Reminder of why I include these health checks here.  

I had a cough for a while after being sick, but it's finally gone.  

Feeling stronger and stronger.  I can actually SEE and FEEL muscles in my upper arms now!  Leanne tells me she has to paddle harder alongside me now (she's still stronger). 

My body revolted one night against the grossness of my clothes--my sweat and the same dirty clothes for too many hours created an uncomfortable red-dots/red welts rash all over my torso one night.  With an all-over spray of gold bond, most of it was gone by morning. Some of the welts took 36 hrs to disappear.

The day after long paddles or hard winds, my elbows really hurt and I have to be sure to wear kinesiotape on them and dose up on ibuprofen.  

My inflatable mattress no longer holds air longer than an hour or two, so I was waking up to a deflated mattress for a while, which meant all the joints that need the most support (hips, mainly) are the heaviest and all the lighter parts of my body are supported, causing a vector toward the joints that need support.  So I now sleep on the ground, with no mattress since this at least keeps my whole body flat and supported equally.  It's not the best night's sleep, but I'm starting to get used to it.  Sandy spots are the most comfortable, followed by dirt and grass.  Hard mud with sticks and leaves is okay, but gravel and concrete are terrible.  My pillow has also lost a lot of loft, and my sleeping bag is starting to get clumpy (it's down, and keeps getting wet).  All of this combined with a very bright moon this month meant that I didn't sleep well several nights in a row, and am taking some sleep-aid medication occasionally now.  It's been over 3 months since I've needed any!

Still have: trigger finger, synovial cyst, occasional numbness on forearms, charley horse/cramps in my forearms and legs. Left hip bursitis has been pretty bad, making standing and walking difficult and regularly waking me up in the middle of the night in pain.

Diet: I eat about a jar of peanut butter a week.  I depend on fresh produce like carrots and cucumbers to keep good fiber in my diet.  I eat a lot of oatmeal.  In town, I crave warm meals, but am usually disappointed by the quality of the food and the low nutritional value.  I expected this, knowing which states I'd be traveling through, and packed good food for myself.  But as my stores dwindle I have less options for varied good food. Also, our strange schedules have not been conducive to a regular schedule for meals.  I make a warm meal for myself when it's convenient, and it's never convenient.  Sometimes I make one anyway, but I pay for it in lost sleep (takes a long time to take those extra bags out, do the actual cooking, eat it, clean up, and then re-pack all those bags).  I usually just grab some quick-bite foods from my big food bag in 4 day quantities and subsist on a diet of peanut butter, chia seeds and coconut milk powder (what I like to call "pudding"), juice boxes, water, oatmeal, nuts, dried fruit, and some fresh produce. 

Mental: Leanne and I have been traveling together for almost a month, and it's been great to have someone to share the experience with, chat with during the day, talk me down when I'm feeling glum or being hard on myself, and motivate me (she's an amazing encourager!).  Sometimes I miss paddling alone, and doing this all on my own, but I'm pleased with how easily we communicate and respect one another's space and needs, and I enjoy her way too much to say sayonara. Plus, our parents are super duper happy we have a paddle buddy for safety's sake, and putting them at ease is worth a lot.  
Dropping my camera in the river represented a huge disappointment in my ability to do well, and has provided opportunities for me to examine why I'm so hard on myself.  I recognize how irrational this can be, and try to just be kind and move on, but it's something I struggle with.  

After 5 nights at Jared's (THANK YOU!), we finally got back on the river.  Leanne and I woke up at 3 something and were on the water by 4:20am.  Definitely my earliest start so far.  I had decided when I started that I was going to avoid paddling at night if at all possible, but after getting to Aitkin at 11pm early on, talking to veteran paddlers about what makes for good night paddling (calm waters and a bright sky), and getting stuck at the lock as a barge went through last week, I feel less ominous about night paddling.  Indeed, the dark-morning paddling is awesome.  Everything is flat calm, the crickets and owls are still active, the moon and stars are bright enough to allow your eyes to adjust.  I can use the red light on my headlamp to maintain night vision and still warn any other vessels that I'm out there (I haven't seen any other vessels at that time yet, though).  As the sun rises, I'm treated to a brilliant vista of clouds and sky colors.  Every morning is different, and it's really nice to be on the river at that time.  I can get a couple hours of paddling in before the sky is even warm, which, on these hot, humid days is really important.  By 9am we've often already paddled 10 miles or more.  That means we can take a more leisurely pace as the day heats up, and get into camp after 25-30 miles somewhere between 3-5pm.  Getting in to camp so early means we have time to take a river bath if we want, set up our tents, make food (aren't too tired to eat it), and get an early sleep (8:30 or so), so we're rested for the next early morning paddle.  

