The IFFINESS of Our Stop-Over Destinations

When I first thought of undertaking this adventure I knew that if Mary was going to come along with me then I’d have to make things comfy-cozy or this whole thing would collapse. Riding in a boat for the better part of each day for three weeks doesn’t seem to raise any concern with her but if you were to ask her about sleeping and bathing; then the tune beats to a whole new tempo. I promised her that on this trip she'll not have to suffer regarding these most critical aspects. With some advance knowledge and foresight I should be able to keep from letting her down. 

When our children were young we stayed out overnight in our tent on a beach along the Mississippi near Red Wing, MN.  It was an interesting experience. Our evening was nice and we cooked hot dogs over an open fire on the beach and all things were nice. But this all changed when some unexpected weather visited us overnight. A heavy thunderstorm had blown through with much lightning and wind and disturbed us a great deal. The kids were oblivious but Mary and I sat up in our tent worried that it might never end.

You forget quickly how powerful a storm feels when you’re outside in the middle of it, especially lying inside a tent. Out of the corners of your eye you see the first distant flashes, then hear the first gentle rumble of distant thunder. You wonder if it is heading somewhere else.  The flashes brighten and become more frequent. As the storm builds you anxiously wait and wonder. Then the first synchronized lightning and thunder crash is so close it makes you jump. The rain starts and you hold on knowing the first gust of wind will soon arrive. The thunder crashes with a high fidelity sound you can’t sense when indoors. It’ll hiss and sizzle and its echo coming through the trees is skewed in time from the sound you hear descending out of the sky. As the storm peaks it blows and pours, with terrible flashes, and crashes and you wait to detect the first sign the worst has passed. Then you notice the lightning and thunder seem to be coming from a different direction with less intensity. Finally your heart slows knowing the storm has passed and now you set about gathering your thoughts and reflecting on what had just happened.

Our 4 person tent stayed intact but we were all soaked and basically trapped on the sandbar in the ink black night. We just sat there wet and waiting for morning a few hours off. While not in any serious danger I began to wonder why I was there with my young children, on this beach with no practical way to navigate 4 miles back to a harbor in Red Wing in the middle of a stormy night. There was no chance of walking anywhere as the swampy Cannon River bottoms filled in more than a mile behind us. The lesson learned?  Watch the weather and maybe pick a location with an alternative land egress.

The next time we made plans to spend a night over after a day of boating I decided to try a completely different approach. Instead of the tent on the beach we tried the Holiday Inn in Winona, MN.  I’ll bet you’re not surprised if I say this was much more agreeable to Mary, and to me too. This experience set a new standard and one that I’m now going to relive 25 or more times in a row.

Each night of our trip we will stop at town with a motel, hotel, lodge, B+B or whatever you want to call it. In order to do this a few things are going to be required. Unlike in a car, you can’t just drive around until you see the bright Holiday Inn sign along the road. You have to know where the motels are ahead of time or have a means to find them in route.  The boat adds another complication in that you need the services of a marina with transient dockage that'll allow a boat to be docked on a daily basis. Most marinas charge $1.00 per foot of boat so the Blue Fin comes in at $16/day. Not all marinas offer transient dockage so some investigative homework is in order here too. Once dockage and a motel are in hand another problem pops up.  How do we get our belongings and ourselves from the marina to the motel?  Can’t use the Blue Fin for that. We'll need a motel near to the marina.  You see, this is all so simple!  We just need a town with a motel, in close proximity to a marina that offers transient dockage. 

Now before I go any further, I’ll add still one more complication. It’s a partially self-imposed complication in that I don’t want to, nor do I think it possible, to stick to a strict schedule of nightly stop-overs.  The, don’t want to, part is just me. The, not possible, part is due to the unpredictability of each day’s journey. Remember what I said earlier about the lock-thru times at each dam?  Those times will invariably throw a wrench into any plan to control our stop over destinations.

So how will we make this work for 21 days and 1700 miles?   Easy, seat of the pants planning.  You can toss out that linear planning your boss likes. That just won’t cut it here and I don't like that stuff anyway.  That kind of planning says if you want a cold beer on Saturday you better put it in the fridge on Friday or you'll be drinking warm beer. Dumb Dumb Dumb. If you truly forget to put it in the fridge on Friday then execute a different plan. Go to the bar or a friends house on Saturday. Needless to say I prefer this thing I'll call conditional planning and if this term is new to the world then let me postulate a new theorem: Linear planning is for work, while conditional planning is for retirement.

