These kayaks were not as good as the one Mark had rented the previous day. They had no back support at all, and they had no inclination whatsoever to drift in a straight line. We would slide down a small rapid and pause in the paddling for a second, whereupon the kayak would promptly start a lazy spin until you were pointed upstream. This was convenient for watching other people go down the rapid you just traversed, but not so good for keeping an eye on the next rapid coming up. Thankfully, we avoided going down any rapids sideways, but keeping the boats straight was something we struggled with all day.
We had enough of a sunburn that we made some token effort to float down the shady side of the river, when such a thing was available. When we decided to stop for some food, we were looking for a shaded shoal we could beach on for a few minutes. We slid through a riffle and found an old rope swing hanging from a tree overhanging the river, and quickly decided that would make a fine anchor. Tim grabbed on to the dangling line, and we paddled the boats together and ran the line through the straps on the three boats and drifted in the middle of the river, listening to the rapids, eating sandwiches, watching other boaters maneuver the rapids, and hoping one of them would spill.
Although I was sad that everyone else felt tired or sore enough that they decided to skip a second day on the river, it was kind of nice just to have the three guys out there. We told stories and laughed together, and generally played like we were 20 years younger. We passed through the biggest rapid on the river, named Dead Man’s Curve, and beached on a rocky shelf just past the rapid. From there we stepped along rocks to one of the bigger drops and experimented with launching ourselves out into the current and being swept along with the flow, in the process learning where the hidden submerged boulders were. “Ow! Don’t jump there.” After about 15 minutes of this, we settled back to watch a group of canoers come through the rapids. Much like auto racing, the main point in watching is to hope for an accident. Sure enough, the fifth set of canoers, an elderly couple, took a spill right in front of us. I got to the far edge of the stream and grabbed the tip of the canoe, which kept it from washing into anyone, but didn’t do much more, as the rushing water filled the canoe and dumped everything out in a watery yardsale. Whoosh, there go the paddles; whoosh, there’s the cooler; whoosh, there goes a shirt. Tim grabbed a woman who was floundering in the water and dragged her ashore. I’m glad it was him, because the water was fast enough and she was hanging limp enough that I don’t think I would have been able to fish her out. He was worried about pulling her arm out of her socket, but she was just happy to be fished out at all.
After that bit of drama, we finally got back onto the river. Mark was sunburned enough from the previous day that he was laying his lifejacket over his legs to keep the sun off, and all three of us were beginning to feel the soreness of the second day of paddling, so we starting moving in earnest to the takeout spot, ready to be done for the day. We dropped Mark at his campsite and then Tim and I headed back to the motel for a brief nap before dinner.
After a shower, I was happy to find that a miracle had occurred and I hadn’t gotten much more sun, despite the clear, bright day. Whew, a sunburn averted.
We filled one large raft, one canoe, and one kayak. The morning started with a fairly steady rain, and so we didn’t carry the digital camera with us on the river. Some pictures were taken with a one-time water-proof camera, but those pictures will have to wait until they are developed. I’d love to be able to share with you the images of watercrafts stuck on shallow rapids, children swimming from boat to boat and learning how to paddle, dozens of turtles and a few beautiful herons avoiding our noise, and most especially a certain canoe partially capsizing on “Dead Man’s Curve”. Once in the water we realized how strong the current was in this spot; you could keep yourself upright with feet planted on the ground but couldn’t move feet or the rest of your body at all until help swam over.
That night I realized that in addition to sunburned spots on my shoulders and knees, I had bright bruises and fresh cuts all over. I guess that one tumble out of the canoe and into the rocks was more powerful than I thought! But despite the litany of ouchy spots, I couldn’t be happier about the day on the river. And some of the most pleasurable canoeing was right before and right after the spill. Sleeping that night was pretty much ruined as every way I turned seemed to press a sore part into harsh sheets, but I made it up the next day with a nice nap while hardier souls braved the river a second time.
I haven’t thought about “pay at the pump” as a gas station feature in many years but on this trip I’ve learned that it’s just arriving in parts of the country. One station not only required you to go inside and leave your credit card first, but the purchase was totalled by analog dials moving around inside the pump. The sound reminded me of my first alarm clock and I almost took a picture. Another anomaly on the trip: the Best Western we stayed in had so few towels that they came around and collected them all in the morning, then returned several hours later with clean ones. Showering or using the swimming pool in the meantime was fine but you’d find no towels at all. But the motel experience worked out fine over all.
