If you’ve ever had Huckleberry Finn fantasies of floating down the Mississippi River, have we got a trip idea for you! Nothing so rustic as a raft, but a houseboat. A kitchen, fridge, and sleeping quarters with room enough for a group of friends. A journey at your own pace and in your chosen direction at any given moment—because you’re the captain.
Have you got boat experience? Ever steered a boat? Have you seen one navigated on TV? It doesn’t matter. This houseboat rental with S&S Boats in Lansing, Iowa, offers you a chance to add some sailing experience to your resume. That may sound a little crazy, but it really isn’t.
Setting Sail
To be clear, the sailing area is confined to the main channel of the river; you won’t be poking in and out of backwaters of unknown depths and dead ends. Some islands and sand bars just outside that channel are also open for putting the boat in for a little beach time. For three days, my wife and I and four friends are sailing in Pool 9, the region between Lock and Dam 8 at Genoa, Wisconsin, and Lock and Dam 9 in Lynxville, Wisconsin, a 31-mile stretch of river. Thanks to a crew of 800-plus local volunteers, it is considered the best-maintained pool in the region. The team collects hundreds of pounds of trash each year and provides fire rings at numerous landing sites along the channel.
Everyone in the group takes part in a morning training lasting about an hour, which is followed by a bit of sailing under the instructor’s supervision to make sure we have it down. How to steer, monitor speed, dock, and even run it up onto a beach for the night. Plus all the matters of safety and communication, electricity, engines and generators, and how to conserve battery energy for the night. And if something has us completely stymied, we can call in the cavalry—the company sends someone on a fast boat to help sort out any problem.
Plus, there’s insurance, and we have a deductible if we do something wrong. The biggest threat, albeit easily avoided, is running across a wing dam. These long, submerged obstructions run perpendicular to the banks and constrict the mighty river’s flow to increase the current in the main channel. But the rule is to stay in the channel. The river’s buoy system makes that easy and keeps us off these wing dams. Green squarish barrels mark the west side of the river, while red crayon-tip buoys mark the east. Stay between them, and there is nothing to fear. Many of the buoys, but not all, mark wing dams, and not all wing dams are marked. So it’s best to follow that channel rule.
Our last test with the instructor was a beach landing. We headed into the shallows in a direction perpendicular to the channel, only turning upriver at a 45-degree angle when close to shore. Then, using just one engine opposite the shoreside and a rudder turned hard to shore, Karl, our elected captain for the test, slowly coaxes the bow into the sand and turns the boat back to the perpendicular angle while we hop onto shore to plant anchors in the sand for a potential picnic or a night’s stay.
With all the preparation, warnings, and safety instructions, you may ask, “Is it relaxing?” Absolutely—for the most part. When you spot a river barge coming along, slow, steady, and unbudgeable, you need to pay attention. The barge captain, if necessary, will let you know where to go: one horn blast, go to your—not the barge’s—port (left); two blasts, steer to your starboard (right); five blasts means “What the devil are you doing? Get out of the way.” Not a desirable message. But these massive barges are slow and methodical compared even to the modest speed of the houseboat, so they are easily avoided and anticipated—even when they are coming around a bend. In this case, you could merely wait. But if you do decide to pass them on a curve, you need to be sure to go wide on the inside of their turn. The few times our houseboat met barges, we waited to pass on a wide straightaway. Easy peasy.
And sometimes, your boat is the bigger boat. Even as we take our first training run, a fishing boat crosses our path as if we were invisible. Our instructor tells Capt. Karl to give the horn five blasts, then he steps out on the front deck, arms crossed and unsmiling, giving the fisherman the river stink-eye.
The Beauty of the River
Don’t let all the technical aspects scare you off. This is a relaxing trip through a very special environment. The bluffs along here are extraordinary, rising up 300 to 400 feet, showing green but with some cliffs that reveal sedimentary stone from ancient seas that have been carved away by glacial meltwater during the Ice Age.
Eagles appear regularly in trees along the shore or circling overhead. We watch as one swoops down and attacks another, perhaps arguing over fishing territory. Pelicans, large and prehistoric, circle overhead and gather in large groups near the shore. The occasional crane croaks in the distance, and a heron fishes close to shore. Cormorants clear out of the way, flapping hard on their long takeoffs across the surface of the water.
The boat has a Bluetooth sound system, and we can sit around a bar under a canopy on the upper deck. There’s a water slide off the back with an attaching hose to make it slick for launching passengers into the drink, presumably an entertaining alternative to walking the plank.
In the evening, we enjoy sundowners up top. Out on the front deck, we fire up the grill to cook some beautiful Iowa steaks (which we had acquired after hours, thanks to a local butcher’s meat vending machine). Far from interfering with city lights, we get a full view of the starry sky and the Milky Way. We lay out on deck chairs to watch for meteorites and passing satellites.
We could return to the dock for the night, but we opt to run the boat up onto the sand of an unoccupied island and anchor it in place. As we drift off to sleep, the boat rocks gently as a barge passes somewhere out there in the dark.
An early riser myself, I head to the upper deck for the sunrise. The bluffs are hidden, and morning mists drift and billow like clouds falling from the sky. The white world begins to blush with the gathering light until the sun appears a deep, warm orange. A large fish leaps out of the water as if on cue, and an eagle flies past right overhead; at some point, we just lose count of them. There just isn’t a more beautiful and intimate way to experience the Mississippi.
