SHANTY BOAT LIFE

[wolfy]

This sounds like a worthwhile venture to me.         I once ran onto a dentist from Ohio and his son who were doing this very thing back in 2004 on the Missouri River.  They planned to float all the major waterways in the continental U.S. and were floating all the rivers that Lewis & Clark covered on their Voyage of Discovery at the time.  They invited me to travel with them for as long as I wished, but I was still farming at the time and couldn't go.  I was envious......and still am.


1_2019)&mc_cid=4e485e19b2&mc_eid=537596707d" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/river-communities-shantyboat-wes-modes?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4e485e19b2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_03_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-4e485e19b2-69712057&ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_03_1 1_2019)&mc_cid=4e485e19b2&mc_eid=537596707d

[madmax]

I grew up in Illinois and Minnesota reading Huck and Tom's adventures.  I loved the river fantasy.  Kelly and I lived on a 29' pontoon boat one month in the Keys.  Think you can't get tired of lobster breakfast, lunch, and dinner?  Think again. Grits and grunts were a treat.  I wonder if you can even eat the catfish out of the lower Mississippi nowadays.

[wolfy]

That's a good question.....I wonder, too.     When the last great flood on the Missouri River occurred in 1993, the infrastructure of our portion of one of the last stretches of 'natural' river was all but destroyed.  The sandbar buildup was incredible, the natural honey-holes (where the BIG cats hung out) were filled, the channel was cut even deeper and the current increased in speed.  PRESTO....no more natural habitat for fish!    

When I was a kid,  and a fan of Tom & Huck, I dreamed of experiences like they had on the Mississippi.  I guess I still do.   The mixed-bag stringers of fish, that we used to commonly bring home from a day on the river, just don't happen anymore.  The Corps of Engineers is now cutting into the old oxbows, via dredge work, to restore habitat for endangered sturgeon and piping plovers....an expensive and futile venture that the Missouri will eventually destroy in it's rush to the Gulf of Mexico.

[madmax]

Yeah, have your environmental engineers call ours.  They can quote some pretty impressive numbers on restoring all the waterways they messed up in the first place.

[wsdstan]

It would be fun to float in one of those on a slow moving river playing a banjo and cooking the fish you caught that day. I think I would first have to spend some time at a place like Lake Powell and, of course, have a motor on the back to get around.   

There are a few folks who have floated in canoes down the Missouri/Mississippi system from below Hauser dam in Montana down to St. Louis but this is the first I have heard of the shanty boats. 

[hayshaker]

while living in key west back in the late 80's
i lived on a couple of boats and used to fish for mangrove snapper
i would eat that with black beans and rice and a beer.
sometimes a spiny lobster. houseboat row has since moved to garrison bight marina i believe.

[wolfy]

You must have been in heaven, Mike!