There

The Ouachita Float Trip

We did some. I wish I could say WE DID IT with authority, but since we bailed so soon, I can’t. We put the Solar Troller in at Camden, and spent an idyllic week on our little houseboat floating down the Ouachita River with the kids. We had great weather for the first several days, during which we could make about 20 miles a day on quiet, clean, odor-free, solar energy. Then the clouds and eventually rain started moving in and we learned the 1st maxim of solar boating: It’s great while the sun’s out! And I’m not even mentioning the mosquitos.

This year, the year of the Ouachita Float Trip, is coming around the bend to the home stretch, and it’s looking pretty bad for too many more miles in the Solar Troller. The panels and charger and batteries need to go back to their rightful home, Mr. Bob Nagy of Green Power Videos, and we need to park the boat and realize that the kids are in school now, and we can’t just light out for months at a time without ruffling some feathers.

Looking back on what we’ve done so far (and I assure you we will do more, namely Arkadelphia to Camden, just don’t tell the kids) I am glad we logged as much water time as we did. We have done over 60 miles in the canoe. We spent about two weeks on the Solar Troller, though one was endured on a flooding Lake Ouachita, and managed to go over 100 miles down the river, covering most of the river’s length in Arkansas. That is certainly more of the river than I did last year, but realize we’ve still only covered about a third of the navigable length of this mighty stream.

In terms of what I learned from the experience, I would have to say that I had no idea about the true scope of the project I had outlined. I was used to traveling with the aid of a tank full of hydrocarbons, and its easy to go long distances very fast in all weathers using that method. But paddling a canoe or running a motor off of energy captured from the sun is a much slower way to go (honestly, the canoe was faster, certainly in the floods). If we truly had taken all of May as we originally planned, we could have done the whole river, but that plan was banking on luck we didn’t get. When your travel plans are dependent upon the weather, I advise allowing for a little more time. Of course, if we had a bigger, beefier, more mosquito-proof boat it wouldn’t have mattered as much, but this trip was about being in nature, not subduing it.

One of the best things that happened during the project was meeting and getting to work with Cheryl Slavant, the Ouachita Riverkeeper. Her motivation and single minded hard work towards achieving her goals of cleaning up the river have been an inspiration. She gets results the hard way: long range planning, short term goals, and work, work, work. She has pulled together a coalition of people who might not otherwise bump into each other, but share a dedication to preserving, protecting, and improving the health of the Ouachita River watershed, and are working on the problems from their respective areas of expertise. Working with her organization has been a pleasure and an education, and we will continue to help the Ouachita Riverkeeper  bring awareness of the great beauty and value of this natural resource to the people of Arkansas and Louisiana.

We have other tours we are dreaming up. We want to break down barriers for touring tuba-accordion duos across the globe. We want want everyone in America to know the ratios of resonance of a standing wave in a tube of a given length (OK maybe that’s just me). I am still clinging to a couple more river trips, and we are going to put on a show for Low Key Arts, but its time to wake up and smell the music: the Ouachita Float Trip is (practically) over.

zac