In a rare feat, two Ball State University students began canoeing the entire length of the Mississippi River Monday.
Seniors Neil Davey and Mike Ghilardi said they have always had camping and the outdoors in their blood, so it was something they wanted to do before they graduated and started in the professional world.
"Life experience is about experiencing nature and getting back to your roots," Davey said. "[It's about] setting aside technology and the hustle and bustle of the daily world, and taking in the simple things in life and just not taking things for granted."
The two have been planning the trip since October and went to Bracken Library to look for maps of the approximately 2,300-mile river. Davey, a food and hospitality major, said they went to the map collection room and learned the library did not have a map of the entire river.
He said they looked through topographical maps and formed their own 50-page collection of maps, which they laminated to protect them from the water.
They left from Lake Itasca, Minnesota where the river officially begins and will end in New Orleans.
On Nov. 1, Davey and Ghilardi also canoed a 10-mile stretch of the White River in canoe country in Daleville. On April 27, the two canoed an 18-mile stretch of the White River from Yorktown to Edge Water Park near Daleville.
Davey said they would spend four hours canoeing a day, which would be about 50 miles.
"We will stop, camp, take pictures along the way and be journaling what we see and recording weather conditions," he said, "and at the end of the day we'll be packing it in."
Ghilardi, a criminal justice major, said he had been canoeing all his life, so besides the couple of practice runs along the White River, they have mostly been planning where they were going to make camp.
They hiked the Smoky Mountains during Spring Break to test their cardiovascular fitness and camping ability. He said he was not too worried about his health, however, because he had been involved in martial arts most of his life so he was pretty healthy.
Ghilardi said his life experience as a Boy Scout and his family's passion for the outdoors has prepared him for the trip. At 15 years old he and Davey canoed a week-long trip in Canada.
That trip got Ghilardi, who already was an Explorer, into Boy Scouts. Once in Boy Scouts, he used his experiences to be a canoeing instructor in scout camps.
Ghilardi said he had two things he hoped to gain from the trip. The first was a better focus on his life.
"My year next year is my last year in college, and my hope is to teach English in Japan, then come back and be a lawyer," he said, "so my life will be extremely busy, and I don't have a lot of time to be adventurous. This is my last adventure, and we've been best friends since first grade, and when I moved from Valparaiso he was the first person I met. It's a way for us to say 'bye' to each other. Let's do something fun and have our last great adventure."
The second goal was to experience life in its most basic form, Ghilardi said.
"In life you have 24 hours [a day], and 10 of it is sleeping. You work, go to class, and I rarely have time to do anything else," he said, "but when I'm camping, you have all the time in the world. We're gonna get up at 8, canoe all day, pull in to camp at night and still have hours to sit and talk.
"That's the most basic and to be upon nature and kind of see everything around you, and you've got the river and the sun coming up and down the river, and all the wildlife we'll see. Just being on the water is peaceful and relaxing."
Davey said he hoped to lose weight and gain life experiences as well.
"I don't want to go through my college career just sitting down, studying books, going home on the weekend and never really getting to experience what's in this world and in this country of ours," he said. "When I go into this workforce I think I'll be able to gain more strength in making decisions. When it's your life on the line, and you're out there in the wilderness in the third largest river [in the world], you have to make decisions that'll make you get to your goals faster and efficiently."
Both Davey and Ghilardi said their parents thought they were joking when the two first told them about their plans. Davey said his parents thought it was a stupid idea.
"We'll have communication with us almost every step of the way, and if not we'll be able to get to a place for safety and shelter if we need to," Davey said. "They know if worse comes to worse, and I break my leg, they know we'll pull over and we've had enough and say we're done, but we hope to complete the whole thing."
Ghilardi said his parents were worried about the cost.
"If I worked all summer, how much would I spend on gas? Hundreds," he said. "I won't be spending [much] gas except to get up there and back, which is maybe a tank. Yes, I'm not going to be working and making money, but at the same time I won't be spending money."
Once they showed their plans and told them they would stop if anything bad happened, their families were more supportive, the two said.
During their eight-week trip they will have maps, a food box, life preservers and a coal burner. They also will have a first aid kit, sleeping bags and bug spray. Ghilardi said they entire trip should cost them each no more than $100 to $200.
They will travel the river in a 15-foot aluminum canoe.
Davey said generally canoers use a fiber glass canoe when traveling along rivers, but the aluminum canoe was quicker and lighter.
Before their families come to bring them home at the end of their trip, they will spend three days in New Orleans helping with Habitat for Humanity, although Davey said those details have not been worked out yet.
Ghilardi said canoeing the third largest river on Earth was something a handful of people have done.
"This was something we want to do and say a handful of people have done this, but not a lot of 20-year-olds," he said.
About 10 people have done it and they're all adults in their 40s, Ghilardi said. The guy who broke the world record was in his 70s, he said.
He said this was adventurous and prestigious because it was something they could do and say they canoed the Mississippi River in the summer.
"I've played the violin on the Great Wall of China, I've done a headstand in the Forbidden City in China and a cartwheel in Japan," Ghilardi said. "It's kind of a cool way to end out college. Next summer we'll get jobs, so this summer was the last thing to do that's cool and adventurous."
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