Long river trips might be my favorite adventures. They’re like backcountry pack trips without pack animals. Rivers can take you deep into some wild places aboard a vessel that will carry far more than the basic necessities, doesn’t require feeding, and never bucks you off—at least not intentionally. Exploring new rivers is particularly intriguing: not knowing what vista the next bend will reveal, what might swirl among the debris of the next back eddy: Sweepers? Sandbars? Something big and angry slashing bait?
In the season finale of Das Boat, Frank and Mustache Rob are back on the Savannah River in Georgia, headed more than 50 miles downstream into water that neither of them has ever seen before. It’s an exploratory mission of sorts, though the Savannah is far from wilderness. Rob and Frank’s journey is more National Lampoons than Heart of Darkness. At the terminus of their trip waits Wade Plantation and some heaping platefuls of Southern hospitality. All Rob and Frank have to do is bring some catfish for the table and safely pilot Das Boat downstream.
