Part 4:
Day 4

Our author and his friends, Dellus and Benton, continue their journey on the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and back in their 21-foot Carolina Skiff. It’s a spur-of-the-moment, throw-caution-to-the-wind, put-life-on-hold adventure. They had each other, lots of food, and an unbelievable number of empty gas containers. We left them after their third day on the water as they swam after their boat!

The skiff had luckily been caught by several of the many branches sticking out of the river by the shore but would not have been there long had Benton and I not reached it in time. Once to the boat, we then realized we had no key to start the motor. “We have an oar,” Benton said, and both of us laughed, as that was all we needed to get the boat back to shore and we knew it. OK, fine. The boat was safe but that did not stop Dellus from yelling at us and, more specifically, me.

“You checked the ropes yourself,” I replied, though somehow it was still all my fault. And although it was a crisis, complete disaster had been avoided. We tied the boat off again to the same log but this time I let them do it and they pulled the skiff way up onto the sand and I said nothing but knew it was a bad idea. We enjoyed the rest of the night and I still call it my favorite campsite of the trip, although Dellus and Benton both disagreed.

The water had receded by only a foot or so but that was enough to leave us with a ton and a half of a problem resting on wet sand.

The next morning, we followed our routine of breaking camp and moving on but again found adversity in our way. The water had receded by only a foot or so but that was enough to leave us with a ton and a half of a problem resting on wet sand. We were optimistic at first, but had yet to realize the full magnitude of the situation. We tried the obvious but there was no way the three of us were going to push the boat back into the water from the bow. I am certain that somewhere river Gods were laughing at us attempting to nudge more than a ton of stuff into the water. We quickly learned this wasn’t going to work and then had the idea of unloading everything. We removed everything not directly attached to the boat and were excited until we realized that it still left us with more than 1,500 pounds of dead weight on hard-packed, wet sand. I brought up the silly notion that if we waited the water may come back up again … Dellus yelled at me, “This is not the ocean! There are no tides!” And he was right so I shut up. The water would continue to drop because of non-existent rainfall and one of the worst droughts ever to hit the eastern United States. We came up with another plan: Zigzag the boat, pushing the bow sideways towards the shore, yet closer to the water, while simultaneously moving the stern a few feet backwards. This didn’t work either. We succeeded in moving the bow closer to the water but, at the same time, moved the stern—the heaviest part of the boat—completely out of the water. This was bad. So now we had a boat resting on wet sand parallel with, as opposed to perpendicular to, the shoreline. Brilliant idea number three was to continue to push the bow around to see if we could get it into the water, which looked like it was going to work until we realized that we were only succeeding in sliding the stern, engine and all, farther onto the shore. We were all, I think, just about ready to start crying when we heard an alarming but familiar sound from up river.

“It’s the power plant,” Benton gleefully yelled. “They’re about to release the water!” We knew this was our chance and waited anxiously. Sure enough, in about five minutes we could actually see a surge of water racing towards us! It was now or never, so we grabbed the opportunity and even though the wake was only six to 10 inches above the level of the water before, it was enough for us to push and grunt and rock the boat until it rested within the river again. We were so happy at this point we almost let it float away without us, but Dellus jumped in and started the engine and trimmed it down just enough to propel him to the shore where we quickly reloaded our goods and gladly left this trap behind, fallen trees and all. We had learned yet another valuable lesson that was chaotic but gracefully earned. Once again, we were moving down the river with uplifted spirits and newly acquired wisdom that made us feel like we could handle anything. Benton said, “How much worse could it get?” Dellus and I just looked at each other.

“So, in a state capitol right on the Mississippi River, you’re saying there is absolutely nowhere for us to buy gasoline?”

As I’ve mentioned, it was beginning to get colder and that morning it began to rain. Not a lot, but enough to make us start to worry. For 20 miles or so, it seemed that we were on the verge of getting poured on. We saw more bald eagles that day, frolicking way up in the air, and the sky seemed immense and hard to put into perspective. We started to notice that traffic was picking up on the river the closer we got to Baton Rouge, specifically from barges and tankers. In fact, there were places where literally hundreds of barges were lined up on both shorelines. These must have been huge staging areas where tugs would pick up or drop off these floating football fields. We made it to Baton Rouge with the same hope we had powered into Vicksburg with, looking around for a sign that said “City Marina.” Again, no such sign existed. But, we had to have fuel, so leaving Baton Rouge without it was not an option. We lashed onto an enormous commercial dock and waited for someone to come up to us. After a few minutes, we began to wonder if anyone even saw us, but eventually heard a voice over a loud speaker say, “Tom, go see what those guys want and let them know they cannot come onto the dock and need to get their boat out of our way.” We thought, “Great, this will be pleasant.” So, two men came up to and looking down, literally, at us, asked, “What you fellas need?” We explained our gas dilemma and our story of how far we had come and they laughed and said, “In that boat?” Then one of them added, “Sure, I’ll give you some gas if you can hold 50,000 gallons of diesel!” as both men got a good chuckle out of that one. We didn’t think it was very funny and I said, “So, in a state capitol right on the Mississippi River, you’re saying there is absolutely nowhere for us to buy gasoline?”