Here's a beautiful example of what I'm trying to say.  Have you ever heard of the IF-THEN-ELSE statement used in many programming languages?  It’s always been one of my favorites and I’ll be putting it to good use on this trip. You use it all the time too but probably didn’t even know it had a name.  Let me show you how it can work for my trip.

IF - a town has a marina

THEN - check if the marina has transient dockage.

ELSE - look for the next marina.

See, I told you that you use this sort of thought process all the time and I'm sure you think I’m an idiot for attempting to explain the obvious.  But think what you want, I’m going to expand on this a bit further for no other purpose than to explain how I’ll plan my daily stops. And IF after that you just can’t get enough of the (if-then-else) statement, THEN take a class in the C++ programming language, ELSE you can just forget about it.  

Here’s my decision process in action, picking out our nightly stop-over destinations:

IF - a town has a marina

THEN - check if the marina has transient dockage, ELSE – find the next marina

And IF – the marina has transient dockage

THEN check for a nearby motel, ELSE – find a different motel or marina

And IF – A motel is found nearby

THEN – Check if there’s a room, ELSE – find a different motel or marina

And IF - there’s a room

THEN - make a reservation, ELSE – chance it and just show up

OK, if your observant then you'll notice I was too lazy to make my little table catch every possibility. e.g. What if a motel is found in a town with a marina offering dockage but the motel is simply NOT nearby.  Duh, then I’ll figure out how to get there. I'll tell you more about that later.

The first step in the decision tree requires me to find a town with a marina. How can I accomplish this? Between the Navionics navigation system and the smart phones we’ll always know where we are and how far it is to the next town. 

Step two. Determine if transient dockage is available.  How so?  I can actually know this before I leave on our journey by doing some homework. I’ll use the old fashioned method and acquire a simple list of marinas ahead of time. There are a various resources available for this and Quimby’s is a popular publisher of a book with a lot of information. The bottom line; in one form or another I’ll have a list of all marinas with their services listed as well as their phone number, which by the way, doubles as a list of places to purchase fuel and incidentals too.

Step three is to check if a motel is nearby.  I could do this the same way as I plan to deal with the marinas. That is, to have a list of known places in advance. I might do a bit of this but I've already discovered that if transient dockage is available then a motel is going to be available somewhere in the same town.  How will I determine this for sure? Ask at the marina that’s providing my transient dockage, or use the smart phones to find a place, or hang out a the nearest bar and ask around.

"How much time do we need?" she asked.

This aspect of the trip is going to drive my copilot crazy.  She likes to plan things down to the minute and that’s just not going to be possible on this trip. For a few weeks her planner book will be worthless and the ability to react will be king. The trip will be the perfect experience to ad lib life.

 My observation is that most activities we normally partake in don’t require us to account for time, equipment, weather, and geography all at the same time, all day long, when, without notice, any of them could pitch a curve ball.  People would normally get paid to handle these situations but from time to time it can make for challenging fun too. All this anti-planning is part of the attraction for me while offering Mary an exercise in restraint. But, to be honest, we'll be in this pseudo chaotic mode for a few weeks and we could both become weary of the daily stress. Right now I’d like to think it adds to the challenge and sounds like great fun as long as it doesn't turn dangerous.  Nevertheless, it’s still a necessary exercise to block out a schedule since we don’t have an infinite amount of time to complete our journey. The answer to the most basic question, “how long will the trip take and when will we set out?,  would only be left unanswered by a fool.

Foremost, I want to avoid the chance of flooding conditions and the more unsettled weather of early summer. This would make the trip a lot less fun and only serve to increase the stress level. Thunderstorms in the early summer are more of a nuisance and can occasionally become a hazard. Wind and lightning on the water is a bad combination. Then there's the concern of the possibility of a tropical storm or hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico later in the late summer. That would definitely but an early end to the trip. Neither of these things can be predicted very far in advance so any kind of long range or seasonal forecast is worthless.  It seems then that the suggestion of Mother Nature might be the best, and she says the best average conditions are in mid-summer. The forth of July has always been a favorite holiday so, without giving it anymore thought, I’m setting this as my start date. (approximately)  I’ll probably round off to the nearest weekend.

