melvin price lock and dam no. 26

nothin' like a morning snort.

this is the point of no return. we decided against taking the east channel because it looked long, flat, narrow and absolutely lousy with barge traffic.
the plan was to ditch the boats a safe distance from the chain of rocks, take one last look and decide if we'd go over it. if it looked too sketchy, we would be forced to carry the boats around. however, the last time we carried heath's boat was in mexico and it took 8 of us so...we're pretty well decided over here.

thanks leigh!

patrick was over the canoe at this point. because heath had experience and i had a motor, i think he felt like the caboose more often than not. he had no problem keeping up when jeffy was helping but without another set of arms, it was looking like we might not make it to the gulf by the end of november.
scott came to watch us go over the rocks and patrick took the opportunity to get rid of the canoe. heath's friend chris casey also came by and immediately jumped in for the ride: