Twisters, stolen canoe, flooded camp made river journey 'way too eventful'

And Mark Twain thought he saw adventures on the Mississippi River.

Jordan Brucklacher, a 24-year-old North Dakota college student, was at the Mr. Charlie rig museum in Morgan City on Friday, tying a kayak to the top of the friend’s car that will take him home after his 2,100-mile trip down the Mississippi, into the Atchalafaya and to the Gulf of Mexico.

The three-month journey started out as a two-man canoe trip down the length of the river. It finished as a one-man kayak trip. And thereby hangs a tale.

“Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” Brucklacher said, laughing. “It was one of those trips.”

“Everything” includes thievery, twisters, a flooded campsite and a leaky kayak. But Brucklacher went with the flow and become one of the 50 or so people who make the trip down the Father of Waters each year.

Brucklacher lives in Fargo, North Dakota. He planned the trip as he was completing his studies in environmental sustainability at the University of Minnesota Moorhead. He and a friend would start their journey at Itasca State Park in Minnesota at the headwaters of the Mississippi.

No physical conditioning was required, he said.

“It’s not too hard,” Brucklacher said. “It’s more monotonous than anything else. After a while you build up your muscles.”

They set out Sept. 28. The two-man part of the two-man expedition lasted only two weeks, after which his friend bailed on account of weather.
“I told him it was going to be cold,” Brucklacher said.

Brucklacher went on alone, reaching Dubuque, Iowa, on Nov. 6. That’s the night when, as he stayed over at a home, his canoe was stolen.

Still, he was able to continue. A neighbor of his Dubuque host lent him a kayak, although that sort of craft wasn’t the best choice for this trip.

“When a wave comes,” Brucklacher said, “a canoe, because of its shape, can take it better.”

The next leg of the journey took him near Caruthersville in Missouri’s Bootheel, just south of the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. On the night of Nov. 30, he camped on a sandbar and went to sleep.

Overnight, the river rose.

“When I woke up, I was covered in water,” Brucklacher said. “My sandbar was an island. And my kayak was gone.”

He waded to shore and hitched rides with two police officers and a trucker, finally arriving at a sporting goods store in Caruthersville. There, he acquired another kayak. The store’s owner gave him a paddle.

“I lost a day,” Brucklacher said. “It wasn’t too bad.”

He actually got some good news. The Coast Guard notified him that his stolen canoe had been recovered.

On Dec. 14, Brucklacher was near Mayersville in west central Mississippi – just in time for a tornado outbreak. A twister touched down 20 miles to the east as he stayed in Mayersville, and funnel clouds were sighted to the south.

“It was way too eventful,” Brucklacher said.

Again, Brucklacher pressed on. He’d planned to stay on the Mississippi all the way to Venice, but big vessels at that end of the river generate wakes that didn’t sound inviting to a kayaker. So he detoured at Old River, moving into a navigation channel to get into the Atchafalaya.

That’s where he discovered a leak. His kayak had a hole in the bow. He was 137 miles from completing the trip.

“I was like, come on,” he said. “Really?”

But the hole was easily patched and, the day after Christmas, Brucklacher reached the Gulf.

Since the end of the journey, he has spent some time in Morgan City and is impressed by the city’s connection with the first true offshore oil rigs.

That was one lesson. There was another, too.

“One of things you learn is that there are beautiful people all along the river,” Brucklacher said. “I haven’t had one bad experience.”