The amount of time I’m planning to allow for the trip is between 3 and 4 weeks. We are constrained by that nagging old problem, which is, we’re both still working so we need to make the plans fit the time.  It will however be the longest vacation Mary and I will have taken, ever.

I don't have an exact timeline for our travels but it roughs out like this:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
6   days from Minneapolis to St Louis               Segment #1
2   days from St Louis to Kentucky Lake            Segment #2
8   days from Kentucky Lake to Mobile             Segment #3
5   days through the Intercoastal Gulf Area      Segment #4
3   days slack time
2   days to get home

This list looks good on paper but I’ll bet it doesn't work out this way.  The first six days on the upper Mississippi will be plagued by widely varying lock through times at the 27 dams we’ll encounter. I've had experience with this before and the range of waiting times at the dams is from zero to 3 hours. By zero I mean the lock gates are open and the lockmaster is signaling you to come into the chamber as you arrive. Since the lock through times I expect to experience at these dams is such a big part of this trip let me divert here and explain a few things.

How do I plan for the time needed to lock through the many dams?

 If it were not for commercial barge traffic using the locks then it would be easy to predict the time at each lock.  It’s takes about 20-40 minutes for a pleasure boat to get through a set of locks so the planning would be simple. Worst case, 27 locks x 40 minutes, so I’d add what comes out to be 18 hours to the trip time.  But here's the catch. A towboat pushing barges has priority over pleasure craft so they get to go first and they typically take 1-2 hours for a lock through. This is according to the US Army Corps of Engineers rules. So now the possible waiting time is; if I add the 40 minutes of time to transit the lock to, say, 2 hours for the towboat to lock through, I could be waiting almost 3 hours. If I were a person with really bad luck and had to wait 3 hours at each of the 27 dams between Minneapolis and St Louis it would total 81 hours of waiting.  This is very unlikely but I'm certain I'll experience a long wait approaching 3 hours at least a few times.  

Now another question. What happens if there are two tow barges waiting at a dam? Will I have to wait for both of them? I don't believe it's widely known that the regulations say a pleasure boat should be allowed through after 3 other lockages of commercial traffic. I wouldn't however be quoting these rules to a lockmaster if he or she decided to not strictly follow them.  They are the cop, the judge and the jury over what goes on at their dam and it's best to let them do what they want.  In my experience though, I've always been allowed passage once the commercial tow ahead of me had completed their lock through even if another tow was waiting. I have also been put into the lock chamber with smaller commercial craft and that would speed things up too. You see then that the time needed to pass through all the locks is not an insurmountable problem but neither does it lend itself to being planned with any precision.  So what does one do?  I’m going to just throw the rough figures up in the air, use my gut instincts, and pick 1 hour as the average wait time at each lock.  That’s an easy number to remember too.  One last point is the locks are spaced at varying distances on the upper Mississippi and an average figure might be 25 miles between dams.

Tow boat in locks on the Mississippi

How far must I travel each day in order to finish the trip on time?

The second aspect of the trip that also lends itself to a bit of calculation is the speed of our travels.  The Blue Fin cruises along nicely at 20-25MPH so again, it’s simple to figure, for example, that an 8-hour day would get us 160-200 miles.  The real question is however, how fast do I really need to go to make the full 1700 miles in the 21 days of travel?  (I picked 21 days from my list above.)  The quick answer is 81 miles per day and that works out to slightly more than 3 hours of cruising time. This is a figure I like because it will make for a very comfortable travel day and allows for quite a bit of free time to do other things; and other things are exactly what I want to do.  

So a day on our trip should go like this, 3-4 hours of cruising, 3-4 lock passages at 1 hour each, and 5-6 hours of other fun things. And even the day with the longest cruise time, the most lock passages with long waits, and the most fun time only adds up to 14 hours.  Just right!  And remember, it’ll be July with nice long days.  In parts of the trip where there are fewer locks then more time can be allotted to either covering a greater distance or enjoying more fun time. That will depend on where we are and what’s around us.

Thunderstorm Approaching on the Water
Time to take cover!

 Some allowance for weather conditions should be included in our plans too. There will be rainy days that will slow our start or cause us to get off the water early.  We’ll need to occasionally stop and seek shelter from heavy storms.  I don’t expect this to be significant in causing changes to our plans but I do have safety concerns about wind and lightning. We’ll try to be prepared to sit out heavy thunderstorms that we’ll surely experience.  In over 1700 miles, 21 days, and in the heat of summer, it’s certain we’ll have to run for cover more than once. 

