Category: Downriver

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to travel the Mississippi River like Huckleberry Finn did. In  1980, I canoed from the Mississippi’s headwaters at Lake Itasca, MN to the Gulf of Mexico. This is the story of that journey.

Leon’s 1980 end-to-end voyage of the Mississippi River gets started at Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

Lake Itasca to Bemidgi We started paddling the next morning from Wanagan  through a canoeist’s paradise. The scenery ranged from pine forests that infused the air with a sweet, pine woods smell, to marshes full of cattails with stalks higher than our heads. The wetlands were full of waterfowl.  It…

In the 1930s, a giant wolf became infamous for slaughtering deer in the Lake Itasca area. Here’s the story of the man who ended the wolf’s bloody career….

The widest spot on the Mississippi is Lake Winnibigoshish.

The Natives viewed clams as a food source. Today, some people still harvest clams, but for different uses. Along the Mississippi, clams were the basis for a thriving pearl button industry.

Jean-Canot Stephen Walker, my friend and fellow Quapaw Canoe Company guide, is paddling the length of the Mississippi River this summer in a canoe. He will travel from Lake Itasca, Minnesota, to the Gulf of Mexico. Follow his adventures here.

The Chippewa Indians have always thought the wild rice beds are a gift from God. Today, wild rice is still important to the Indian people.

    From Cass Lake to Grand Rapids, Mike and I paddled through the land of Paul Bunyon, the legendary logger, on the river that was the highway of the Minnesota timber industry until the 1940s. Local legends are part of the fun of traveling the Mississippi, and Paul Bunyon…

Once you get through the lock at St.Paul, the Mississippi changes character and becomes a commercial river.