adventurous Pat is in a few days after the initial shock of seeing the first
couple wears off.
We finally went through Baton Rouge today. We have been
waiting for days with mixed feelings about it.
Baton Rouge marks the beginning of the more industrialized section of
the river. There are many many more terminals, docks, fleeting areas (parking
areas for barges), etc from here to New Orleans. As we approached Baton Rouge,
we went through a staging area about 5 miles upstream from town. There were
easily 3 dozen tows of all sizes and well over two hundred barges parked along
both sides of the river over a couple mile stretch. I would guess that at least
a third of the tows were active in hooking up barges or organizing barges for
loads to be picked up. Most of the organizing work is done by much smaller tows
than the ones that move the massive configuration of barges up and down the
river. In our numerous encounters with these small tows and observing their
interaction with other small pleasure craft and our canoe, I have concluded
that many suffer from a syndrome I have labeled big towboat envy. It is my
feeling that they do not get the respect from the fishermen and pleasure boat
operators that they feel they deserve as the big towboats do. Fishermen and
pleasure craft give the big towboats more space than they do the little
towboats that are scarcely much larger than a big run-about. I believe that builds
up hostilities that the small tows take out on the only other craft that they
are bigger than and they can catch, the canoe. They seem to derive great
pleasure in heading directly on a line that will force us to paddle as fast as
we can to get out of their way. Although I can not prove it, I think on more
than one occasion, they changed their route just so they could see us panic and
scramble to get out of their way. They seem to have a nasty streak when it
comes to canoes. We call them the trouble makers when we see them approaching.
We also had an interesting situation in Baton Rouge
when we stopped on the shore near a gambling boat, as we have done many times
before to get water from them. As I
scrambled up the bank to get to the parking lot, I was met by Joel the Manager
of Casino Security. Joel wanted to see my ID and took down my name and address
and informed me that since 9/11 there was a directive from the Office of
Homeland Security that there could be no vessel docking along the shore in Baton
Rouge. I started to laugh as I though Joel was going to have some good natured
fun with a Yankee boy. Joel was very serious. I attempted to reason with Joel
and explain why I was holding the two empty water containers but Joel took his
managerial responsibilities very seriously. I asked him why it was okay to stop
at the town boat ramp but not on the shore at that point. I said I could
understand if it was for liability reasons but I did not see Casinos being high
on the terrorists hit list. Joel had made up his mind that we were not going to
get any water so I decided the best course of action was to let Joel execute
his managerial duties and be on my way. We paddled 500 yards down the river and
stopped on the shore by the museum and I scrambled up the bank over the levee
and down the other side to museum and got water there. Go figure!
We are currently at river mile 197 which is about 33
miles down steam from Baton Rouge. We have traveled about 1567 river miles to
date. We have just over 100 river miles to our exit point in New Orleans at St
Peter Street in the French Quarter. The last couple days it seems like we have
been paddling in circles. We are in one
of those sections of the river as the locals say, it meanders a lot. In the
last two days we paddled 40 miles but the straight line distance we
traveled was only 22 miles!!
We saw our first ocean cargo ship today. It was
heading upstream toward Baton Rouge.
More to follow later.
John and Pat Dickinson
Long and Lat since last update:
July 26 N32, 16.951 W-90, 57.239
July 27 N32, 03.524 W-91, 03.957
July 28 N31, 51.145 W-91, 18.048
July 29 N31, 39.538 W-91, 24.228
July 30 N31, 29.025 W-91, 31.355
July 31 N31, 12.364 W-91, 36.256
Aug 01 N30, 55.556 W-91, 38.029
Aug 02 N30, 44.311 W-91, 29.885
Aug 03 N30, 40.353 W-91, 20.134
Aug 04 N30, 30.415 W-91, 16.339
Aug 05 N30, 19.048 W-91, 09.104
Aug 06 N30, 12.541 W-91, 09.305
-
Report
#12 (8/13/03):
WE
MADE IT!!!!
We
arrived in New Orleans Monday morning, Aug 11th @ about 9 AM after staying
just about 10 miles up the river the night before. Tracey & Chad met
us a couple hours later at the designated spot as planned. We will take
the next couple days to re-acclimate ourselves to indoor plumbing, getting
drinking water from a faucet, meals other than pasta, sleeping on a bed &
no paddling!
Look
for a trip summary to follow next week, after we get back to Minneapolis.
More
to follow,
John
& Pat Dickinson
Canoe
Trip Summary.
Hi
all,
Where
has the time gone!?! It seems like we have been back home for only a couple
weeks but as I look at the calendar it has been almost TWO MONTHS since we
landed in New Orleans. I wanted to
share a few observations about the last section of the river and provide some
summary data on the trip. Where I left off
in Update #11, we were just about 100 miles from New Orleans. The last 100 miles was the most exciting for
me and the most stressful for Pat. We
encountered as much river traffic in the last 100 miles as we did in the
previous 1600 miles combined. There
were many “little trouble makers” (i.e.
the small tows), many large tows (although their barge count was only typically
in the “teens” or less), several ferries crossing hither and yon in our path, a
couple of dredges, a few tour boats and coolest of all was the many Ocean
Liners we saw (probably numbering over 200), most were docked but many passed
us traveling upstream or down as we were paddling.