The Route - Segment #4 - Mobile to Pensacola, FL

Segment #4 Mobile to Pensacola, FL

The final segment of our trip is through the Inter-coastal Waterway.  This is a passage that is protected from the open seas of the Gulf and is “river like” in nature. Small strips of islands lying just offshore of the mainland make a protected passage for small boats.  This protected waterway extends east about 150 miles so it will absorb a few days of our schedule.  I’m really looking forward to this part of the trip to see the many interesting beaches, resorts, restaurants etc. This is an area that people would actually consider a destination for a vacation, not a place to end it like we'll be doing. . I’ll head east on the Inter-coastal and it’s in the plan to stretch out at a high star resort.  Got my eye on the Grand Marriott in Fairhope near the entrance to the Inter-coastal but maybe not if the water is rough on the eastern side of Mobile Bay. No problem though because there are many other places more numerous than I'd ever need.

Inter-coastal Waterway.
Makes a Protected, River Like, Passage.

Even with the protection of the Inter-coastal I'll still have to pilot through some pretty big water.  Occasionally the river like nature disappears and the water opens up into large lakes. Rough water will again be a potential problem in my small boat.

You have to be wondering, does anybody take a small boat out into the open Gulf?  The answer is yes and I'll sneak out there and away from the protection of the barrier islands if the opportunity presents itself. There are many places where narrow channels will let you out and if the water is dead calm a nice beach will look attractive, but first I’ll have to get smart about tides and swells. I could find the boat has floated away or is fully beached if I’m not careful. A boat like mine can also be easily washed up onto the shore from a big swell. It's smart to anchor out, wade into shore, and save the embarrassment.

Ft Walton Beach

I don’t have any real destination once on the Inter-coastal but some of the cities are Orange Beach, Pensacola, Ft Walton, Panama City and the end of the line for a boat like the Blue Fin is at Apalachicola. To travel past here puts you out on the open Gulf, as there is no further protection while underway until the Tampa area.  That would be 180 miles as the crow flies and 250 miles if one were to hug the coastline. This is referred to as Florida’s Big Bend because; well, just look at map. While not impossible to make this link I’ll have had enough by this point, be thankful that I made it, and probably be thinking about home.

Oyster Bar where I dined before I realized it was
 on the Inter-coastal waterway at Apalachicola.
We'll stop here again!

Apalachicola has a slight pull on me anyway as I had sat at an Oyster Bar there a few years ago with daughter Ellie and boyfriend Aaron watching boats pass on the water. At the time I had no idea I was looking right at the Inter-coastal and wondered who travels in these places and must they be salty old sea dogs?  Well some probably are but many are just regular people in their boats riding around in the nice weather just like I do in Minnesota. I think I’ll take the time to join them.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Photo:  Inter-Coastal Waterway

Photo: Oyster Bar,  Pat Caneva
Photo: Ft Walton Beach,  Anna Maria Web Design

The Route - Segment #3 - Kentucky Lake to Mobile

Segment #3 Tennessee Tombigbee 

The third segment of the trip passes through a few distinct bodies of water. The first is the Tennessee River. I enter it from the Ohio at Paducah, KY and at about 25 miles upstream I pass through Kentucky Dam. On the other side of the dam is Kentucky Lake and once here the change is just like magic, I’m back in recreational waters with more marinas, resorts, and parks then I’d be able to take in.  Kentucky Lake is really the Tennessee River and it is wide and about 100 miles long. Most of the eastern shore is the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area so I expect to see a lot of scenery and I do plan to spend a few days in the area enjoying a resort or two. It does cause me a slight worry though because the north-south alignment of the lake could cause some rough waters if the prevailing winds kick up. The deep V of the Blue Fin could handle it but it would be a hellish 100 or more mile ride along the full length of this lake in rough waters.

Kentucky Lake eventually returns to the character of the Tennessee River that it is, and to my liking recreation is still a big part of its theme. The natural course of the river becomes apparent here and it starts to wind more naturally and is less altered by man. I'm still heading south and moving upstream.

The next key milestone on this route is Pickwick Dam and Lake. It is the first dam I’ll approach since passing through the Kentucky dam 180 miles behind me.  There are some interesting things in this area so again; I will try to spend some time to enjoy them.

