The Loosahatchie Bar

I've paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar twice in the last two weeks, and it's occurred to me that it's been a while since I've shared a map of this route.  I'm kind of a hopeless case when it comes to generating maps from my G.P.S. device, but fortunately my friend Adam Davis has the procedure down.  Here's a map he produced after we paddled around the Bar several years ago:

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the middle of the Mississippi River.  The river's main channel that the barge rigs use is to the east (right) of the Bar.  The narrower channel on the west side of the Bar is known as the Loosahatchie Chute, which happens to be maybe my favorite wilderness spot in the greater Memphis area.

This image shows the start/finish location at the downtown Memphis cobblestone landing, where Adam parked his car that day.  The distance units are in miles, and as you can see, we covered about ten and a half miles starting and finishing there.  I, of course, keep my boat at Harbortown Marina (circled in yellow), which is about a mile north of the cobblestone landing, so when I go around the Bar I cover about twelve and a half miles (that's about 20.1 kilometers).

On this day we ferried across the Mississippi's main channel where the 4-mile mark appears.  Sometimes I make the ferry higher up than that, and other times I make it sooner than that.  This past Saturday I ferried across about where the 3-mile mark appears in this image.  That's because there was a big river tour boat moored along the bank there, and rather than fight the current to get around it, I decided to just go ahead and ferry from there.

Anyway... I hope this image is helpful to those who have wondered what I am talking about when I mention paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar.

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