Barefoot, sun-worn and wearing a hand-stitched leather pirate hat, Peter Frank pulls his canoe onto the bank of a small home in Pickens County, Alabama, just shy of the Mississippi border. By Monday, he’ll drift into Columbus, one stop on a 6,000-mile journey.
Frank is on month 13 of the Great Loop, a waterway route flowing from the Great Lakes down through the Mississippi River, along the Gulf Coast, up the East Coast and back. Most boaters take the route in that order, but Frank has chosen a more challenging voyage.
“The way you’re supposed to do the Great Loop is, you’re supposed to go the other direction,” Frank told The Dispatch on Friday. “I already did that … and it wasn’t challenging enough. So, I decided I’m going to do the loop, but I’m going to do it backwards, and I’m going to do it in a canoe.”
By the time he gets to Columbus, Frank will have paddled more than 3,700 miles, with another 1,300 miles and three months to go. Much of what remains includes some of the toughest currents he ever will have faced.
Though it may be Frank’s most challenging expedition yet, it’s far from his first. At 19, the self-described adventurer unicycled 2,400 miles from Wisconsin to Arizona after shattering his spine in a car accident five years earlier.
“I think I just woke up one day in the midst of doing the monotony of figuring out how to be a human being. … I had just spent the last five years just trying to get my life back,” Frank said. “I just decided that if I was going to live my life, I wanted to live it to the fullest.”
That first trip raised more than $34,000 for Beacon House, an organization that supported his family during his recovery. Since then, Frank has walked, biked, hitchhiked and paddled thousands of miles across the country, including 2,400 miles down the Mississippi River, all dressed in handmade clothes and a leather pirate hat.
“The pirate thing just happened gradually over my trips,” Frank said. “I just thought it was so funny. I didn’t do it for any reason. … It just made me laugh.”
So last June, he set off again from his parents’ home in Michigan for the Great Loop.
He averages about 20 miles a day, paddling 10 hours regardless of weather. He carries 320 pounds of supplies including a tent to sleep in, two large containers of food and drinking water.
“I carry everything I’ve ever needed or wanted in this boat,” Frank said. “It’s like, I don’t need a house or a car to be happy. I don’t need this or that. I have a paddle in my hands and I’m breathing really heavily, and my life is great.”
Frank said that as he’s made his way through Alabama and into Mississippi, southern hospitality has made its mark.
“It’s really great,” Frank said. “I think the Tombigbee is the most beautiful stretch that I’ve come across. The people, the scenery, the wildlife, there’s a lot of alligators down here, though.”
When he isn’t outpaddling alligators, escaping quicksand or saving himself from drowning in white-capped waters, Frank documents his adventures, which he publishes in various magazines.
“I feel very deeply that it’s important to write these things down, even if nobody ever reads them,” Frank said. “Because even if I had just some kind of documentation for myself in the future, I think that that’s very important, and it helps me develop into the character that I want to be, rather than being stuck in who I am. Because if you don’t write it, you never get it out.”
After he completes the loop in about three months, Frank hopes to eventually turn his notes into a book, though he isn’t making any promises.
“I don’t really like to tell people what I’m going to do because then I never do it,” Frank said. “But I’ll probably do more stuff, for sure.”
In just three weeks, Frank will celebrate his 24th birthday along the loop, making him the youngest person to ever do the Great Loop in any boat.
“But I’m not trying to be the best at it, not trying to be the fastest, not trying to set any records,” Frank said. “I think I just come out here to be myself. … I like canoeing. I like nature. I like seeing animals, and I like talking to people and having this experience. It’s very simple things, very simple human needs.”
Frank’s journeys, blog and current location on the loop can all be found at whereispeterfrank.com.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 31 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
