The Mississippi Trip

Hello from La Crosse, Wisconsin. We’ve stopped for the night and the good people of the Diamond Way Buddhist center here have been kind enough to let us stay with them. We’ve done a little meditation, some indoor rock climbing, and even a little basketball. Tomorrow, we’re going up to the bluffs bright and early to check out the view before we take off. The trip thus far has been great. The weather for the most part has been wonderful, except for a large thunder storm on Lake Pepin which gave us a good scare. We’ve seen two bald eagles, been through eight locks, and travelled one hundred and fifty miles. We have been camping mostly on sandy banks and are learning to deal with grains of sand in everything. Going through the locks has been a new experience, but so far has been relatively quick and easy. You just paddle up, pull a large chord (which proceeds to let out a custom sci-fi ring for each different lock), wait for the gate to open, paddle in, chat with the locksman (always friendly and usually with facial hair), wait for the water to go down, and then paddle on out after the second gate opens. The paddle/rowing combo has been working well and our daily mileage has been increasing, up to 35 miles yesterday. The shower and beds here in La Crosse are welcome ammenities that we probably won’t be seeing for the rest of the trip. So here’s a few more pictures of the trip so far, more to come later I promise. And don’t forget, all comments and questions are welcome. We hope everyone is well and we’ll update the page again as soon as we can.

Hello friends and family. As some of you know, we’ve been up in Minneapolis for the last few days. The trip up here was exhausting and fun. We made four dollars at an Indian casino and found Oklahoma very kind. The last few days have been spent working on the boat and testing it on a nearby lake. The newest additions to the craft include: workable oars with bonus rowing ability, beefstick keel for extra straightness, and a bedsheet/oar sail combo for windy days. Everything has been tested but not retested and we’re doing last minute packing for an eight a.m. launch tomorrow. We chose Pig’s Eye Lake to start from, it’s below a couple of locks and we liked the name. So thank you all for your patronage of our blog and as a reward here is a video from the plains of kansas and some pictures. More updates soon, keep checking back.

Plains of Kansas

The canoe is mostly complete now and has been baptized in the waters of San Marcos. Here’s a few more pictures.

Here’s some more photos of the canoe being built. I’ll add more as I find them.