 In just a short distance upstream from the dam the route changes and I'll be leaving the Tennessee River.  With a hard right turn we'll enter the Tenn-Tom waterway and in a few miles be constrained inside a man-made channel.  Immediately the feel of a canal will be upon us with closely spaced dams and high banks on either side.  Reports I've read fortunately say the canal atmosphere is not unpleasant and things quickly return to a scenic flavor.  The Corp of Engineers has also put effort into placing many parks and recreation facilities along this route and I plan to stop at a few. There are number of nice towns along the way too so it will be fun to stop and check things out. I believe I’ll find this part of the trip interesting since it is so much different than what I’m used to.

A Canal Section of the Tenn-Tom Waterway

Barge Tow plying  the darkened Tenn-Tom Waterway

Purple Highlight Shows the
Man-Made Tenn-Tom Waterway

The Tenn-Tom waterway was built to connect the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River. It is 230 miles in length and has 10 dams and locks to lift you up and over the passage between the two rivers. The waterway eventually becomes one in the same with the original course of the Tombigbee river. The man made alterations disappear and we return once again to a natural winding river.  When I entered the Tenn-Tom on the northern end I was going upstream and when I exit it on the southern end I’ll be heading downstream. It’s like going over a hill of water.

Sunset on the Tombigbee River

As we continue on the Tombigbee the towns and services that were plentiful all the way back to Kentucky Lake will now have disappeared and we’ll have to more carefully gauge our fuel and time.

A Necessary Stop

We'll pass Bobby’s Fish Camp which is another famous (it’s all relative) and necessary stopping point. Necessary in that it is the only fuel stop in approximately 150 miles of this segment of our trip and there is food available too. Mary will like that. If you check a map you’ll see we need to leave Demopolis and travel all the way to Mobile in one day.  That’s about 150 miles which, while not impossible, might force me to get started earlier than I like on this day of our journey.

Moss in the Trees.  Now it's Really the South

As we continue southward we’ll begin to sense the river changing to the feel of the south with the flat bayou's backwaters replacing the embankments that extended along much of our travels. Somewhere around here Mary will start to look anxiously for an alligator to pet. Soon the scene will become tidal in that the river will level out and the water will spread wide into the grassy marshes. In not too much more distance the smell of the ocean might be sensed. The river will begin to wind through the marshes and meander through the low tidal plane.  We will quickly emerge into Mobile bay and now are only one hour's travel time from the full Gulf.

Matt in 2008 entering Mobile Bay

We pass through the commercial dock area of Mobile where the seagoing ships are busy loading and unloading.  I’m anxious to pull the Blue Fin up next to one of these big gals but I’m sure I’ll chicken out. It’s probably illegal anyway.  The bay area is about 10 miles wide and 25 miles long.  This is a bit intimidating to a freshwater guy like myself so I’ll need to pay close attention to the marker buoys and the weather.

 One predicament I don’t want to be caught in is to emerge into the bay area to find rough seas.  This leaves me in a pickle since, as I mentioned above, I will have traveled about 150 miles down the Tombigbee with no real services or much in the way of a town to stop at. If the seas in the bay are bad then I have no other choice but to back up to Bobbies Fish Camp or risk going ahead into the rough bay. With a little planning though I should be able to mitigate this problem.  The sea conditions and forecasts are readily available and I do have the normally calm weather conditions of mid summer in my favor.  Worst case I’ll be hold up in Demopolis or Bobbies Fish Camp waiting out weather to make a safe passage across Mobile Bay.

Thanks Matt and Friends for the photos.

The Route - Segment #2 - St Louis to Paducah, KY

Segment #2 St Louis to Paducah, KY

After exiting the Chain of Rocks Canal it’s a short distance to St Louis’ downtown and here I’ll have entered an area that’s strictly business.  This in no longer a sportsmen’s river and the tows with their barges can crowd the river to an uncomfortable level.  There are times when the Coast Guard will not allow a small recreational boat to continue on past the Chain of Rocks canal if the water levels are too high. If that happens my trip could be cut short.

I hope to be able to pull up to the Jefferson Memorial Arch for a brief picture stop by beaching the boat onto the concrete pad that lines the St Louis downtown waterfront.  This will depend on the river level and my comfort with doing so. A little secret about the Blue Fin is the bottom didn't get painted.  It’s has 32 years of scraping shorelines and hitting bottoms so I’m more than happy to add my share of dings by beaching it here.

