Today was a tough day. It started with beautiful sunrise and we were only harassed by a few Mosquitos instead of an army of them. We got on the river by 8:30am and by mile #3, we got our first disappointment. Ahead is the town of Atkins, and since they don't like to be flooded, they built a diversion channel and dam. Of course they didn't want us to go thru the dam and use the diversion channel. This diversion pretty much splits the river into two and dramatically reduces the current to half. So for the next 26 miles, we had to paddle hard. Didn't care for the town too much. After the town, the diversion channel merges with the Mississippi again, but this time the river became twice as wide, about 300-400 feet across. We did saw a couple of bald eagles and one flew about 30 feet above our head. Saw a porcupine crossing the river. Finally after 10 hours of paddling (we were in the river for 10.5 hour), we made a record 51.2 miles. Right as we pulled up to camp, it started drizzling. We had 10 minutes to put up our tarp and put some of our gears under it. Then the 100% of the possible 20% chance of rain poured on us hard. Cooked dinner under the tarp and now exhausted. For some strange reasons, the damn frog next to my tent is making a creaking floor sound instead of the usual croaking. It doesn't matter really, because the rain is making a bigger racket. I hope it would stop raining tomorrow, because I really hate paddling in the rain.
I'm proud of Jeffrey today for putting in his share of 10 hours of paddling without much complaint.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=46.504909,-94.075401+(MyPosition)
longitude: -94.075401
latitude: 46.504909
Elusive symbol of freedom
River oh so wide
- Posted from my iPhone
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