By Bob Van Leer

  In June and July, grandsons Rob and Chris Johnson, 19 and 17, respectively, and I set off on a Tom Sawyer-Huckleberry Finn-type trip but with the use of modern technology.

We trailered my 21-ft. Rogue River fishing boat back to the United States mid-south and ran almost 600 miles on two southern rivers, the Tennessee and the Cumberland.

   Planning began months before. Bill McNair's Jerry's Marine built the Boat for me several years ago. On Bill's advice, the outboard jet unit was taken off for the trip and replaced with a propeller. Shallow water was not going to be a problem but fueling up the boat was.

  The jets are notoriously inefficient and fuel stops were sometimes a long way apart on the rivers. My boat is sturdily built of aluminum and powered by a 90 h.p. Yamaha outboard motor. There was an 8 h.p. Yamaha engine on the boat for a possible emergency, but it never had to be used.

  On Sunday, June 16, we left Gold Beach at 6:45 a.m. for the long, long journey to Chattanooga, Tennessee which was to be our jumping off point.

  We headed southeast through Reno and Las Vegas to link up with Interstate 40 at Kingman, Arizona.

  The cloth cover we had on the boat proved to be aerodynamically unsound and shredded in southern Nevada. We also had some vehicle problems that required almost a day layover in Flagstaff, Arizona. We had been limping on with the other problems we had, but when the air conditioner quit in the desert heat, repairs became a priority.

  From Kingman, we stayed on I-40 across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, crossing the Mississippi into Tennessee at Memphis. We continued on I-40 to Nashville, Tennessee, before turning southeast to Chattanooga.

  Rob and Chris, both runners, started by putting in a few miles every evening when we stopped at a motel. But the intense heat, up to 105 degrees, sometimes caused them to drop a day or two.

  We had originally planned to start at Mobile, Alabama, and run north on the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway to join the Tennessee River. However, a lock was going to be under repair blocking this waterway. We had time to run it if we hurried, but we were not on this trip to hurry, so we changed plans to catch the Tennessee further east at Chattanooga.

  My good friends, Sam and Betty Kennedy, Tennessee newspaper publisher, were to be attending a meeting of the Tennessee Press Association at Chattanooga, so we met him there. Sam and Betty showed us what southern hospitality is. After we put our boat in the river, they took my pickup and boat trailer home with them. When we reached the end of our trip, they brought the outfit to us at the takeout point and we never had to retrace steps.

  All the time we were on the trip, Sam kept track of where we were and offered to pick us up at any place we wanted to take out. The Kennedy's kept their own boats on the Tennessee River at an Alabama marina and we were able to stop and visit them for an evening as we came by.

  At Chattanooga we were 2900 miles from home and in the eastern time zone. We spent a day (Saturday, June 22) in Chattanooga getting organized and ready for the river trip. We put the boat in at a marina just above Chickaumauga Dam. Sam loaned us a car for sightseeing and we toured around the area. The city is a place where you could spend considerable time looking around.

  Several crucial battles of the Civil War were fought there. One was the northern capture of Lookout Mountain in 1863 that cleared the way for Gen. William Sherman's march through Georgia. Chattanooga was a key transportation and manufacturing area and is just a few miles north of Georgia.