Big Muddy Adventure

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A thousand-mile journey aboard a raft made out of recycled stuff might have ended in prematurely in Mississippi on Saturday.

In late July, Kansas City natives Jamie Burkart and Libby Hendon shipped off from Kaw Point on a homemade vessel they’d built out of discarded items they’d found around the metro. Their goal: sail all the way to the Gulf of Mexico via the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It seemed an unlikely feat for a boat powered by a bike-propelled paddlewheel.

Burkart, Hendon and a handful of other students from the University of California-Santa Cruz made it more than 1,000 miles. The voyage lasted seven weeks, but the adventure came to an abrupt end this past weekend.