1978 River trip......
Bought a photo/slide scanner recently and have been scanning old slides and pictures for my son and daughter to have...Ran across a small box of pictures from a river trip my son(age 16) and I took in June of 1978...picture quality isn't very good,we encountered several heavy rain storms the first day and my camera quit working....whatever we had the camera in, wasn't very waterproof and neither were the rainsuits we wore back then either....
My memory is getting a little blurry and I wish would have taken notes or could remember more of the little things about the 447 mile trip.... maybe with help of the pictures,I can make it interesting enough for you...
I had sold my old Warrior 16 ft bass boat(w 50hp) and bought a 14 1/2 ft Duracraft with a 35 e-rude that I could use as combo duck/bass boat a few months before the trip...it was manual crank,tiller steer engine and had a Motorguide hand held trolling motor(probably 18lbs thrust)...boat was sturdy but it was a riveted boat and couple of years after I got it,I had to take it back to Duracraft for them to tighten and re-seat all the rivets...this trip might have had a lot to do with that...
.We had spent several years hunting and fishing on the Miss. River and had talked about what a neat deal it would be to travel the 447 miles from New Orleans to Greenville,Ms.I had taken a new job as a mall manager and thought I'd probably get opportunities to manage bigger malls which would require me leaving Greenville so I decided to make the trip while i was still living there......did some research on where we could get gas along the river by asking people I knew in the towboat business...determined gas was gonna be available in Baton Rouge,Natchez,Ms. and Vicksburg,each roughly a 100 miles apart...
next step was to see how far a 6 gallon tank would take us up the river against the current.We hooked up a fresh tank in Greenville,Ms. at mouth of river and headed upstream.....48 river miles later we ran out of gas just north of Rosedale,Ms. so I carried three 6 gal. tanks along giving us a 144 mile range......
Had one of the Humminbird 100 ft flashers(depthfinder) on the boat,a flashlight and small tools.....
didn't have much money back then (3 kids at home) so we carried sleeping bags and planned to camp out on an island someplace..don't recall what we carried to eat,probably a can of Dinty Moore beef stew or something similar and i think we had a cooler with soft drinks and water...
I had a little apprehension about taking this trip because we didn't have cell phones back then and there is no place to get help along the river if you should break down...unless you ran across a commercial fisherman,the only choice you would have is to get to the bank and walk to the nearest levee which could be several miles from the river and probably some swamps or lakes to cross or get around between the river and the levee...
also a 14 1/2 ft boat isn't exactly a cabin cruiser and i knew there would be a lot of ship traffic between New Orleans and Baton rouge...but...I was younger and braver back then so this didn't stop us...
My ex-boss when I worked for the A.C.Nielson company lived in New Orleans and he invited us to roll out on the floor at his house when we got to New Orleans....we enlisted one of Mikes young friends to drive down with us and bring the truck and trailer back to Greenville. ....we left Greenville with all three of us in front seat of Toyota truck.....stopped and located exactly where to get gas in Vicksburg,Natchez and Baton Rouge on way down..some gas docks are hidden back in harbors or behind breakwaters and not easy to spot from river so it makes it lot easier if you know where they are located beforehand...we also found a place we could launch the next morning in New Orleans before we went to my buddies house in New Orleans that night....
It was just breaking day at 6:00 a.m when we launched across river from New Orleans...there was a long breakwater just north of the launch ramp and we cranked up and ran around it,entered the river and headed upstream..we had traveled maybe a mile upstream and I saw the biggest boat I had ever seen up close coming down the river....and couple minutes later saw a huge wave headed toward us...I had ridden over some big waves from a ship in Houston ship channel some years before in a small boat so I didn't panic but I was highly concerned until we got up and over that wave....we encountered several more similar waves from passing ships and it's kind of a scary thrill to climb over one of those waves in a small boat plus you have to angle your boat just right crossing the trough to keep from sticking the nose in the next wave and swamping the boat....
We encountered a lot of commercial boat traffic between New Orleans and Baton Rouge...the entire river bank is lined with chemical plants, refineries or grain loading operations...The river was dirty looking and the smell from the plants and river was pretty bad...they didn't call this stretch of river "cancer alley" for nothing...
I believe we got to Baton Rouge a little before noon..Top speed on my boat was a little over 30 mph and i tried to cruise at 26-27 mph... I was going upstream against probably 2-3 mph current plus there was so much commercial traffic and waves we had to slow down a lot.....soon as we gassed up,dark clouds started rolling in and just north of Baton Rouge we started hitting one rain storm after another...on the plus side, just a few miles upriver the boat traffic dropped dramatically and once we got maybe 10 miles further up the river,all we would see is an occasional commercial fisherman and towboat...Several times during the afternoon,we had to stop and just idle along because of heavy rain...
we had picked June because river is typically high during that month...little bit of a disadvantage in that you may have a little stronger current but the water is high enough you don't have to worry about running over rock dikes if you get out of the main channel...also you can cut the corners on some of the wide sweeping bends in the river and save substantial running time.....
The rain let up in late afternoon but I was pretty sure everything we had,if it wasn't wet,it was probably damp so the idea of camping out didn't seem like a good one... I made the decision to to continue running until we got to Natchez and get a motel,hot meal and shower....
We pulled into the Natchez boat store at 8:00 after 14 hours on the water and 269 miles behind us...after tieing the boat off and getting permission to leave it there,we called a cab that took us to the Holiday Inn....called home and let my wife know we were off river....those were the days you had to call collect and Ma Bell would gouge you on long distance calls...after a quick hot shower we headed to the motel restaurant to eat...I don't remember what we ate but i do remember seeing Mike almost falling asleep while he was eating...
after gassing up at boat store,we left early the next morning and headed north again...sky was cloudy but thankfully no rain....80 miles upriver, we stopped at another boat store in Vicksburg for gas...these boat stores existed to serve the towboats coming up and down river...they typically had large cabin type aluminum boats and a towboat would radio an order in for food and supplies and the crewboat would meet them in mid river with their order...at the time most of the boat stores also had gas pumps but not any more and probably due to EPA restrictions...according to Quimby river guide,the only places gas is available between St.Louis and New Orleans now, is 27 miles south of St.Louis at Hoppies and yacht club in Greenville,Miss.
We also called home(collect again) and told them we thought we would arrive in Greenville late afternoon....my parents who were retired and lived on Toledo Bend had come to visit and be there for end of our trip. my Dad wanted to come to the Miss. River bridge just south of Greenville to take pictures as we approached from downriver. ...Late afternoon, we arrived at the bridge and my dad took the pictures of the boat approaching from downriver....after a short visit,we continued on..it was another 15 miles or so upriver then we had to enter Lake Ferguson and run up to the city front/launch ramp area...Dad was able to go to my house,swap vehicles and meet us at ramp with trailer....
...I sent these pictures to my son the other day and his first comment was..."Dad-that sure was a small boat" and I suppose it was but it didn't seem that small at the time... Both my son and I have had that trip on our "I did this one time list" for 33 years and that's worth a lot...
