The Mississippi Trip

We apologize for the long interval between this and the last update, but hopefully all the pictures will make up for it. We’re writing this from the Memphis Metal Museum, a small, one of a kind metal arts community and museum right on the banks of the river. It’s a beautiful place with kind people. And we have to give many thanks to our new friend Lauren for driving us over here and introducing us to everyone. We made it to the city last night, stashed the canoe in a super secret hidden location and hiked along the woods, fields, factories and highways for a few hours until we reached Beale St. It was very reminisent of 6th street with all the bars, people, and music that go along with it. We had a great time, got some food and met many interesting people, including a lively troop of actors from Knoxville. It got to be too late to trek back to the boat so we stayed in a motel and finally got clean and slept in real beds. What a night! It’s fascinating to come off the river into such massive structures and human activity.

We miss all of you, and we especially want to say “I love you” to our beautiful lady friends. We’ve paddled well over halfway and soon we’ll all be together for the holidays eating Zac’s “pasta of love”… right Zac? Deep Peace to all

We made it to St. Louis! Not quite half way yet, but close. We came in at about six yesterday evening and met up with our good friend John. Kent worked out a deal with a shady barge dock to tie the boat up overnight, we paid by the foot. St. Louis is a huge city with quite an impressive arch inside of it. We spent the night walking all over the town and seeing as much as we could. And now to back track. The past week has gone well. We met some new friends from Illinois who kindly offered us beer and pizza, and even towed the canoe a couple of miles down river to a sand bar. It was interesting to actually be causing wake instead of trying to navigate through it. We made our first fifty mile day- sixty is next. Unfortunately, no pictures this post, as Kent’s camera has gotten a bit wet and currently isn’t working. In place of visuals, here is a rough draft of our ideal canoe mix tape. And it must be a tape, as a cassette player and mini disc recorder is all we have available.

1. Keep On Rocking In The Free World -  Neil Young
2. The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down - The Band
3. Born On A Bayou - Creedence Clearwater Revival
4. War Pigs - Black Sabbath
5. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
6. Life In The Fast Lane - Don Henley?
7. Whip It - Devo
8. Immigrant Song - Led Zepplin
9. Once In a Lifetime - Talking Heads

If you have a way to get these songs on tape, or you’d like to make your own mix tape for us, we’ll try to find the address of a small town post office down river and put it in the next post. So, now that we’ve been refreshed and cleaned in St. Louis, it’s time to move on. We miss all of you and hope all is well.

Hello Friends, Family, and Internet Surfers,
We’re writing you from Muscatine, Iowa with high spirits and all of you on our minds.  Today marks the beginning of our third week on the river and we’ve been blessed with some stronger bodies and faster currents.  We’re averaging about 35 miles a day now.  The library is about to close so I won’t write too much- but mainly we want to say that we’re feeling strong and thinking of all of you warmly.  Speaking of temperatures, we heard it will get cold next week and then this trip will officially be a winter adventure.  We’ll write again soon.

With Love and Respect,

Kent and Chris