[BananaTom]

A buddy of mine from from Butte LaRose that I met on Houseboat Magazine forum bought a houseboat in Evansville and came down the Mississippi. He posted for abought a year during his shopping and dreaming of this trip. Once he was on his trip, we all wondered about him. Long after he was to return he started posting about this adventure.

He wrote one heck of a story about this trip. It was such a heck of a story of the trip, that Houseboat Magazine published it. It took 4 months of publications to tell the whole story, as it was so long.

Everyone loves this story, as written by Ted Shelton, aka Ted655. I wish to share this story with this forum. I will post it in sections over a period of time, as Ted did. This was his first post to a thread looking for him since he was over due to return to the fourm as follows:


Summer of 2007

Sorry all. We got home & had no Internet. Levees, lines, digging, USC of Engineers. Oh what a mess it's been. Finally managed to get dial-up, still no DSL Anyhow, what an adventure! Not just the actual trip but the total experience. Shyster marina personnel, crooked transporter, thieves in motel rooms and more! Even a mutiny on board! Huck & Jim had nothing on our river adventure. Yes Virginia, there are STILL pirates on the Mississippi & Ohio. We managed to escape with our lives but not our moneys. We would do it again tomorrow, what a blast we had.

I don't want to bore anyone, as the trip has been done by many but I urge all who can to make the trip.

We had heard many warnings & been told a few myths about the lower Mississippi. At no time did we feel in danger or even have a close call.
Here are some figures; Total time on rivers was 12 days (2 spent at Memphis marina). We traveled only during daylight, average 12 hrs a day. The diesel got 4 MPG. We averaged 8 mph. on the Ohio (little current). We averaged 10 mph on the Miss.

We were SO bad at the first lock we never did get a rope around a bollard. The lockmaster just lowered the level & let us go. By the 2nd lock we had it together and by the 3rd. we were old hands. The rope/pvc pipe towline worked like a dream!!! Found out the hard way... there is no recreational fuel in Paducah. People there are NOT friendly (with 1 exception). Paducah was the worst experience of the whole endeavor.

We learned that Cairo is pronounced Karo (like the syrup) and not Cairo, like in Egypt. They also will not give a recreational boater the time of day but are more polite about it than Paducah. Greenville has brand new marina and were nice & fair to deal with.

There is much to recount about a lot of things. I learned the difference between a lake boat & a "travlin" boat
Yipes! I better shut up now. Thanks for the concern, we are well & pleased we "did it".

Post script; We were here only a week & the Corps of Engineers drained our swamp. The Merrybobber sits high & dry on a mud bank until December. We "walk" to her to check on her.