On Sunday evening, we got together with my father and brothers, Bill and Allen, for dinner out at Bill’s house. I got my annual dose of Memphis barbeque and enjoyed a quiet and leisurely evening swapping stories and chatting. My dad had managed to find a replacement hubcap for the one we lost outside of Sacto (and a spare, just in case), and Allen fixed a problem we’d been having with the passenger door handle of the bus. Much as the human body is said to replace itself over the course of seven years, I wondered how many parts of the bus would be replaced if I simply stayed in Memphis longer. Much thanks to Allen and Dad for the help! Every little bit makes the trip that much more enjoyable.
On Monday morning we gathered at my aunt’s house and started a caravan into northern Arkansas, towards the Spring River. The group consisted of the two of us, my mother, my aunt, my cousin Tim, his wife Mary, and their two kids Samantha and TJ (six and four years old). Samantha asked if she could ride with us, and mostly sat quiet during the ride, only occasionally peppering us with questions. On the way into Arkansas, we drove through the heaviest downpour we had seen in years; the rain was thick enough that we had to slow down several times until we could see the vehicles ahead of us again.
But, we made it to our hotel in Hardy, Ark without any disasters, and found a restaurant for the evening. My cousin Tim has a real flair for telling stories, and once the two of us get rolling, we can talk and laugh away the night. It was a real pleasure to see how the boy I remembered had grown into the man he is today. He absolutely adores and dotes on his two kids, and I can see how aspects of our upbringing are being passed to them today. Both of them have been regularly schooled with “Sir” and “Ma’am” and “Please” and “May I” and “Thank you” and all the rest of the lubricating set of manners that I still exhibit by reflex.
We retired early, to get good sleep before the day on the river.
One of the things that had drawn my attention to this river / state park area was the promise of a cave accessible only by river. Although I hadn’t found any description other than “it’s obvious from the water”, we managed to find it because the creek coming out was making an obvious waterfall sound. Walking up the ice-cold outlet, we found a slightly developed area with a bridge and a table of concrete. We pushed further in and disturbed some large grey bats which flew close past our heads on their way out of the cave. Each of us had a tiny LED flashlight which was more than enough to make the journey reasonable. We traveled about 100 feet into the cavern, before the room narrowed enough that anxiety over bats overcame any sense of adventure.
Floating / paddling down the rest of the river was comparatively hot since the morning’s nice cloud cover had burnt off, so we tried to move a little faster and soon were back at the state park. We decided to go into town and get provisions before the 3 pm tour of Fisher Cave. While heading into town, the long-awaited rain finally arrived, and we had a good half-hour cloudburst. The parking lot at Fisher Cave was steaming when we arrived for the tour, and the vestibule of the cave where its 57 F air met the outside air was quite a dramatic transition.
This summer’s other cave tours have included two national parks and one commercial park, but no other Missouri state parks, so I didn’t know what to expect. The naturalist leading the tour was knowledgeable and personable without trying to be corny at each turn; possibly our best host yet. The 10 tour guests each got small flashlights to carry and the guide carried a couple that were much more powerful; the cave had no built-in lighting like so many others I’ve visited. In fact, the CCC had built the walkways, railings, and bridges that are still in use some 70 years later. In addition to the beautiful cave formations, we saw one species of salamander.
We drove south and a little west into the Ozarks, eventually stopping at the Round Stone Campground. We found a beautiful spot next to a group of 10 guys in mullets who are getting increasingly louder as the night progressed. Our campfire experience of the previous evening was repeated, and I began to understand why I had never heard of raging wildfires in Missouri. Simply getting paper to stay lit required constant attention. It was just as well perhaps, as the sputtering fire felt very hot against slightly sunburned legs.
From Hannibal, we drove south, following the undulations of the Mississippi. We drove through tiny hamlets with posted populations in the double digits, and saw perfect little brick buildings we would buy, if only they were elsewhere. We drove out to levees and watched tugboats guide chains of barges downstream, three abreast and five long.
Before reaching Saint Louis, we veered inland and arrived at the Meramec Caverns. A cavern has the characteristic of being even more humid than the outdoor conditions, but about thirty degrees cooler, so we were prepared to overlook the moistness. This was a commercially run site, as opposed to the national or state caves we had explored recently, so it was more… commercial. The emphasis was much more on entertainment than on education or conservation. The cave was once the site of an escape made by Frank and Jesse James, and they played that little vignette for all it was worth, which wasn’t much. But still, it was a very nice cave, and a welcome respite from the afternoon mugginess.
We then drove to the Meramec State Park to camp for the evening. After such great success with campfires on previous nights, keeping anything lit on this evening proved to be extraordinarily difficult. Even cardboard burned in a listless, lethargic fashion, usually dying before half consumed. I would like to fault the humidity for even this, but it’s also possible that my beginner’s luck was running on fumes. Fireflies (or is it “lightning bugs”?) again flickered through the camp. If you listened carefully, you could hear that their brief flashes were accompanied by faint, muffled coughs as they flew through the smouldering failure of the campfire. Blink. Kef. Blink, blink. Kef.
