A Furlough and An Accomplishment

What was supposed to be only a 4 day hiatus turned into a month long furlough for me and required Christian to move the boat, alone, from Grafton to Memphis. I would love to post pictures of the reason why but have neglected to get Elias’ approval to do so… and new grandparents do not want to start off on the wrong foot! 🤗🤗👶👍💃☺️

Christian was kind enough to document his journey in pictures for us… A solo journey on the Upper Mississippi is quite an accomplishment so we will forgive him the lack of editorial. I will add color where I can but full disclosure, I was not here…

The flotilla from Grafton to Paducah; Christian’s traveling companions turned off at the Ohio to make their way down the Tenn-Tom route but he had company for the first three days.
The famous Hoppies stop… I am truly sorry to have missed this as it is legendary among the Loopers.
There was a very dicey start one morning – fog! This is hard with two sets of eyes, a major feat alone!
See you in… wherever!
A tow head; these are Mississippi River features made famous by Mark Twain. Huck often landed his raft on a tow head and Jim hid in among the trees when necessary.
Please make note of the gauge which marks swings in the rivers depth… and notice how low it is currently.
The Mississippi River current added 4-5 mph of speed to Christian’s travels. We plan the day’s trip, normally, using 7 mph as travel speed. It is completely conservative to use 10 mph descending the Mississippi and Christian reported he saw 13 one time!🚀
The big boys are ALOT bigger on the Mississippi…
A gaggle of tows.

The Mississippi has no pleasure boating infrastructure to speak of so overnights stops are slack harbors (inlets where barges are loaded or tows are staged) or sides of the river where the bends are wide and the current is low.

This geographical feature was most likely produced by barges parked on the river. The tows beach the barges on the tow heads…
Very little in the way of development along the banks of the river…
… but interesting nonetheless.
The Memphis skyline

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