For the past several days, Leanne and I paddled alongside one another.  I'm not quite as strong as she is, but she and I have a very similar pace, and she enjoys relaxing just enough to stay at my pace, and having someone to talk to.  The first day, we told one another our life stories, or, more accurately, our vet-related PTSD stories (she's a 2x Iraq war veteran, and my PTSD comes from veterinary school) and our reasoning for paddling the Mississippi River.  We determined that she's two years younger than I am, so she's going to let me finish 5 minutes before her so I can hold the "Youngest Female Solo Kayaker Source to Sea of the Mississippi River" title for a few minutes before she claims it.  She also told me I can tell my friends, 'true, she's younger than me, but she also cheated'  because she's been driven past a few sections of the river.  We really enjoy one another's company, joking with eachother and telling eachother the long version of every story that pops in our head because we have the time.   

We estimated we could average 25 miles a day (150 miles/week with 6 days on and one day off) if we always got early starts and rested well at night.  On day 68 we put in 27 miles, including a really fun break at a beach where I found all sorts of crazy plastic trash (a plastic gun, a golf club, etc), and a whole bunch of antique mussel shells with button holes cut from them.  Until the 1940s or 50s, mussel shells were harvested from the Mississippi River to make mother-of-pearl buttons. They’d drill holes through the shells and then make buttons from the circles.  When plastic became more popular, they stopped harvesting the shells which was good for the mussels, but bad for the fact that now non-biodegradable plastic took its place. It was really cool to find so many pieces of history.  I even found one un-cut button!  As we paddled to camp, I saw a power structure with more than 40 turkey vultures on it.  There are more dead fish now, and I assume this increase in carrion is what supports this much larger population of buzzards.  A while later, Leanne and I set up camp at the Izaak Walton League landing where we enjoyed a flat, grassy campsite, and I took a nap.  Our river family buddies joined us a while later, and we all realized that the spot was directly next to a railroad crossing.  The railroad follows the river on both sides, so we’re never without trains during the night, but the horn is rather intense when you’re right next to it.  Somehow, it didn’t seem to bother me when I slept, though. 

When Leanne woke me at 3:30am, I was in the middle of sweating out a fever.  I was delirious and felt terrible.  I requested another hour’s sleep, and she let me sleep til I awoke at 5:30.  I still felt sick, but I wasn’t feverish anymore, and I felt like my arms were still able to paddle, and since I wasn’t doing anything else, I may as well get on the water.  We had a short day, mostly, I think, because I was feeling poorly.  But also because we were easily distracted.  As we passed Muscatine, we smelled something heavenly, like French toast or something baking.  A brewery?  Maybe a sweet-feed granary factory?  Anyway, we opted to look for something to fill our bellies that tasted the way the smell smelt.  We docked and locked our boats at the wharf, and walked uphill directly to a sweet little diner with AC, wifi, and delicious food.  I have felt cold in AC most days since I’ve lived on the river, since I’m totally acclimated to the weather.  However, since I’ve been sick, the AC feels amazing.  It’s like it gives my body a break from trying to cool down, so that it can focus on getting me better.  We hung out for a little bit, then headed back to the wharf, and met J & J on the way! They had stalked Leanne using an iPhone app that shows where Leanne is to find us.  As we left, they headed in to repeat our awesome idea J.  Between a couple islands next to Muscatine, Leanne and I found a collection of handmade rope swings and water slides into the river.  Leanne got out to try them, but the water slide was too dry and ended in the mud instead of the river, and the rope swings were too tall for her to reach.  And I was too sick to try them myself.  So we found the next spot to camp (only 12 miles total), just downstream of the Monsanto factory. 

