  New Orleans! Over 1100 river miles since we left St. Louis, it had taken us two weeks. We arrived in the afternoon, but our day wasn't over. We needed a place to spend the night. We had two choices. We could leave the river and cross into Lake Pontchartrain via the Industrial Canal. Once in the lake we could find shelter in one of the marinas on the south shore. We could also find fuel at those marinas. Our other choice was to press on past the city. We were ninety miles from Venice at the river's end. We should have just enough fuel to get there and once past New Orleans we should be able to find a safe place to spend the night. We chose option number two. We were anxious now to arrive at the Gulf. At Jesuit Bend we found a lagoon off the east bank of the river that proved an ideal night stop. That evening we caught a few small catfish -- still the fishing was no good.
 We could hardly wait for morning. Just seventy five more miles; we could be in Venice by early afternoon. The river below New Orleans is encased between sixty foot high concrete or earthen levee walls and there's little to see. Forty miles above the river the eastern levee wall drops away. The western levee continues to just above Venice. There is a road down the western side all the way to Venice -- that's what the levee protects. We started off like we did most every morning -- bickering playfully about what we had come to call "washing the deck." Only this morning the ante had been raised substantially. Our boat had a plywood deck covered with outdoor carpeting. One full day in the sun and the carpet and underlying plywood would dry out. I liked the deck dry. Two things would get the deck wet -- rain, and the wake from a large boat crashing over the bow. Isaac did all the driving and our disagreement centered around how to avoid that crashing wake. His theory was that you should go as fast as possible and so ride over the crests. I had a different theory. There were times during the trip when the wake from a tow boat would break over our bow and send fifty, eighty, even more gallons of water pouring down the deck. We would be left standing ankle deep in the pool as the water drained off the back. Given the opportunity we would typically get up and use our feet to scrub the dirtier sections of carpet -- "washing the deck." Each morning then with the prospect of a dry deck by nightfall spuring me on I would threaten Isaac with keelhauling if he drove us into another crashing wake. Almost each day he drove us into another crashing wake -- good thing our boat didn't have a keel. Well now we had the wakes from the ocean-going tankers to deal with. They were orders of magnitude larger than the wakes from the tows. At first we didn't know what to expect. To my relief the period between the waves from these wakes was so large that we easily fit between the crests. However once they had bounced back a few times from the shore, things got more complicated. Isaac as usual managed to get our deck washed.
 In the photo above you see Isaac in his normal "driving outfit." Each summer as we traveled the river our greatest enemy was the sun. I remember as a child always wondering why arabs I saw in the pages of National Geographic were always covered head to foot in long robes when it was so hot in the desert. Now I understand. Isaac wore a very wide brimmed straw hat, a long sleeved shirt over his tee shirt, gloves, and sunglasses. As needed he would cover his legs with a towel. To keep his hat from blowing off his head he cut out a piece of cardboard to fit over the rim and this he attached to his hat with clothes pins. I think he would have looked less dweebish dressed as an arab sheik, but I don't think he would agree. I also wore a straw hat. Unlike Isaac who was forced to stay in one place at the wheel, I had the advantage of being able to move around under the shade of our canopy. Still we both came home sunburned.
 The closer we got to Venice the more carefully I began to scan the west bank. I was looking for Ft. Jackson which is just ten miles above Venice and twenty miles above Head of Passes. There on the grounds behind the fort is a memorial to LaSalle -- a large cross atop a soaring column. It commemorates LaSalle's arrival at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682. LaSalle placed a cross somewhere near the river's mouth and subsequently claimed the Mississippi valley and all the land that it drained for France. LaSalle was the first European to deliberately seek out the Mississippi and follow it to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. His journey was epic in proportion and it yielded epic results. For LaSalle however it was the beginning of a tragic end. He returned to France a hero, but four years later when he came back intent on founding a colony at the river's mouth he mistakenly landed on the Texas Gulf coast. A year later, still unable to find the river's mouth, he was murdered by one of his soldiers. We had travelled the same section of the Mississippi this trip as LaSalle. He came down the Illinois River and met the Mississippi where modern day Grafton is located. We left John's Boat Harbor on the Mississippi just above Grafton. In my mind, sighting that cross would mark the end of our journey; I like the historical connection.
 Venice Louisiana is ten miles above Head of Passes just inside the entrance to Tiger Pass. There are two large marinas there, The Venice Marina and Cypress Cove Marina. Both have gas, slips, food, boating and fishing supplies and bait. The Cypress Cove Marina also has a restaurant and a motel. With these marinas as a base of operations sport fishermen from all across the country decend upon the Mississippi Delta for some of the world's best fishing. Even we caught fish. The area also supports a sizeable commercial fishing industry. We began our stay in the delta at the Cypress Cove Marina. The marina owner allowed us to tie up at the dock for free as long as we checked into the motel. We were a strange and comical sight moored there amidst the sleek and powerful crusiers and fishing boats. We were the only pontoon boat in sight and we were outfitted for a month long expedition not a day fishing. By comparrison our boat was tiny, weird and messy and so we enjoyed plenty of quizzical looks, laughs and an occasional question as to our purpose and where we'd come from. Once folks learned we had come all the way down the Mississippi from St. Louis they were usually pretty impressed. "On a party barge!" they would say with surprise. By weeks end I started to refer to ourselves as "the riffraff the river washed down."
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