In 2008, the voyageuses cast off from St. Paul for “somewhere in Iowa” to continue south along the river — yes — but also because “it’s where Anne lived.”

Before paddling out of the cities, though, we must stop, and highly recommend to you, reader, the Mississippi River Gorge. Located between Minneapolis and St. Paul, it’s one of the river’s true beauty spots, and so close by, there’s no excuse you shouldn’t see it.

And you can see it without a canoe. Just pay the admission fee to enter the Science Museum of Minnesota, 120 Kellogg Boulevard West, in downtown St. Paul. There, in the lobby is the Mississippi River Visitor Center. Most Americans don’t know that just as the U.S. has national parks, it also has national seashores, and national rivers. The Mississippi River, through the Twin Cities, is officially named “The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area,” meaning it’s a kid brother to Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Glacier National Parks. You’ll even see rangers on duty with the famous Smokey-the-Bear hats.

The always vigilant ladies had little time for gawking at scenery, for danger lay just ahead, danger that would be with them all the way to St. Louis: locks and dams.

Before 1930, the Upper Mississippi, the river from Lake Itasca to Cairo, Illinois, was free-flowing. Nearly every spring, it predictably flooded, bringing destruction to nearby cities and farms, cutting new channels, and reducing the depth of the water to less than a foot at many points. Navigation by even the smallest boats was impossible.

Also in 1930, Congress mandated the Army Corps of Engineers to design and build a 9-foot-deep navigation channel (minimum clearance depth for loaded barges), the entire length of the upper river. The plan called for 29 locks and dams financed through the Works Public Administration. A “pool” was created between each of the dams to float the barges, and locks allowed them to bypass dams. The Corps, who maintain the water level in each pool to this day, do so by opening flood gates when required. These same locks and dams, now nearing 90 years old, ensure Iowa’s corn and soybeans can be exported worldwide at competitive prices.

Even locks and dams are no guarantee the crops can ride the river to New Orleans every year. In 2023, a year of drought, there wasn’t enough water in the upper river and barge traffic was severely curtailed. Barges couldn’t be loaded to capacity and fewer barges could move as the size of the shipping channel was greatly reduced. Rates to ship corn and beans went up more than 75%. With all the rain so far in 2024, barge lines are warning they may not be able to operate normally this harvest season due to too much water in the river. Too little, too much: this is the real story of a river that’s been the subject of endless tampering.

In making the river usable by barges, little thought was given to using it for recreation. Are you surprised, reader, that a canoe with three middle-aged ladies aboard has as much legal right to use a Mississippi River lock as a fully-loaded, 195-foot by 35-foot river barge?

As the stalwart canoeists approached their first lock in St. Paul Anne Sherve-Ose recalled, “We’d read the little mariner’s guide about lock safety and felt we were prepared to meet the challenge.”

What could go wrong?

Neither the manual nor the unsuspecting mariners took into account the power of poor communication. We won’t recount every detail of the incident here, but the canoes were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and could have been quickly sucked to the bottom of the giant lock as millions of gallons of water rapidly drained away. They would have been helpless in the giant, swirling whirlpool. A life-saving, split-second decision was made to back-paddle out of the lock.

The lesson? Danger is always looking for canoes on the Great River.

Subsequent trips through locks were more routine and became almost boring compared to their first experience.

Sherve-Ose wrote, “After the first couple locks, approaching and going through them became less enjoyable because it’s a time-consuming process. In addition, water in the locks is particularly bad; scummy and stinky, with lots of floating garbage.”

In addition to locks and dams, canoeists on the Mississippi must contend with wing dams. Little more than long piles of rocks extending into the river, they aid in flood, erosion and current control. In times of high water, wing dams are submerged and mostly invisible; in low water, the dams rise several feet above the surface. Regardless, they can be deadly to small boats.

“… They (wing dams) wreak havoc on canoeists, particularly those as oblivious to their existence as we were. All we knew was, every now and then, the surface of the river would boil and swirl, creating cyclonic action that looked like giant bathtub drains. I hate to think how many times we nearly met our demises in the early years. By the end of the trip I was paranoid about wing dams, to the extent my ‘mates teased me about it …” Sherve-Ose observed.

Leaving St. Paul in 2008, they paddled to Brownsville, Minnesota. Along the way, they passed Minnesota river towns with much to offer travelers in canoes, or otherwise. Red Wing, named for a Dakota Indian chief, is home to Red Wing Pottery, Red Wing Shoes, and the beautifully-restored 1904 Sheldon Theatre. It’s as charming as river towns get.