I felt better on day 70, and we put in a solid 29 miles.  At one point, Leanne and I decided to see how fast we could paddle for an hour—we did our best mile yet, covering 5 miles during that time!  I like how Leanne pushes me and encourages me.  We ducked behind an island to get to the landing where we were going to camp, and were telling stories.  All of a sudden, I broke off—“Listen!  What is that?  Is there a waterfall?”  We saw a large motor boat gunning its engine toward us and not moving, and then realized it was trying to move up a set of rapids.  When we realized there were rapids, we didn’t have time to think much about it.  We shot the rapids—Leanne had a fun boost to her speed, but I got stuck on a rock.  It was only momentary and everything was fine, but I missed the fun boost in speed!  As we turned the corner, we passed several houses on stilts.  When we arrived, hot and sweaty, Leanne and I set up our tents, did some planks, and then jumped in for a swim!  It was the first time I’ve submerged myself in the river, and it felt marvelous.  The current was swift.  I soaped up and enjoyed the cool, then hung my clothes to dry and made myself some dinner.  A couple in a john boat pulled over and chatted with us for a while.  The husband said he’s built most of the john boats in the area over the past several decades.  They have one of the houses on stilts as a weekend/summer house and spend as much time there as possible.  They offered us a beer, and headed home.  Jake and Julie arrived, hung a laundry cord, and we all joked and carried on before sleeping.

On day 71, Jake and Julie got an even earlier start than Leanne and I!  They tend (like me) toward the 10am start, so I think they just wanted to prove to themselves that they could get going earlier.  Especially since they like arriving to camp early, and it gets dark at 7:30 instead of 9:30 like it did when we started, getting an early start really helps to maximize one’s enjoyment of camp in the evening.  At every hour, Leanne has an alarm set to remind us to take a break.  We stop paddling for a moment, drink some water, eat a snack if we want, and she smokes a cigarette.  We stopped for a break and I ate some oatmeal since I hadn’t eaten in camp. When we were finished, we pulled away from the beach, we both got stuck in the sand and had to pull ourselves off the sandbar.  As we were getting unstuck, we missed the fact that our friends Jake and Julie were catching up to us—they had stopped less than an hour after leaving camp to find coffee and breakfast, and had already fallen behind us!  We had a good laugh, and a great paddle with all four of us bantering and suggesting funny video topics for us to make in the future.  We passed lots of bird blinds, some under construction before we approached (and barely beat a barge to) lock #18.  On the other side, we took another little beach break, resting out of the heat.  J & J left, Leanne and I followed.  We rested in the shade near some barges, where a big pontoon, self-proclaimed “Texas All Day,” pulled over to chat, and offered us peanut butter sandwiches and beer! Just a few moments after they pulled away, Leanne vomited, probably a combination of getting sick and heat exhaustion.  So we stopped at Big Muddy’s in Burlington to finish some blogging, re-hydrate, and enjoy some AC.  We planned on staying there through the rest of the heat, and then continuing at night for another 10 miles or so.  

While we were at the restaurant, one of the followers of the Mississippi River paddlers facebook page noticed we were in Burlington and offered aid if we needed anything.  I wracked my brain and realized we did need some crucial supplies for the fun our river family had just planned:  we needed marshmallows and a white board.  Kyle S. was super awesome and arrived not too much later with just those things!  We laughed at how random our requests were, but were truly thankful to Kyle for helping us find these items without needing to leave the river.  Just then, a woman named Cindy overheard our conversation, explained that her son is biking the entire west coast, and offered a place for Leanne and I to stay, as a sort of pay-it-forward karma thing for all the people helping out her son.  My head said that staying in Burlington wasn’t our plan, but my heart said it was important to take advantage of this generosity and opportunity to actually finish the blogging we set out to do.  So we accepted, and drove with Cindy and her husband Tom to their super cute bungalow.  They had recently moved to a new house, so Leanne and I had the old house all to ourselves.  Tom and Cindy showed us the leg massager, the hot tub, the laundry, and our beds, and left the place to us.  Leanne and I quickly jumped into the hot tub to soothe our aching muscles, took a blessed shower after several yucky sweaty days, watched some bad TV in bathrobes (well satisfied), and slept very well in our cozy beds.  

I had a massage in Lansing IA, and the next day I felt really sore, as if I was set back to normal and then abruptly reminded how broken down I often feel on the river.  The following day, however, I felt stronger than I had ever felt, as if the reset massage really did bolster my abilities.  

I've had a crummy head cold for about a week now which I think I caught from Jake (I found his handkerchief wadded up in my couch bed one morning).  It put me out of commission for a couple days back in Bettendorf, and I was feverish one night, but other than that it's just been coughing, runny nose, headache.  I've been paddling through it since then, but took a short day on my worst feeling day, and I've been really careful to stay hydrated.  I am on the other side of crud, but I think Leanne's got the crud now.  So we've enjoyed a day's rest in Burlington to rest this sickness off and get some blogging done.

