Will and some other Lost In Space names. This made it easy to verbally
identify bags. For instance, "Joan, can you get the stove out of Marge?"
Thursday morning we slept in again,
although perhaps not so much as the day before. As we packed we noticed
that a lot of the dry bags that we stored the camping gear in were identical,
causing some confusion about where to find things later. That morning someone
decided we should identify the bags by name. For unknown reasons but (not
surprisingly), Bob had a huge indelible marker that worked well on the
rubber bags. Joan I bags named our bags after The Simpsons' characters
Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Smithers (later we added Milhouse). Bob named
his bags Penny,
Will and some other Lost In Space names. This made it easy to verbally
identify bags. For instance, "Joan, can you get the stove out of Marge?"
We had a hearty oatmeal breakfast and loaded up the canoes for our trip down the river, leaving around 10am. We decided not to work too hard, so we tied the canoes together with bungees. That allowed the crew in the bows--Mark, Katy and Joan--to lay back and enjoy. We all perched the rubber duckies on top of the bows. Mark didn't particularly enjoy this stillness, so he and Leo broke free often to do their own paddling. The other two boats tied up for quite awhile. Joan spent more time on her back than a woman recovering from childbirth. Hardly any of the pictures from the 6 days show her sitting up.
It should be noted that Mark and Leo served valiantly as the crew's garbage barge, taking in empty beer cans and other rubbish into bags on the center of their boat.
This day is when we learned that you can't really navigate a river trip with a Rand McNally interstate road atlas. After looking at that atlas back in the offices of the Wall Street Journal, and getting feedback from Mississippians who canoe the river, Joan had figured we would make it to the Mississippi on the first night (Tuesday), to Ferriday, La. by Wednesday, to somewhere a little north of Black Hawk, La. by Thursday, to the southwest border of Mississippi by Friday and to right outside of our take-out, St. Francisville, by Saturday night. That way we could have a short morning paddle Sunday, return the canoes and get back to New Orleans in time to have a leisurely dinner. But on the river, not only did we move a lot slower than expected, we didn't see most of those landmark towns. They weren't on the river anymore. Floods and course changes had chased these once booming river towns miles inland.
We did pass one town on our map early on, Waterproof, La. The way we noticed it was we saw these two huge white grain elevators on the far side of the river and Bob took out his field glasses and read the name on a nearby water tower. The landmark slipped by fast. There is no way we could have stopped there, because by the time we would have crossed the river and reached the Louisiana shore, we would have been at least half a mile downstream. Besides, we didn't see any other buildings there.
So we kept floating and counting barges (we lost count after 25 or so). It was in the 90s and we all slathered on no-ad SPF-30, waterproof, sweatproof suntan lotion, which was pretty gross. Each boat had one huge bottle, which we pretty much used up during the trip. We were all wearing wide-brimmed hats, like Leo had suggested--all straw, except for Mark, who had this kind of Indiana Jones canvas hat. Once we were on the river and it was windier, we ran string through the straw in the hats to keep them from blowing away. Joan tied on two hats--the bottom one was airy and let the breeze through, but also the sun, and the top one was tightly woven so it kept the sun out. All trip long, everyone said how nice she looked in her *hats.*
We were a little timid about swimming at first, but Bob jumped right out of the canoe into the water and we all followed suit. It was a weird feeling to be playing around in the water and traveling at the same time. When we were swimming, we were being swept along at five miles an hour, the same speed as the boats. So we weren't losing any traveling time.
Getting back in the canoe is very hard. You have to reach over your head and hold onto the side of the canoe, near your seat, and then as quickly as possible, hoist the top half of your body over the seat. Or, you can cheat by pulling your body high enough so your elbows are resting on the seat, and then try from there to get your hips onto it; but if you do that you have to do all the pulling with your upper body, since you're not deep enough in the water to kick out of it. The whole maneuver is difficult since it basically requires you to jump about three feet out of the water. Once you are laying face down on your seat, the easiest way to get in is to hold on to the far side of the canoe and swing your legs onto the boat. Then you have to do a push up, usually off the sides of the boat, to maneuver into a sitting position. This final push-up is hard because you are tired from jumping into the canoe and your body feels heavy and wet. If you fail to do a good, fast pushup you may end up with your face on the seat and your butt in the air, a very embarrassing posture. Katy was especially graceful at re-entry.
