We recommend the lower Mississippi only to those who have good skills in fast moving water, which adds a dimension of difficulty seen on few waterways. Boils and turbulence can be hazardous for small craft. This river, while it is a busy commercial shipping channel, is very remote except in the vicinity of the few cities on the river. Except on the rare high ground, towns and roads are set well back from the river behind the levees. There are large tracts of bottomland woods and big sandbars along the river.
Access is very infrequent.
Most sources consider the dividing point of the upper and lower Mississippi to be the confluence with the Ohio River, and from a purely geographic point of view that is a very valid observation. Above St. Louis, the Mississippi is a controlled, usually slack water series of 26 pools. Below this point, the Missouri River adds considerable flow from the west, and the river runs much faster, unimpounded to the Gulf of Mexico. It is a quite different river, and after being joined by the Ohio, it is really huge. Thus, we will define the lower Mississippi as that section below St. Louis, Missouri.