For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to travel down the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans in a houseboat. The older I got the further up my bucket list it traveled.
The desire didn’t come from reading Mark Twain, although doing so added fuel to the fire. Rather, the idea came from always having a boat; and always having the freedom that boat represented.
A couple of weeks ago, my dream of puttering down the Mississippi River to New Orleans took a giant step forward when I was introduced to The Shine On of the Port of Winona.
The Shine On, docked, from the stern.
The Shine On, docked, from the bow.
The Shine On, docked, starboard side.
The Shine On, cabin interior (partial).
The Shine On is a 1960 Whitcraft steel hull houseboat built in Winona, MN. I spent more than five hours on her with Steve, my Chinese medicine doctor; Dick one of his oldest friends; Catherine, his companion; Will, her son; and Mark, the boat’s owner and Dick’s son in law puttering just south of Lock and Dam No. 5 to Fountain City, WI and back.
I grew up with boats, but they were both on a lake I knew intimately. Rivers—and especially working rivers like the Mississippi—are completely different.
River navigation is easy in the main channel; just stay between the markers. But back water river navigation is where things get fun. I learned about how to spot wing dams and that the Mississippi’s back channels change every year. Landing and docking is also more of a challenge: The boat’s much bigger, and there are river currents and usually wind with which to contend.
Then there are closing dams, bank protection devices, sandbars, driftwood, barge wakes, and weird waves produced when the wind blows up-current.
The part of the upper Mississippi around Winona is quite shallow—about nine feet deep, requiring dredging annually—and The Shine On is the perfect river boat, drawing only 12 inches of water. The Shine On’s original big Chrysler twin inboards have long ago been replaced, currently with a 90 horsepower Mariner. It’s enough to putter—even upstream—at about a third of full trottle.
The best part of The Shine On is that it’s pure river rat. To get to her slip you have to crawl on top of an old picnic table that holds up the end of the first section of dock, across two more shaky sections of dock to get to the stable dock that’s actually in the water. No shore power, water, or dumping station. It couldn’t be more perfect, and at a slip fee of US$400 per year just south of Lock and Dam 5, it really couldn’t be better. The Shine On even has a salvaged fiberglass flybridge salvaged from a 1970s or 1980s fiberglass monstrosity.
The Shine On, docked..
I’ve already got the US Army Corps of Engineers’ navigation charts for the Upper Mississippi River and Mississippi River Navigation Book loaded on my iPad.
I spent every summer growing up with my maternal grandparents. Weekends, summer holidays, and long stretches were spent at their cottage on Lake Sallie in Shoreham, MN, 10 miles or so southwest of Detroit Lakes. Lake Sallie was in the middle of the Pelican River chain of lakes. It was possible to take a boat from Big Detroit Lake to Little Detroit Lake to Lake Sallie to Lake Melissa. I only did it once, but that once was enough to give me the bug.
Before my time, there were a series of locks and dams connecting the lakes, and steamboats brought tourists from all over (and locals) from Detroit Lakes to the two big dance halls in Shoreham. By the time I can remember, the dance halls were gone from Shoreham and all that was left was Mussie & Jimmie’s drive-in (now the restored Hotel Shoreham); Conrad Ohm’s store, campground, and resort (now a single residence); Louis Lynch’s store (now a women’s boutique); the Shoreham Chapel; Tom and Rick Lynch’s Standard gas station (now the office of the Lakes Melissa + Sallie Improvement Association); and Wally’s bait shop and boat rental on the channel between Lakes Sallie and Melissa (now part of a private residence). I remember Shoreham and especially Lake Sallie as paradise.
I knew every inch of Lakes Sallie and Melissa; less so of Big and Little Detroit. My wife, Karen, and I spent our 30th wedding anniversary on Big Detroit Lake last year. Shoreham has changed quite a bit as the cottages are slowly replaced with estates, but what few people know is that every lake property in Shoreham has a deed restriction guaranteeing common access to the lakes in perpetuity.
As soon as I was old enough to reach both oars of my grandpa’s Ole Lind fishing boat, I was allowed to row anywhere I had the stamina to reach. Ole Lind was known for crafting fine, but heavy, wooden boats so for the first few years I rarely made it out of eyeshot of our dock. But by the time I was 10 I was rowing all across Lake Sallie. I think it was when I was 11, I was allowed to run the 20 horsepower outboard and off I went; that boat and I were joined. A few years later my grandparents bought us a 14-foot fiberglass Silverline runabout with a 50 horsepower Mercury outboard (back when they were still white) to use as a ski boat. I lived in that boat and a few years later we got a new Mercury outboard (a black one). So I was hooked on boats and boat life early on.
I’ve had the boat bug for a very long time. I used to sit in my grandpa’s lap and study charts of the local lakes, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River. Once I learned I could take a boat through the channel and drag it over what was left of the old dam (or get Wally to pull out the planks) into the next lake, I knew I could probably get anywhere in a boat, and I was hopelessly hooked.
There’s lots of logistics in planning this trip down the Mississippi and I plan on writing a couple more articles about that and then moving these to a separate publication to document my planning for the trip and the trip itself. Original plans were to depart from just south of Lock and Dam 5 in the spring of 2013 in order to make it to New Orleans in time for the 2013 Jazz & Heritage Festival. That’s turned out to be overly optimistic, time-wise, so plans are now to get to New Orleans when we get there.
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