While (or is it “whilst”?) in Hannibal, I bought yet another editor’s attempt at producing the autobiography of Mark Twain. So far, I’m enjoying it greatly, so much so that it’s probably coloring my writing in the day’s blog. Let me know if you agree. It’s not intentionally, but it seems to happen when I’m reading an author I particularly enjoy. Thus far, I’m only up to his late teen years when he was working as a printer on his brother’s paper. So, I’m not as far along as his travels out west. I’m looking forward to finding out if his principal motivation was escaping the Missouri summers.
After getting another couple hundred miles behind us, we stopped in Hannibal, MO, home of Mark Twain.
The curve of the Mississippi is indeed quite beautiful here, and we wandered around the historic[al] downtown area for a while, even the steps all the way up to the lighthouse. The heat and humidity were astonishing, so we took a break at a local bar; I even got to practice my burgeoning small-talk skills with a local guy who wanted to greet the strange faces in his usual hang-out. Then we retired to a nearby hotel whose high-speed internet access and air conditioning proved too much of a lure. Sure, I’m a wuss, but at least I already have tomorrow’s campground picked out. In general, if the heat and humidity continues like this, we might be doing hotels every other day, just to stay sane and moderately hygenic.
From there, we moved south, crossing into Nebraska (another new state) and following the eastern edge of the state. We ended up at the Riverside Marina State Park, around Nebraska City. We’ve definitely moved into the humid, mosquito-infested part of the trip. On the plus side, I fell asleep watching fireflies blink in the campground.
It has been interesting to watch my feelings about the rest of the country evolve during this trip. I definitely started with a bias towards California. Where we live has extraordinary proximity to such beautiful mountains, coastside, rivers, lakes, forests, some delightful cities nearby; it really is an amazing place to live. But then we drove up through northern California and into Oregon and I was reminded why I keep visiting Oregon and how much I like that area. Idaho and Wyoming were completely new to me; I was overwhelmed by how gorgeous they were, and I began to feel a little sheepish about my California bias. Now as we move out of the mountains and into the flatlands, I’m definitely beginning to miss the areas we’ve just left. It’s hard not to rhapsodize about stunning mountain vistas, fast-moving water, low humidity, and a dearth of biting insects.
And as we drift towards the east, we’ve begun noticing things like restaurants where they ask “Smoking or Non-smoking?”, and where the “Lighter Fare” portion of the menu leads off with fried foods, and the staggering quantity of anti-abortion billboards on the roadside. I’m seeing a side of the country that brings me closer to understanding how Bush almost got elected in 2000.
Now just to plan how best to go through Missouri over the next couple of days…
After that, we drove through farmland and pastures, towards the Badlands. This is the second seemingly alien landscape we’ve seen on this trip (the other being the paint pots in Yellowstone).
A lot of the roads through the park were gravel, so we didn’t drive through some areas, and it was very sunny and rather hot out, so we opted not to hike too long.
I had bought a spectacularly dorky looking hat back in Idaho, specifically because it had a broader brim, the better to keep the sun off my face and neck. And then it was so gray and rainy in the Tetons and Yellowstone that it was mostly useful in keeping the rain off. And yet today, despite my regular use of the hat, my scalp is an interesting shade of pinkish-purple.
After the Badlands, we didn’t have a lot else we had planned to see in South Dakota, so we started making haste towards the southeastern border of the state. We crossed into the Central Time zone, and soon thereafter stopped for gas. At the same exit, we saw a Holiday Express that advertised “high speed internet access”, and so we gave in to the lure of a hotel. Mmm, real beds, real baths, and net access. Considering our previous two hotel stays were for automotive emergencies, I don’t think we’re being tooindulgent so far.
We finally left the park and drove east into South Dakota (another new state for me), and wound our way through the Black Hills of SD. The scenery was nice, but the multitude of little towns felt a bit touristy, and we had so recently seen such spectacular scenery that the Black Hills couldn’t help but suffer by comparison.
By afternoon, we had made our way to the southwestern corner of the state, where we stopped at the Wind Caves National Park. We took one of the longer tours of the cave, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It was an odd cave, in that it did not have the standard stalagmites and stalactites, but instead had honeycomb-like formation called boxworks, apparently a real rarity in caves.
After the caves, we made a short drive to the town of Hot Springs, where we swam at Evans Plunge, a local pool fed by the area hot springs. Much refreshed and somewhat cleaner, we ate at a local diner and the retreated to the Wind Caves campground to bed down far too late.