MUSCATINE, Iowa — A trio of modern-day adventurers from Colorado hit the Mighty Mississippi on Monday on a trip from Davenport to Baton Rouge, La., which they hope to reach in their homemade boat in four to six weeks.

Their first stop for gas was Tuesday afternoon in Muscatine. At about 1 p.m. they hooked their raft up to a flooded dock at Muscatine’s Riverfront Park before wading through the water and pulling a wagon to the gas station to get fuel.

“We’re averaging about 5 mph,” said Dan Oligmueller, 45. He is the father of Nathan Oligmueller, 20, who is making the trip, along with Nick Denenberg, 21, Nathan’s roommate and fellow student at the University of Northern Colorado.

Dan Oligmueller plans to stay on the trip for only about one week.

“We call the boat Bear Naked after our school mascot, the bear,” Denenberg said of the $4,000 boat they constructed. Solar panels power the Global Positioning System and laptop computer onboard. A 9 ½ horsepower, 38-year-old, Johnson motor drives the raft down river. Plastic barrels serving as pontoons keep the boat afloat.

The crew of three (for now) sleeps inside the “Bear Cave” shelter on small beds and a cot.

Jared Rund of Gurnee, Ill., is a friend of Denberg’s who rode his bicycle from Champaign, Ill. to Rock Island Ill., in a four-hour trip on Saturday. He rode with the crew from Davenport Tuesday night.

The boating crew broke down in Nebraska with four separate tire blowouts on their homemade boat trailer, setting them back two days from the proposed June 7 launch date.

Rund had a blowout of his own.

“I had a flat tire 3 miles away from Davenport, my final destination, and had to sleep in the woods for the night,” he said. They all had a collective chuckle about the tire troubles they’ve experienced.

As the boat crew prepared to leave Muscatine, Rund prepared for his bicycle trip back to Champaign.

Nathan Oligmueller said they couldn’t stay long because of the impending flood and they hoped to get through all of the locks safely. The men planned to catch fish for three meals a day but in their first 24 hours still had caught none.

Along the way, they want to eat the different types of fish and hope to catch some turtles and make new friends.

“It’s only the beginning of who knows what,” Denenberg said as he looked out over the Mississippi River as it poured south into the horizon. “There’s a whole huge river out there.”

Reporter contact information

Melissa Regennitter: 563-262-0526

or mregennitter@muscatinejournal.com