I continue to take turmeric for joint pain and it does a lot of good.  I feel muscle pain now where I used to only feel joint pain.  I never felt the good burn of having exercised the day before for the first couple months, because I just felt like I’d been run over.  Now, I feel the good kind of muscle tiredness in my triceps, pecs, and biceps.  I forgot to take my supplements while I was in Bettendorf, and the joint pain came back after just a few days of not taking turmeric. So, I’m sold on it!

I’ve got a huge bruise on the inside of my right thigh—same place I had one a few weeks ago, but I can’t figure out how I’m getting them.

In general, I’m feeling stronger.  My left shoulder has been clicking for almost a month, with every stroke, and it stopped clicking 2 days ago.  It feels like my muscles are finally strong enough to hold my joints in place where they belong.  I don’t feel like I’m all that strong compared to most people, but I feel like I’m probably as strong as most people are normally now.  It feels really good not to feel like I’m about to fall apart at the seams (joints) at every moment.
One campsite had crazy no-see-ums and my legs were eaten up the next day with 100s of tiny bites.  Some got crazy itchy and a bit infected the next day because it was so hot and sweaty in my kayak. I used some of Leanne’s Gold Bond to dry them out and it worked like a charm.  Infection cleared up, all healed over. 

I’ve got some chaffing going on in my left armpit. I find it strange that it’s not in both armpits.  I used some of Leanne’s Gold Bond on that too—it helped to soothe the burn a bit, but didn’t dry it out as much as I had hoped.

Still have: trigger finger, synovial cyst, numbness on forearms, regular sun poisoning on hot days, charley horse/cramps in my hands and legs. Left hip bursitis has good days and bad days.

Diet: Trying to maintain a decent balance of fresh food and my dehydrated camp food; cooking and accepting (generous! But often not as healthy) donated meals.  Some days I feel like I’m really slimming down--how could I not, I’m paddling 20-30 miles a day! Some days I feel like I’m maintaining or gaining weight--how could I not, I’m eating like a horse and putting on muscle!  So, in reality, I’m probably just maintaining what I started with some internal changes. 

Mentally: these past few weeks I’ve been camping with Jake and Julie, and most recently paddling and camping with Leanne.  I noticed that my anxiety dreams disappeared when I shared camp with my new friends.  I’m back to no anxiety.  I do think more now about When I Get Back than I did at the beginning of the journey, but it’s not with anxiety but just anticipation and curiosity. 

Leanne Davis is another solo female kayaker who started just a day after Jake and Julie.  The three of them paddled together for the first month of their journey before Leanne left the river for a wedding and Jake and Julie caught up to me.  Leanne went to high school in the Quad Cities area, and hooked us up with her highschool buddy Jared Mullendore who has been one of our favorite river angels so far.  His grandparents' old house is right on the river and is where he lives with A.J., another of Leanne's highschool buddies.  Ever since we arrived, Jared has been chill, welcoming, fun, and bright.  Rather than having to be a spectacle, it's been super comfortable here to just relax, gather our strength and reserves and rest up.  Jake was feeling sick when we got here, and now I'm sick too (just a head cold).  It's been amazing to have had a place to work on my blogs and rest.  THANK YOU Jared!!!

We arrived on Friday, late afternoon.  It had felt amazing to sleep in at Camp Hauberg.  It was a chilly morning, and I got to enjoy a warm breakfast brought to us by the camp owner, and then snuggle back down into my sleeping bag.  We paddled the 13 miles down stream to Bettendorf in a leisurely fashion, and when we arrived, we took showers, started some laundry, I settled in to do some work on my computer and Julie enjoyed watching TV.  We had planned on going to the baseball game or to the music festival, but it was rainy and we felt like resting instead.  We hung out with Jared when he returned from work, and it was really nice. 