“I suppose if you pull up on a bank somewhere you could walk to a gas station” the other one said and then they both snickered again. “Thanks” was all we could say, and pulled away.

So here we were, citizens of the greatest country in the world trying to explore one of the greatest rivers in the world inside of our own domain while what little infrastructure was left (that has not been out-sourced) was rusting and fading away in front of our eyes the farther towards the Gulf of Mexico that we traveled. What could we do? We found a place to run our skiff aground about a half mile down river. I stayed with the boat this time while Dellus and Benton trekked off carrying eight empty fuel cans to find the nearest gas station.

I met four or five people waiting on them to return, which is a story in itself. Dellus and Benton came back with an interesting story of their own about a huge but benevolent cab driver that sounded like he could explain the world … I knew I should have gone. Full of fuel again we trusted in our skiff and the Yamaha engine that propelled us to bring us safely to and through our next adventure. And, just that easily, we were moving south again, disgusted not just with what we had found but the let down of what was there. We got over it, as we still had a long way to go.

From Baton Rouge towards New Orleans, the river became more violent and the barges and wakes became ever larger and the banks continued to transform as well. No more stretches of seemingly undisturbed forests and wildlife; now the shoreline was strewn with enormous structures and docked super tankers that, presumably, were in constant operation although, by appearance, looked as if they were put into service years ago. Each ship’s name was prominently displayed and just beneath the name was a country of origin: Norway, China, Venezuela, Mexico, Denmark, Brazil, the U.K., etc. We didn’t talk much about it but it was apparent that we were in the heart of America’s industrial distribution infrastructure. These same ships that we had been dodging and muddling through were bringing raw crude oil from all over the world that our refineries process and then load onto the very same barges the three of us had been trying to avoid for five days. In fact, these thousands of barges push all manner of goods up this gigantic river as far north as cities like Chicago and Detroit, even into Canada via the Great Lakes. The commodities are then further dispersed through a vast spider web of railroads and highways to an ever- consuming America, just as Norris and The Octopus described. Though it’s a widely known fact that this goes on, to actually witness it is mesmerizing and enlightening as well. As everything seemed so decrepit and rusted, I found myself wondering how the system maintains itself at all. It was a lot to take in.

New Orleans was our next destination and we eagerly wondered what it would have to offer. We weren’t making great time, though, both because of the boat-on-the-shore fiasco, and the two hours we wasted trying to track down fuel in Baton Rouge. We only made just over a hundred miles before we started looking for a suitable place to rest our pathetic selves on the bank. We did about thirty miles up river of New Orleans and found a gem of a camping spot, which would become both Dellus’ and Benton’s favorite of the trip down. There was a natural sandbar right at a bend in the river jutting out enough to create a small lagoon on one side, which was the perfect place to pull the skiff into while the river literally washed up onto the other side of the bar before continuing its way downstream. People that have lots of money to waste pay thousands of dollars for access to a place like this and there it was waiting for us to anchor our skiff to, set up camp, build a fire and watch commerce pass us by. Needless to say, we did just that and met friends along the way. Several four-wheeling rebels stopped by to say hello and even went off into the forest on their ATVs with ropes and drug us back huge logs for firewood. They were probably more curious about us than we were about them, but they seemed surprisingly happy to have someone to talk to. One of them even trekked back to his house—five or so miles away—and brought us bait to fish with! It was a wonderful night. We had a huge fire—the biggest of the trip—and ate fresh fish, crawfish, corn, and drank vodka and beer with our new friends, celebrating into the wee hours of the morning.

Benton caught a three-foot-long eel as well, but we were scared to eat it so we threw it back. We felt like Vikings and it was one of the best nights of the trip. I suppose we were lucky that our new-found friends were not vandals or thieves or worse. I think Dellus even got one of their cell phone numbers, although I can’t imagine when it may ever come in handy. But, based on this trip, one never knows.

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