There
were hundreds of barges “parked” along both sides of the river in various
fleeting areas, most secured to the shore and tied to each other extending 6 to
10 barges wide out from the shoreline.
Some of the barges where actually anchored out in the river far enough
from shore so that we could pass between them and the shore. In one section there were several Ocean
Lines anchored awaiting space to dock and we had to weave between them to avoid
getting too far out into the channel.
We passed within a few feet of these sleeping giants. The thought of the Indiana Jones movie where
Indy was almost crushed between two large ships when the boat he was in tried
to pass between them flashed through my mind but I quickly dismissed it as
there was ample distance between the ships.
The
two things that I found most interesting about the Ocean Liners (other than their
obvious size and diversity) was the wake they created and how quiet they
were. Although they created a wake that
could vary from about three to 5+ feet depending on the type of ship and how
fully it was loaded, etc, the period of the waves (i.e. the distance between
peaks of the wake) was considerably greater than the length of the canoe and
the waves did not “break” until they reached the shore. As a result, when the big ships would pass
us as we were paddling, the canoe would harmlessly rise and fall on the wake
without the threat of taking on water.
However if we were on shore for a break, we would have to hold the canoe
out in knee to waist deep water with the bow pointed into the wake as it hit
the shoreline or we would find the canoe full of water and washed up on
shore. Most often it was easier to just
cut the break short, get into the canoe and paddle away from shore rather than
fighting the breaking wake to keep it from battering the canoe. Obviously when we stopped for the night, we
made sure the canoe was a good distance from the shoreline and on high
ground. When we got into the situations
where there were towboats, Ocean Liners and tug boats all operating in the same
area we were paddling through, the inter-mingling of their respective wakes
presented some interesting challenges navigating through the resulting
turbulence.
Having
spent the better part of two months dodging towboats, we were very used to
having significant time to observe or hear the slow moving tows
approaching. If you did not see a tow
approaching from the rear, you certainly heard it well before it closed close
enough to be a problem. With the Ocean
Liners, it was a different situation.
Those ships moved extremely fast and were so quiet that if you were not
constantly looking behind you, the next time you turned around you were in for
a big surprise! After having a very
large, very fast ship come up behind us without knowing it and have it pass us
just about a 150 yards away, we decided wherever possible we would stay as
close to the shoreline as possible and be more vigilant in checking behind us.
The
last 100 miles of the trip also provided many things for us to observe as we
were paddling. With the heavy river
traffic, there was always a ship, a tow, a tug, a dock, a fleeting area or
something to see as we traveled. One
area we passed through must have been a “mothball area” for old towboats as we
saw what appeared to be several generations of old rusting towboats moored
together. We also saw several ship
repair areas and dry docks. At one dry
dock area, there was a naval ship completely out of the water being repaired
and in the bay next to it, there was a new ship being built. There was a tremendous amount of activity to
observe relating to the loading and unloading of the Ocean Liners. Many carried dried goods, many had special
loading and unloading equipment for the products they carried but one of the
most impressive was the huge movable cranes that were used to unload
containerized cargo.
Here
are a few statistics from our canoe trip from Minneapolis (actually just south
of Lock #2 in Hastings) to New Orleans:
Departed: June 2, 2003
Arrived: August
11, 2003
Total Days: 71
Paddling Days: 64
Rain Days: 7
Camping Nights: 65
River Miles: 1669
Highest Daily Average Speed: 6.8
MPH
Maximum Speed: 10.3 MPH
Most Daily Miles paddled: 37.0
Number of Locks: 23
In
summary, the trip was absolutely wonderful.
We had some incidents with heavy winds, turbulent water, water in the
canoe and closely passing towboats but were never in any life threatening
situations. We saw an abundance of wild
life including eagles, snakes, turtles, beaver, turkey, opossum, pelicans,
alligators, deer, raccoon, wild dogs, fox and many many herons. Except for a couple days of rain and a
couple weeks of extreme heat, the weather was excellent. The people along our route were extremely
nice and very helpful. Often they would
go out of their way to give us a ride to get water or groceries. The river was considerably cleaner than we
imagined it would be. Except for the
last couple days of the trip, I went for a swim every day. We were expecting to have to camp in some
muddy and smelly places but that was never the case. We were extremely pleased with the beautiful sandbars and dredge
islands that we called home each evening.
I am hopeful that I
will have them organized and available for viewing by Thanksgiving. When they are ready, I will let everyone
know. Have a great fall!!!
John
and Pat Dickinson