St Louis' Riverfront

I've been to the St Louis riverfront before and I know people launch their boats from there but I don’t think it’s a real prime place to go pleasure boating. The obvious attraction is the arch but the Morgan Street Brewery a few blocks off the water could easily overpower my interests. If I miss the chance to stop then the best plan is to move on and make it about 35 miles downstream where things settle down and the river is big and open and the barges are mostly in route to further destinations and not crowding my passage as much.

Of course, at about this same point one must make the necessary stop at Hoppie’s Marina, the last marina with dock and gas facilities until I'm past Paducah, KY and into Kentucky Lake over 250 miles away. There is much written about Hoppie's on the Internet and it was fun to learn about it and the owner, Fern, who I hope to meet.  If I can make it work I’ll try to arrange transient dockage for a night over and see if I can take a day to visit family in St Louis. My brother Nick lives about 10 miles from here so it would be a nice break to get off the river and visit for a while.

Hoppie's Marina
Last Chance for Gas

When departing from Hoppie’s I head downstream for about 180 miles to the intersection of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers at Cairo, IL. This is the dividing point where one would choose the Mississippi route to New Orleans or the Tenn-Tom route to Mobile, AL. My course is already set with my choice of the Tenn-Tom route so now will begin the upstream navigation on the Ohio River.  It’s about 55 miles to Paducah from here and then 25 more into Kentucky Lake

Before I go on, I need to explain there are a number of difficulties that might arise on this segment of the trip. I've already mentioned that in periods of high water the Coast Guard could close the river to small craft. That’s problem number one.

The second problem is that I cannot make the complete distance from Hoppie’s, all the way to the next marina 250 miles away at Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River, in one day.  I’ll need to find a stop over point somewhere about halfway and a quick look at a map says it's logically Cape Girardeau. A significant enough city but unfortunately there is no marina with docking facilities on the river there. I’ll have to arrange for someone to pull my boat from the river and get me to a place where I can stay overnight. I’m still working on this so stay tuned to see if some arrangement can be made.

The third problem is due to two old Wicket dams #52 and #53 on the Ohio River. If the water levels are high then you just boat on over the dam like nothing’s there. The Corp of Engineers de-constructs the hinged Wicket panels so they lay on the bottom of the river and are submerged underneath you.   (See the picture of the Wickets here in this “on land” exhibit.) If the water is low then the Wickets are stood upright impounding the water upstream and thus they create a waterfall on the river. Boats now must use the adjacent locks to pass.

Exhibit of a Wicket Dam 

So why, after already passing through 27 locks on the Mississippi, would I think these two dams are a problem?  The answer is in the amount of barge traffic passing through them. A one-day wait for a lock through is not unusual.  What I have read, and I’m not sure if it’s true, is a wait for up to three days can occur.  Two people in a small boat cannot survive on the river that long so a contingency plan has to be in place. What that is I haven’t the foggiest idea. 

See the picture of the dam when the Wickets are up and impounding the river. That's roughly a 10 foot wall of water so I don’t think I could jump it, especially since I’ll be going upstream against it.

Water Flowing over a Wicket Dam

Because of these three potential problems it would be tempting to just skip the river in this segment of my trip altogether. But short of putting the boat on a trailer and driving to Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River near Paducah, KY there is no other alternative.  I have some work to do in making plans for this segment of the trip and I’m determined to not give up too easily.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Photo of St Louis' Riverfront

The Route - Segment #1 - Minneapolis to St Louis

Segment #1 St Paul/Minneapolis to St Louis

So do you know there are two commonly used water routes to get from MN to the Gulf?  The obvious one is to follow down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It’s a route that can be easily traced out on a map by most school kids.  It’s a wide river with a huge volume of water. The northern portion, from St Paul to St Louis is controlled with 27 dams each with locks to allow boat passage. In normal conditions the river in this region is like a long string of lakes, one for each dam.  South of St Louis the river runs free and becomes turbulent and less friendly river.  It is because of this that many choose instead to take the Tennessee Tombigbee route, which is the other way to get to the Gulf.  You may not know much about this route or have even heard of it and that’s probably due to the fact that it hasn't been around very long. Unlike the Mississippi that was here since before the last ice age, the Tenn-Tom route has only been around since 1985.

