
“The Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world–four thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, […]
Farewell
Have the BarrelRaftBoys made their final destination or have they failed to raft from Minnesota to New Orleans? We’re There! Rafting the last 20 miles of the river and through a 5 mile canal to Lake Pontchartrain, we faced every river challenge on the last day: heat, traffic, lock, draw bridge, rain and wake. […]
Cliffhanger

Pulled our raft over in the INDUSTRIAL section of the Mississippi River at mile 115, hiked up the levee wall and down the street to a truck stop to grab some real food: fried chicken and potato wedges 🙂 Hundreds of barges, a bunch of ocean liners, 3:00 storm and a wakey river challenged us […]
Fried Chicken at a Truck Stop

Thank our lucky stars and the prayers from our followers, last night ALMOST proved to be our last. Rafting past mile 185 last night, we decided to camp on a bank just south of hundreds of parked barge containers. Pulling up to shore just after the rocky levee wall, we jumped out to anchor and found […]
What’s an Adventure without Danger? -a Vacation

Been on the river so long we are all going crazy! Skinny, sunburned, koo-koo and straight-up rugged at this point in the journey, we are in Cajun Country now. Rainbow during a quick moving storm, we pushed right on through it to make it to an island for camping. Sunsets seem to be more brilliant after […]
Left MN with 2, entered LA with 3

After Vicksburg was the town of Natchez, Mississippi where we had to pull over to refill our fuel for the 130 mile void to Baton Rouge. As we pulled ashore, a young man waved me down and said he saw us from the bridge. With mainly barges using this portion of the river, a barrel […]
Natchez, MS

After 1,400 miles, 10 states and almost 8 weeks of living on our little raft, we are close enough to finally start counting down! In less than a week we will be arriving in New Orleans, which has been our ultimate goal since we started this journey. A month ago, we were at Lindsey Park Yacht […]
So close we can smell it!

For over a week, the boys have been experience the South’s Hot August weather. With the lows at night in the 80’s and highs during the day near 95 degrees, us northerners aren’t used to the heat. We both have agreed that we take air conditioning for granted. Dripping sweat from 10am to 8pm, taking breaks to […]
Wishing We Could Do an Ice Bucket Challenge

So-long upper Mississippi River, rafting past the last mile marker: 0.8 we’ve joined up with the large Ohio River. The confluence has tons of commercial traffic and industrial areas as this fork in the river connects 15 States. Discovering that the Ohio River accounts for 75% of the rivers’ water outflow, we assumed this would increase our […]
Sunsets, Birds, Arcus Cloud, Heat Wave and a ...

Sleeping on a sand island just north of Cairo, IL the boys are saying goodbye to the Upper Mississippi today. When the Ohio River joins up with the Mississippi, we switch over navigational books and restart milage indicators. 958 miles lay ahead, snaking and bending its way through Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. **Since […]