Day 25 (A day in the rain - and a lesson in the river channel)

Daily stats
Start: 6:30 AM-
Finish: 2:30 PM - Outside Greenville MS
Time: 8:00
Daily dist: 67 miles
Total dist:729 miles
Companions: None
Weather: Off and on rain becoming steady rain after 2:00

I’m currently camped out on a grassy beach just above the highway 82 bridge just outside Greenville MS. I had a little drizzle this morning but got packed up and on the water before the rains really started. After off and on showers all day it decided to really pour about an hour before I got off the water. After setting up in the rain it has pretty much been raining all evening. The weather man promises a couple hours of sunshine tomorrow before more rain after sunset so I’m going to pull off the water a bit early to try to get dried out before I get all wet again.

A rainy day on the river.

I chose this spot because 67 miles is enough for one day and for it’s probable access to a cell phone connection. I wanted the cell connection because it would allow me to post a couple blogs as well as contact people further down stream to coordinate the next few days. Towns are few and far between down here so you don’t want to pass up access to civilization when it presents itself. As I’m nearing the gulf it’s time to think about gearing up for somewhat warmer weather and the likelihood of mosquitoes. Some of tonight’s duties included coordinating a couple gear drops into Baton Rogue which is my last pre-planned stopover before I enter the gulf.

If you were to look at the river channel just north of here on a map it would stand out as an unusually straight course relative to all the twists and turns in the river around it. That is due to the work of the Army Corps of Engineers who are responsible for maintaining a navigable channel for all the commercial traffic on the Mississippi. Before they started the process of channeling the river into it’s current route it meandered wildly from year to year and season to season all over the miles-wide flood plane that surrounds it. Stories are told of people long ago setting up a homestead on the west side of the river ending up living on the east side of the river when it decided to change course and cut a new channel.

On the lower Mississippi the Corps uses two main tools (among others) in controlling the river which include wing dams (or dikes) and shore revetment (reinforcement). - Up north locks and dams are used as well - Wing dams are simply long piles of rocks designed to deflect and direct the flow of the river toward the main channel. You find them most often on the inside of bends where the flow of the river tends to slow and build up sand bars known as Towheads. They show up on the river maps as long skinny lines spaced at intervals jutting out from shore much like the bony spines of a Bluegill’s dorsal fin. Shore revetment is simply piles of rocks set along a shore to try to prevent erosion. You’ve undoubtedly seen shore lines along many high traffic or moving water areas completely lined with rocks. Most often you’ll find revetment along the outside of a bend where the scouring force of the main river flow tends to eat away at the shore line. By concentrating the scouring power of the river into one main channel it has nowhere to go but down so in the main part of the river (especially in narrow sections) the river can be hundreds of feet deep. This conveniently reduces (almost eliminates) the need for dredging to keep the river deep enough for barge traffic. Of course all a paddler needs to worry about is the top six inches.

Army Corp of Engineers working on a dike

Barges full of rocks tor dikes

The straight section I paddled through today was created by actually digging out the bank to straighten the river past some very wild curves and bends. After going through the hairpin curves up around New Madrid where you paddle nearly 20 river miles to gain two miles in the direction you want to go, one wonders why the Corps haven’t straightened out the entire river so tow traffic wouldn’t have to travel so far. I have a sense there are several reasons besides the incredible cost of such a project. One is the fact that the curves in the river create a wider flood plane between the levy system that has been built to contain it during floods. If the river had been straightened the levys would undoubtedly have been pushed much closer to the river creating a much smaller flood plane thus less capable of containing flood water and more apt to overflow its banks. Another is the speed at which the river would flow if it was mostly straight. The curves act as natural brakes to slow the river a bit making it easier for upstream tow traffic to make headway. If straightened out tows would undoubtedly have to work much harder to move upstream. A indication of this I witnessed today when (for the first time) I saw tow boats teaming up and working together to move the rafts of barges upstream along the straight section I came through earlier.

They don't always get it right. This house belongs to my friend Elmore's family it used to be 100 yards from the river until the flow was directed toward this bank.

It’s interesting (actually a little confusing) to watch the Mississippi/state boundary weave back and forth across the current river on the map. Those borders were established along the old river channel as it existed before the Corps contained the river to where it is today. It’s not unusual to see an orphaned chunk of Arkansas surrounded by miles of Mississippi state land that could only be accessed from the Arkansas side after a long boat ride or an hours long drive to the nearest bridge