So now you should ask, why choose the Tenn-Tom route over the more obvious Mississippi river route?   Well, the answer for me has to do with the practical matters of comfort and safety.  Stating it again, the Mississippi is not very accommodating to recreational boaters once you pass St Louis.  To continue on a trip down the Mississippi from this point to New Orleans would require more planning, better equipment, and/or a rugged personality.  That’s not what I want to do nor does it fit my character.  Many others have traveled the full length of the Ol’ Miss in all sorts of boats and made it just fine, and I wouldn't be afraid to try it either if I had a compelling reason. I’m just not motivated nor that much of Huck Finn purest to take it on.   I choose instead to make my trip a little easier and, in my opinion, more interesting.

But even by choosing the Tenn-Tom route, I’m still exposed to a small part of the Mississippi River south of St Louis. I'll need to get to the entry point of Tennessee River near Paducah, KY in order to continue my travels on down the Tenn-Tom. There is not other way to get there. Because of this I’ll have to deal with these less hospitable conditions for about 250 miles and that will be enough to give me the feel of a part of the river that’s more challenge than fun. 

I think I need to back up to the beginning of the trip now that I've explained the basic route I'm planning. I see the trip as being subdivided into 4 distinct segments.   See my map above.

The Segments:

#1 St Paul-Minneapolis to St Louis

#2 St Louis to the Tennessee River at Paducah, KY

#3 Tennessee River thru the Tenn-Tom to Mobile, AL

#4 Mobile Bay into the Inter-coastal Waterway and on to Pensacola

Mississippi River's St Anthony Falls in Minneapolis.
I'll pass to the right of the yellow mooring pylons at the 
trip's beginning and enter the first lock chamber on the river

The first segment from St Paul-Minneapolis to St Louis has the character of the Mississippi that I’m most familiar with. The Twin Cities has been my home for the past 33 years and I have boated on the Mississippi many times in the area. A nice summer weekend run from St Paul downstream to Lake Pepin was enjoyed more than one time. The river is rather nice here and probably under appreciated by many folks. I believe because it's in competition with the state's theme of 10,000 lakes.

Mississippi River at Dubuque

Having grown up in Dubuque and having had a boat in our family I spent quite a bit of time on the river.  I had always enjoyed the adventure of a simple boat ride on the river.  And yes, we’d swim and water ski and lay on the sandy beaches and we had a lot of fun.  There’s a set of people who’ll understand this and then another that’ll say, Oh Yuk! You put your body into the Mississippi river?  Well I did and so do a lot of other folks.  The river in this segment is for the sportsman and accordingly has many accommodations. There are plenty of marinas for fuel and a quick snack.  There are towns enough to find stores, restaurants, and motels and many of the towns are tucked up close to the riverbank making access relatively easy.  You can add to that the many boat launch and park areas. I’d feel safe in my claim that you’re never more than a few miles from some sort of shoreline feature that’ll fill a need that might arise. I’ll enjoy this part of the trip because it will feel like I’m reliving some of my youth. The flavor of the river repeats over and over as I continue downstream. Towns, dams, bluffs, islands etc all repeat dozens of times offering up nice scenery and interesting places. 


Everything changes as I approach St Louis.  The last comfortable place on the river is about 30 miles upstream at Alton, IL and I'll certainly have this on my list of stops. It will be my last taste of the relative comfort of the upper Mississippi.  After departing from Alton I’ll pass through the Mel Price dam and in a few miles I'll see the confluence of the Missouri River and immediately I'll have a quick decision to make. The river takes two paths here, one is through a canal and the other is over a submerged dam aptly named the Chain of Rocks.  The canal bypasses the submerged dam and allows safe passage down the river while the other path leads over the dam to disaster.

Notice on this aerial view the wide main channel of the river to the left and the narrow straight strip of water to the right. One must pass through the Chain of Rocks canal or face a rocky waterfall in the main channel.

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Chain of Rocks Submerged Dam
This is not the way to go.

Once through the canal I'll notice a stark change in the water. The influence of the Missouri will now be on full display as it contributes much to the river's girth and adds too to the muddiness of the water.  I believe it is due to the Missouri's extra flow that there is no need for additional dams the rest of the way to New Orleans. Now instead of a string of lakes the river has become a real river and moves along with a 3-5 MPH current that requires more attention and foresight while underway.

Chain of Rocks Canal
This is the way to go!