KATY's reentry; BOB swabbing ear
We were having a lot of fun but even with the swimming we were really hot and anxious to know when we would arrive at our next resting point, which we figured might be Vidalia, La. (not the onion capital). Eric kept looking at a road map to see where we were. We really wished we had bought the Army Corps of Engineers detailed maps, but it was too late. Katy kept looking at her lunch box, which had a Xerox copy of the trip map on the side of it. We had intended those maps as a novelty, but with only one road map for the whole crew, a lot of us used the lunch boxes to guess where we were. Katy kept asking, but none of us knew until we saw the bridge that connects Natchez and Vidalia.
A black cloud was forming on the horizon and we were all pretty hungry, so we were glad to see a sign of civilization. As we got closer, we saw a good-sized town on the left bank, which turned out be Natchez, once the wickedest city on the Mississippi. History books say that back in the 1800s, when it was a happening riverboat town, it "Natchez-under-the-hill" averaged one murder a night. Natchez under the hill is the part of the town on the river, as opposed to Natchez-on-the-hill, which is on bluffs overlooking the river. Nowadays the town is really touristy, with cute little expensive restaurants on the waterfront, a permanently docked gambling boat (called the Lucky Lady) and old-time mansions on the bluffs.
We pulled up to the boat ramp, but since we wanted to spend several hours in town, we ended up tying our canoes to some trees nearby. We thought about the canoes being stolen or untied for only a second before deciding just not worry about it. No way was someone going to hang around and stand guard. Bob, who was intent on eating some Cajun style cooking, was hoping to find some gumbo. He walked around a bit and found a place serving catfish sandwiches. He and Leo headed off in that direction. Eric, Joan and Katy asked around and someone recommended Pig Out, a barbecue place. Mark said he'd meet us later. We walked in with our lunch boxes and ordered huge slabs of barbecued meat and sweet corn. The guy behind the counter didn't even blink at how grungy we looked. We must have been smelly, too. We sat near the window and chomped away. Mark joined us just before we were going to leave. We got some sweet corn to go, so we could munch on it on the river.
We rendezvoused back at the boat ramp. Bob told us how he had gone into the town's historic bar on the waterfront and the bartender said he saw canoeists practically every other day. Bob had looked at the bartender's copy of the Army Corps of Engineers map of the river. It showed, in more detail, a shortcut that we had planned to take. A little south of Natchez, this map showed the main branch of the Mississippi bending off to our right (the west) and then heading north, and then back south and east--a big loop--before flowing south again. But if we stayed to our left and followed a smaller branch of the river, we could avoid the whole loop, and just go south. That would save at least five miles, and since we were a little behind schedule, we decided to do that. The bartender warned Bob about a flood control gate that might suck us into a dam. We imagined our canoes being smashed to bits.
After the rendezvous we decided to get provisions. The nearest grocery store was a cab ride away (there were no buses), so we split up, with Bob, Katy and Leo going shopping, and Mark, Joan and I going to the bar. In the back of the bar we played pool and then Mark and I played Foosball. JOAN: Eric concentrated so intently on the Foosball game that he stuck his tongue out of the right side of his mouth, a trait he has apparently inherited from his grandfather, who did the same thing when working puzzles.
ERIC vs. MARK
There
were a lot of newspaper articles on the wall, including one that was a
few years old about a local Madame who had openly run a prostitution house
in Natchez for decades. She was known for insisting that her male clients
be sober upon arrival. She met her death when one drunk man whom she had
turned away returned and burned the house down. It was a sad story and
it was interesting because it was obvious that everyone in the town really
liked this woman and admired her even though she was technically a criminal.
We waited for a long time in that bar, and in some rocking chairs out front, for the rest of the gang to return. It wasn't bad at all, the bar had a good beer selection. However, once again, the grocery store didn't. We were stuck with Budweiser for the rest of the trip.
[BOB: We got into Natchez, and Leo and I had terrific catfish sandwiches and I got some gumbo I think, while you guys got barbecue. Then we went next door to the (can't remember the name of the bar). They had these terrific old pictures and models of old river boats and scenes of Natchez from the past. We talked to the bartender some and he let us look at his US Army Corps of Engineers maps.]
