Day 24: yes, we are on an adventure

The crew woke up around six a.m. to prep the boat for potential buyers of Ole' Cat Sass. She was looking fine by 8:30 after some sweeping and organizing. We had a couple interested parties lined up in Baton Rouge and we had told them to meet us at the Baton Rouge boat ramp. With only a few days left to sell the boat we were not optimistic about getting the price we felt Cat Sass deserved and anxious about what would happen if she did not sell at all. First to arrive was Mike, a retired fire fighter from New Orleans, and his son. Mike had told us he had plans to use Cat Sass for a trip on the upper Mississippi, so we hoped to sell it to him. We took them for a spin and appearing to approve of the boat, Mike said he would do some thinking and get back to us. With high hopes we awaited the second pontoon enthusiast, however the timing did not workout and we had to continue on to New Orleans before we had a chance to show him the boat. Despite the bad news, we continued on our way south in good spirits. An hour or two down the river, as I (River Hair) piloted the boat, my phone began to ring. I slowed the boat so I could hear above the engine and paused the blasting music, expecting it to be someone interested in Cat Sass as I'd been receiving calls about the boat. However, the voice on the other end said something like, "you guys are in the pontoon south of the white steam ship, right?" Confused but intrigued, I replied that we were. It turned out that he worked on the steam ship that gave people rides up and down the Mississippi and was friends with Layne (administrator of Mississippi Paddlers group mentioned in previous blog posts). He had seen Layne's posting about our boat and trip in the group and then looked out from the steam ship and saw Cat Sass. He gave us advice to visit the Nottaway plantation house a few miles down (oldest existing antebellum plantation house in the South) and he spoke to the captain of his ship who gave us a location he believed we could dock for the night at our destination, Luling. This is another example of the incredible kindness from strangers that we have received on our way down the river. We pulled up to the levy at Nottaway and walked around the plantation that was now a resort. Our new friend on the steam boat sent us a picture of Cat Sass in front of the white mansion. 

Our next stop on the river was in the town of Donaldsonville. We stopped to refuel and Crimper, Grommeter, and I went ashore in search of food and drink. After finding nothing but a small fried chicken shack, Grommeter returned to shore. Crimper and I kept searching, but finding nothing we returned to the chicken shack. We ordered one lunch meal and talked with the window attendant at the shack. He offered us snowballs (like snow cones) while we waited outside the window of the hot shack. When the chicken arrived we realized that they didn't accept card (although it said they did on the window) and we had no cash. They offered to drive one of us to the nearest ATM, so Clement hopped in the car and the man backed out of the shack driveway. He immediately drove forward and into the path of a fast moving pickup truck that had to swerve onto the grass to avoid collision. 

"Oh shit," the driver said, nonplussed. 

Without stopping the car or slowing down, he pointed at the pickup driver and nodded. After some angry honking, they were off. Loud Dirty South hip hop blasted on the not inconsiderable subwoofers of the car, until track 8 on the CD, which started to skip. Every time the car went over a bump, the track skipped to a section in the song where someone yelled "Bullshit!" until Clement changed the track. 