For the next 250 miles the river will have changed dramatically and I'l be dealing with it's new character.  I'll have to adapt to the change but for now St Louis is just a half dozen miles downstream and I plan to attempt a stop there.

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Photo St Anthony Falls
Photo Chain of Rocks Submerged Dam
Photo Chain of Rocks Lock and Dam

Mea Culpa

By now you know about our plan to take this river trip to the Gulf of Mexico but are probably questioning why I hadn't mentioned it to anybody. Now it is time for me to make a confession of sorts.

As mentioned before, I had been thinking about this trip since last winter and was actively working on the boat for more than six months. It's now mostly finished and sitting in Matt's backyard waiting for summer. I had purposely made Mary, Matt and Ellie swear to secrecy and they were constantly asking me why I didn't want to be open with others. The quick answer I gave was always the same, "just because", is what I said, and for the record, they have successfully kept their silence. I don't think anything was leaked past their girlfriend/boyfriend or possibly someone too distance to matter.  A few months ago I told them it was my intention to reveal my plans at the New Year. That reduced the pressure on them since they now had a date certain when they'd be released from secrecy. Those who know Mary can only imagine the damaging strain she has undergone. Had anyone asked her if she was able to do something this coming summer; she had to say no and make up some excuse. Had anyone asked her about an upcoming event;  she said no again if it required time off work as she's using up most of her vacation time for this trip. New Years day will bring great relief to her because holding a secret is not her specialty.

So you must be wondering why I did this secret keeping?  I'm just a miserable cuss could be in the mix of possible answers.  The largest part of honesty is in this statement, "I truly wasn't sure if I could pull it off and didn't want to be embarrassed by presenting an idea to others that I wasn't sure I could complete". Until I got this trip a bit more calculated in my head I just wasn't prepared to air it out in a larger circle. I needed to do my homework first and get some momentum in rebuilding the boat.  Oh Oh, here I am, doing it again, my answer is mostly true but still with a smidgen of bullshit blended in.  In the beginning I was unsure of success but as time went on this excuse waned and I no longer had what might be construed as a valid reason for secrecy. In my estimation, I transitioned from being unsure of myself into a miserable cuss around October. Matt would say success was in hand 5 minutes after we first talked about the trip last spring.  Does that mean his old man is a full time miserable cuss?   I hope not and even I wouldn't be that harsh on myself.  Here's a little space if you want to weigh in.     Miserable cuss?  Y____N____ Check One.

So from October until today I've had what I'd say is no excuse at all for being secretive. I had resolved that if during that time anyone were to ask me if I was planning a trip to the Gulf of Mexico, via the Mississippi,  on or about July 8 2013, I would immediately fess up. If asked that I had rebuilt a 1980 aluminum Blue Fin fishing boat into a 16 foot, white, center console utility boat my response would have been the same.

Are you beginning to to sense what's happening here? That's right. If you had asked the right questions then I wouldn't have had to keep things secret. If you had only asked then the burden of secrecy would have been lifted. You see this matter of secrecy is not entirely my fault then. It could have been stopped at any moment if only for lack of the right question.

But I'll not be unkind, as I already have been, and shun all the blame. I'll generously accept that I was afraid of failure in the eyes of others and was therefore secretive of my plans. But once I had this trip pieced together and the boat was being finalized, I was waiting for someone to talk to but nobody asked.

To settle this matter then, I would like to suggest an age old remedy I learned early in my work career. Stated in this fashion: Let's not focus on the problem at hand. (Why did it happen? What can we learn from it? How can we keep it from happening again?), but instead lets fix the blame. Who did it? I didn't do it!  Did you see what he did!     Based on this timeless principle, I think a fair settlement requires me to take the hit for being secretive in the beginning because I was a wuss. I'm blaming the rest of the world in more recent times for failing to ask.  Please, please, I can be a wuss but I couldn't stand it if I were a miserable cuss!  (Just joking!)

One last thing. Do you know how close some of you came to uncovering my deceit?

Joe and Terri,  You picked us up one evening and instead of coming out of the garage door we came out the front door.  Das boat was in the garage!

George, You were in Matt's driveway on your Harley looking right at the boat when it was torn apart.  You asked who it belonged to and I just grunted. You left assuming it was Matt's.

On the Forth of July boat parts were scatted about my garage when many of you were here.  No one noticed.