[ERIC: From these maps we learned about the milepost markers along the river. I memorized the key milepost marker for our take out at St. Francesville, #265]
[Bob: There we saw an amazing number of former channels that the Mississippi had abandoned over the years. The bartender told us of one man who had come into the bar a couple of years earlier, who was canoeing the length of the Mississippi - Upstream. We were more impressed than we would have been a few days earlier. We refilled our various water containers in this hose with amazing water pressure outside the bar. Then Katy, Leo and I took a taxi into town, and stopped off at a supermarket. It felt strangely funny to be back in 'civilization', and I was very conscious of how temporary our visit to civilization was. It almost felt like stopping off at a mall in the middle of an Amazon expedition. We loaded up on everything we had put on our list.
[Bob: We still couldn't find jiffy pop, as I recall, and feared that it is no longer being made. We bought multiple cases of beer, and then made sure to put in Sean's last extra twelve pack. I decided against buying anti mosquito fogger - for environment reasons- but was regretting my decision within days] [ERIC: hours.] [BOB: We got the cab driver to take us to an ice cream place and got lemon glazes in waffle cones and I think I got a chocolate milkshake that I had been desperately craving. We also bought about 15 bags of ice.]
On their way back, Katy and Leo had stopped at the paddlewheeler gambling boat that was permanently docked at Natchez. Katy said someone on the boat was impressed with her Keith Haring T-shirt.
We would have left pretty much right away, but Bob had to call a woman who was filling in for him at work, and make sure she was doing OK. He had planned to call earlier, but we hadn't seen a phone since we left Port Gibson. So he kept trying to call her from the payphone outside the bar, but she wasn't home. He finally got through to her and while he talked the rest of us cooled our heels at the boat ramp. He was on the phone for at least 20 minutes, so we figured she probably needed a lot of help with the job. We took turns going up to Bob asking him to leave, and he kept saying he would come along. Later Leo and Joan went up with a crew-issued squirt gun and began firing at him. Finally he got off the phone and we asked him how she was doing, if she needed help, and Bob said she was doing fine.
[BOB: When we got back, I was finally able to get to a phone and called Tina, this woman back at work that I had been furiously working on a document with, and desperately needed to talk to, to give her feedback on some schedule pages that she had faxed to me at the Columns hotel back on Monday, but she wasn't there! I knew that it was likely that I wouldn't get to another phone for days, so I was rather upset. I had really left her hanging when I went off on this trip, and this was the one last thing that was tying me to work. We loaded up the coolers and boats with all the stuff, and then on a lark, I tried calling Tina one last time -and just caught her! Got her my comments and discovered that things were going OK in my absence -what was my worry? Left Natchez feeling much freer and very relieved. Just as we left, we talked to this guy on the boat ramp there who canoed, and he said to look out for this false channel that started off amid farmland, and looked like a real channel, but then petered out miles into the swamp. Remember looking back at that big Natchez bridge for a long while.]
[FLY ON THE WALL: note the discrepancy between Joan/Eric's account and Bob's account of the information received from people in Natchez. Bob hears about the false channel, J/E hear about a dangerous flood control gate. Perhaps the group would have done better with no information.]
We left. The black cloud that we saw on the horizon had moved closer, and it started to rain and gust. It turned into an amazing thunder storm but it blew over us. It cleared up fast and we ate the sweet corn from Pig Out while we were floating. We decided to cross the river to the Louisiana side because a man at the Natchez boat ramp said that side had nicer beaches. He was wrong. We didn't see any beaches and Eric said it was a mistake to take canoeing advice from a guy with a powerboat.
The search for camping was discouraging. Most of the banks weren't banks at all--they were clumps of trees sticking out of the water, like the trees we had paddled through when we crossed from the bayou into the river. There was no hard dry ground in sight for a long time. Finally we saw something that might be land and got out and walked around. It was really swampy. Lots of mud and gnarly plants and lots of mosquitoes. It was the kind of place that normally you would never camp in but we decided to do it because we didn't want to look for a place in the dark. The hard ground was merely a narrow spit in a swamp slightly higher than the swamp around it.
LEO
in a fog
We pulled up to shore and we were going to camp right away, but Bob and I hiked down the narrow spit of land with the river on the left and a swamp on the right until they found a slightly better spot --better in the same way that getting two wisdom teeth pulled is better than four. A line of bush-like scrubby young trees grew in the water about 6 feet from the bank like a tree line protecting the pitiful bit of hard ground. We had to bust through the leaves and branches to get to shore then we hunted for firewood and Bob made the fire again. The mosquitos were vicious, so I cooked the fastest noodles and instant potatoes I've ever made. As soon as we ate we dove into our tents and slept.
Stay tuned for Chapter VIII, Eric's Lesson
Mississippi Main Page 
World
Trip