I stayed and chatted with the restaurant attendant and ordered more snowballs for dockenstein and gromiter back on the boat. Clement returned after a short while and we headed back over the levy, snowballs in hand. Grommeter and Dockenstein scolded us for taking 45 minutes, which we believe is an exaggeration. A few days earlier, after Layne (mentioned above) posted about our trip in the Paddlers group I'd gotten a facebook message from a man named A.J. who was a member of the group and lived between Baton Rouge and New Orleans on the river. A.J. gave me information on docking in New Orleans. We did not know until he told us that we would need to lock through to a channel that fed into Lake Pontchartrain as there was no mooring on the Mississippi in the city. He also put us in touch with a woman named Trixie. She lived with her husband in Paulina, Louisiana, a small town on the shore of the Mississippi. Trixie offered us, over facebook, any assistance we needed and a place to dock over night. There are no good places to dock on the section of river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, so we were very happy that A.J. had put us in contact with Trixie. We highly recommend, for anyone planning on doing a similar trip, getting in contact with the Mississippi Paddlers group on Facebook. We discovered there is a whole network of kind people willing to help travelers on the river and we wish we had know about it earlier. Earlier that day, the boat had been faced with the decision of stopping due to darkness and waking up four a.m. in order to reach Dockenstein's bus in New Orleans, or going for another few hours in darkness and waking up at a more reasonable hour to complete our journey. We chose the former (no, we didn't make Dockenstein take a bus because that wouldn't be a very nice thing to do), meaning we wouldn't be able to stay at Trixie's as we needed to make it farther south. We did however ask if they could help us get more gas as we wanted to travel fast to minimize time on the river after darkness. When we pulled up to the side of the river at Trixie's dock, Wayne (Trixie's husband) and his brother awaited us on golf carts. After meeting the brothers, Crimper and I hopped on the golf carts, loaded with gas cans, while Dockenstein and Grommeter hung out on Cat Sass.

We rode the carts back to Wayne's house and moved into his pickup truck to drive to the gas station. We chatted with Wayne and his brother during the ten minute ride to the stations. Their strong Louisiana accents (or our inability to understand accents outside our own) made it difficult to have a conversation, but both parties wanted to and tried. They had been born in Paulina and had lived there for 70 years. Surrounding Wayne's house were the houses of numerous family members, which he pointed out as we drove by. Wayne had 12 siblings. His father, who it seemed was the patriarch of Paulina, had over 300 descendants (12 children, 77 grandchildren, over 200 great grandchildren). The city of Paulina used to be mostly sugarcane farmland and Wayne and his brother had watched its transformation into a suburb. 

Meanwhile, back at the boat, Grommeter and Dockenstein met a series of interested passersby, all riding golf carts, including an older gent who described the town as "golf cart heaven" because of all its trails. Shortly thereafter a woman and several children pulled up on another golf cart. Though Grommeter and Dockenstein couldn't hear the details of the conversation between the woman and the older man, the Car Sassers were privy to a simmering tension between the two. The man soon scooted away to watch a baseball game. The woman's husband arrived, and the couple and the assembled children questioned the Cat Sassers about their boat-living situation for a few minutes. 

"Are you on an adventure?" one girl asked as the woman motored away. 

The Cat Sassers confirmed that they were.

Soon the gasmen returned. We loaded the gas cans back on Cat Sass, said goodbye to Wayne and his brother, and we were back on the river. The section of river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is known as Cancer Alley, due to clusters of cancer patients that have been covered by the media in the area (in one case 15 cancer cases within two blocks). The area has sections lined with industrial plants and was formerly called petrochemical corridor. We were the only recreational boat on the water for obvious reasons. As we had continued south on the river we were constantly warned about this area due to the huge barges and numerous cargo ships. We started seeing cargo ships once we had reached Baton Rouge. We ended up navigating the most dense industrial sections well after sunset, meaning that the lights on the factories lit the sides of the river brightly. The lights on the plants look like scary miniature city skyline at night. It kind of looked like Mordor. 

At one point we passed a massive tower with a huge burning gas flame at the top. The air reeked of burning chemicals so we covered our mouths with our shirts in desperation. During this very surreal and stunning section of river, we were also all in edge as we navigated around barges and cargo ships. Crimper was at the wheel, and the rest of us rotated between using the spotlight, navigating and eating dinner (this also was convenient as we only had one clean fork). Barges are especially difficult to see at night as they are low in the water and blend in with the sides of the river. The only way to see if them is by searching for their green and red navigations lights and determining their direction from the orientation of the lights. After a stressful few hours we tied up at the bank of the river near a bridge and crashed at the Ramada Inn for our first night on beds in weeks (thanks to Father Gelly for the bed funding).