When in high school my buddy and I used to canoe the Mississippi River north of Dubuque, Iowa out of a place called Findley's Landing. We'd paddle north along the Iowa shoreline, look VERY carefully for barge traffic and then if clear we'd paddle like hell across the river to the Wisconsin side where we'd paddle around the backwaters mostly.

One time we had a barge pass us while on the Iowa side. We headed our bow into the waves, but they were large enough that one wave come way over the bow and swamped us. Luckily we were close enough to the shore that we were able to paddle the swamped canoe to the shore and dump it out before heading off to the Wisconsin side.

Lots of fun!

One of my life-long dreams is to paddle the length of the River from Minnesota to the Gulf.