Next, like a string of pearls, come Lake City, Wabasha, and Winona, Minnesota, and lovely La Crosse, Wisconsin. All offer visitors memorable summer days on, or near, the river, and one of the continent’s finest displays of autumn color. Readers of a certain age will remember a beer “brewed in the land of sky blue waters,” or another hailing from “God’s country,” aka La Crosse. And that trim Indian maiden, who once beckoned you to buy her butter from the dairy case at Fareway? All these and many, many more good things, come from this stretch of the great river.

Calling on her knowledge of native American tradition, Deb Lennox-White began each year by sprinkling tobacco on the water and saying an Ojibwe prayer for safe travel. And, as things developed, the three intrepid ladies would need all the protection they could get in the flood year of 2011, traveling from Dallas City, Illinois, to St. Charles, Missouri, near St. Louis.

Flooding is common on the Mississippi, but in 2011, many records fell. Above-normal snowfall in the winter of 2010-11, and above-normal rainfall all spring meant the river was running high as the voyageuses put their canoe to water that June.

At Fort Madison, there was so little clearance under the Santa Fe Railway bridge, Sherve-Ose remembered, “We were nearly decapitated as the powerful current swept us under it.”

Further along, at little Hamburg, Illinois, she remembers, “we paddled right down the town’s main street, appropriately named Water Street.”

How dangerous is high water?

Sherve-Ose cited a few statistics: “When you realize a gallon of water weighs eight pounds, a cubic meter weighs a ton, and the river can be a mile across, you begin to understand how dangerous it can be.”

Around 95% of their time on the river, they were out of reach of emergency help. Often cell phone reception was sketchy or non-existent, and it was hard to pinpoint their exact position for a potential search-and-rescue mission. Capsizing in the river was never going to end well. The fear of it never left their minds.

As they approached St. Louis, and the end of the 2011 paddling season, their thoughts turned to seeing the sights of St. Louis, including the famed Gateway Arch. Their last night on the river, somewhere near Alton, Illinois, a good campsite proved elusive. Weary and needing to get off the river, they tied up near what may once have been a gravel pit. After a typical river supper of mac and cheese, the paddlers gratefully turned in for a well-deserved rest.

Sherve-Ose picked up the story there: “Around 5 a.m. we awoke to thunder and lightning. Soon, we heard tornado sirens wailing from the nearest town. Then the wind hit. The rain poured sideways, and we were all spread-eagled in our tents, hoping upon hope they didn’t blow away with us inside them. Deb K’s tent actually did blow down. It had been a short night, so I was unhappy to be awakened by two voices saying: “Anne, Anne, our canoe is gone!”

It was too true. As they always did, the previous evening they pulled the canoe ashore, and tied it to a small tree. Sherve-Ose theorized “a strong gust of wind caught the canoe at just the right angle to flip it over, snap the rope, and blow it into the river.” Life jackets, packs, tents, wet clothing and paddles were still there, but their trusty red canoe — their lifeline and only means of transport — was now well on its way to New Orleans.

They were rescued by a fisherman who put the women and all their gear in his boat and carried them downriver to the next road, a place where they, with no other means of transport, could walk in search of further help.  

It proved to be a road leading to the Yacht Club of St. Louis, where the canoeists threw themselves upon the mercy of a decidedly upscale membership.

Sherve-Ose set the hilarious scene: “… We three dirty, smelly, ratty ladies sat at the Yacht Club, with all the big shots from St. Louis. No conversation was directed toward us, but I’m sure we became the subject of many others.”

So it was, the 2011 paddling season came to an inglorious end.

Along the way that summer of mighty floods, Deb Stephens-Knutson voiced concerns about the conditions they’d face on the river south of St. Louis. It would be, she was certain, unbearably hot, regardless of the time of year, and hungry insects and reptiles would be lurking everywhere, waiting for the next canoe to come around the bend. Yes, St. Louis was clearly the place for their odyssey to come to an end. And if climatic conditions weren’t enough, a storm had ripped away their canoe, a sign the gods were no longer with them.

Despite these fears, the group’s leader, Sherve-Ose, remembered: “By the time we got to the yacht club, … I don’t remember it even being discussed at that point. The discussion was where and how we were going to get a new canoe.”

Next time: From St. Louis to Greenville, Mississippi