River and Bayou

Today was one for the ages.

We had breakfast, packed up, and were on the road shortly after 8 AM. What should have been an uneventful hour drive from Fort Pillow to the Boat Ramp turned into two and a half hours – mostly because I can’t read my own directions and, worse, because I clearly can’t drive anymore.

First, we got lost. I checked Google Maps last night and wrote the directions to the boat ramp down on in my memo book. One of the turns I needed to make was on a road that looked in my scribbled handwriting like ‘something’ Webb Road. Unfortunately, there were three roads called “something” Webb – Dean Webb Road, Agnes Webb Road, and Robert Webb Road. Obviously, the Webbs were important people in these parts back in the day. So, long story short, we got lost.

By this time, Gloria broke out her phone and turned on the GPS directions. So it didn’t take too long to get heading in the right direction. Now, despite the great turn-by-turn directions GPS was providing, as we neared the boat ramp, I didn’t believe it – preferring my scribbled notes to the state of the art traveling technology. So, you guessed it, I made another wrong turn.

When it became obvious I needed to turn around, well, Mister-too-lazy-to-turn-around-and-look-behind-me chose to rely on the rented car’s back up camera instead. And when I tried to do a three point turn on the narrow road, well, I backed right up into a ditch. One tire deep in the ditch, one tire hanging in the air, one tire barely on the asphalt, and one tire about ready to complete the disaster and slide into the deep ditch with it’s partner. Ugh!

Fortunately, we had one bar cell service and called a tow. But they were on another job and it would be awhile. So here we were – a hot Sunday morning, out in the middle of nowhere, no trees for shade, hot sun blazing down on us, and our hopes invested in a small town Tennessee tow truck operator thirty minutes away.

But then as happens so often on these adventures of mine, good people and God intervene. And, in this case, it was Dave and Kay Freeman. They just happened to be driving by in their pickup, had a chain in the back, and were able to pull the car out undamaged quicker than you can say, “Thanks. You saved our day.”

After saying thanks and goodbye to the Freemans, we got the car pointed in the right direction and were at the boat ramp in less than ten minutes. Gloria helped me move the canoe and the gear to the bottom of the ramp, where I loaded it all up, and was on way paddling downstream by 1:30 PM,

I had barely waved goodbye to Gloria when the first wave of mild nausea hit. I think all the work loading the canoe in the hot sun gave me a mild case of sun stroke. I drank about a liter of water and paddled on, hoping that would help. No joy. After about 45 minutes, I finally pulled over onto a sandy beach, took a 15 minute break, and immediately felt better.

Anyway, made over 15 miles today with only one more scary moment.

In order to divert slow moving water into the shipping channel (where that water flows faster and helps keep the channel clear), the Corp of Engineers have built thousand of dikes and low dams that extend from shore to near the channel. When the water level is higher than the level of those dikes, it flows over them. And if the water level is just a bit higher than the dikes, it creates chaotic rapids and turbulence at them. A paddler can hear the sound of those rapids a mile away. This being my first day on the River, I didn’t recognize that sound. And didn’t know, that unless I got out into the channel, I was standing into danger. Anyway, long story short, some hard paddling and lucking into a helpful eddy kept disaster at bay.

Anyway, it’s 6:30 PM and I’m camping in a bit of sandy shoreline under some shade trees. The canoe is tied up along the shore where all the waves from every passing barge can slap hard against it. But I’m too tired to unload the canoe and move it up onto the beach, so that’s where it’s going to stay tonight. It’s been a long day and all I want to do is crawl into my tent and sleep.