2013

Last year, the kayak traveled 5,000 miles upside-down without touching water (other than rainwater). It was a disappointing and sad journey. The river bags were packed, the kayak rode comfortably atop my daughter’s CR-V, and we were in Iowa, three days and one state away from the headwaters, participating in RAGBRAI (Or eating pie... Or both...) when we got news that my dad had suffered a serious heart attack. I left for the hospital in Montana, where he’d been fishing, and he passed away July 28 with his family around him.

B1-66er, my daughter, her car and the boat made a U-turn at the Mississippi River (Literally. In Fort Madison, IA), and finished their all-too dry path through Wyoming to Montana, and then south again to Las Vegas. It’s hard to balance the sadness of a parent’s death with the disappointment of a lifetime goal postponed. Happily, the trip was postponed only one year, and once again, the river bags are packed and the kayak is traveling to Minnesota, this time on a tiny red trailer behind B1’s PT Cruiser. Looking forward to a watery trip in 2014.

Leaving LV via I-15, Virgin Canyon, AZ

In Ledges State Park, near Boone, IA

View of 2013 RAGBRAI, Des Moines, IA

Deal Christensen, Jr. (Obituary Photo)

RIVER READING

I have two Mark Twain books loaded in my phone to read in the tent on evenings after we’ve started the river trip: Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi. I haven’t specifically looked for other Mississippi literature, but expect to encounter new titles as we follow the river. (Suggestions welcome!)

Last month, I bought and enjoyed The Control of Nature by John McPhee. The book consists of three essays about how humans battle nature on a huge scale, including how the Army Corps of Engineers controls the outflow of the Mississippi River at the confluence of the Mississippi at the Red River and the divergence of the Atchafalaya River. (The other two essays address lava flows in Iceland and mud/rock flows in Los Angeles). I gained a renewed appreciation for the tenacity/stubbornness of people and their ability to impact their environment.

Not long after I read the book, I happened on a news article about rising sea water levels in Miami—where humans have not yet begun to fight nature on such a massive scale. The article implies that humans are in denial about the future of global warming, and that, if there were only public will, the city could hold back the tides.

RIVER BASIN MAPS(!)

In most of Utah and Nevada, rivers don’t run to the sea, and, instead, evaporate within the Great Basin. In the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide earns a lot of attention, with signs posted each time a road crosses it. Meanwhile, by the time it reaches the delta, the Mississippi River collects and drains the massive center of North America, including: the Upper Mississippi River Basin, the Missouri River Basin (including the Platte out of Denver), the Ohio River Basin (barely separated geographically from the adjacent St. Lawrence River Basin--Great Lakes--drainage), the Arkansas-White River Basin (including southern Colorado and across Oklahoma), and the Red River Basin (which makes me think of the folk song and some good friends in Texas). Three other rivers drain north and east from the center of the continent, while the rest of the rivers just flow to the nearest ocean.

MAPS!!!  
Basin Map
Continent Basin Map
Divide Map

WHERE DO WE GO?

The Mississippi River is about 2,400 miles long from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico and runs through and/or borders ten states. It starts wholly within Minnesota (about 1/4 of the length of the river is in Minnesota, approximately 640 miles). It ends wholly within the state of Louisiana, many miles (almost 100) past New Orleans, at the tip of a long channel that extends into the delta at Louisiana’s toe. Between MN and LA, it flows past: Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

There’s a terrific map on the Wikipedia page.