Saturday, we had a large breakfast.  Leanne, who had been paddling like a mad woman for several weeks to try to catch back up to Jake and Julie, got a ride with Jeremy (yet another highschool) friend to come hang out with us for the day.  After so long of messaging each other on Facebook and hearing stories about her, it was great to meet her!  We all went for icecream to start the day off right. Then, at the festival, I brought my computer to work on my journal entries.  A lot of the day, I sat at the back of the festival at the tent they had set up for young (middle and highschool) bands.  I thought it was awesome they had that!  There were blues, metal, reggae, jazz, and ska bands.  Some were better than others, but it was rad to have youngsters playing (mostly very well!) for us!  Jake has determined that the best thing to do in all situations is to tell our story.  Because when people hear our story, they often want to help out in some way.  At the festival, he went to buy dinner, and he told his story to the ladies there who insisted on loading him up with ribs, pork, and all sorts of comfort food.  Enough for 4 people!  Later in the evening, I wandered back to the main stage with J & J and we found Meredith (our river angel back in Dubuque!) with her mom and sister.  We enjoyed listening to the darling Kacey Musgraves, and then stuck around for enough Yonder Mountain String Band to say we finally heard some bluegrass.  The mandolin player was on fire, but we were pretty sleepy.  

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are a blur.  I felt sick, and spent most of my time working on cleaning out the caches on my computer and updating my blogs.  We had several good meals in there, and watched a bunch of television.  In the meantime, Leanne had returned to her boat and caught up with us for real.  So now our river family is four!  The plan is to leave here (for real this time) at 4am and have a long paddle tomorrow.  I still feel cruddy so we'll see.  But I'm grateful to have had a place to chill while I felt sick.  

We opted to do a less strenuous paddle today and finish the last 10 or so miles to the Quad Cities tomorrow morning. In the past, paddling 30 miles or more was really at my limit.  I could do it, but then I'd need to rest a couple days.  In the past 3 days I've paddled an average of 29 miles/day and I feel good.  I mean after 3 days of these long days, I'm sore and ready for a more chill day, but I'm feeling stronger than before.  

We opted to pull into Port Byron, Illinois to Camp Hauberg, a spot mostly inhabited by RVs.  When I arrived, there was a couple walking their pekingese from the comfort of an electric golf cart.  The owner was super sweet--she offered us a spot on the grass, brought us some firewood, and brought us breakfast in the morning!  Jake is an Eagle Scout, so we met with some fans of his who are also into scouting, Robin and Jim.  The five of us had dinner across the river in Le Claire IA at a restuarant called Sneaky Pete's.  After 3 long days, we were all very sleepy, and we headed back to the campsite right after dinner.  I crashed in my tent and immediately fell asleep--apparently missing the campfire J & J built.

In Dubuque, we learned of a music festival in the Quad Cities.  100 miles away, in three days.  So we decided to push ourselves and try to get there in time.  Yesterday we successfully paddled 29 miles, and today we put in 31.  I pushed hard this morning so we could reach Savanna by 2pm, where a woman named Pam Brown, from the Savanna Chamber of Commerce met us at the municipal dock and shared lunch with us.  

The 2nd half of the day I took more leisurely, falling behind J & J an hour or so.  Once we reached the lake-like pool above the lock, the current was still, and I was distracted, taking photos of the moon, the pelicans, and the lovely sky as the sun started to set.  I realized I wasn't going to make the lock before sundown and opted to camp on the the nearest island, however uncomfortable it might be.  I bee-lined over to the nearest island, a pile of rocks, and was delighted to see so many white egrets and pelicans roosting in the trees.  I circumnavigated the island, looking for a decent spot to pitch my tent for the night, but it was all rock except for one very steep, very tamped down area on the north end of the island, which was covered in guano and ghastly huge dead pelican corpses everywhere.  It smelled so bad.  The sun had already set, and I had gotten a text from Julie that they had locked through, set up camp, but that there was a large barge locking through northbound that would mean I'd have to wait a few hours before I could lock through.  In addition, a small barge passed me going southbound.  I was in a pickle.  Stay on this horrendous rocky, bird-poop-filled island and risk some sort of upper respiratory disease from the stench and airborn dust of the dead pelicans and guano?  Or paddle at night like I said I never wanted to do, face waiting for a lock for several hours to meet up with Jake and Julie?  I figured it was probably safer for me (on this flat, moonlit night) to paddle in the dark, and wait out the barge.  

Paddling at night was peaceful and tranquil (except for my nervousness at doing it without proper running lights).  I had a headlamp, and I made sure to stay just outside the channel until I reached the lock to try and stay out of the way of any traffic.  There was no traffic except the southbound barge in front of me, so that was lucky.  When it neared the lock, it anchored for the night, and was no longer a navigation threat.  I was much further from the lock than I realized, so by the time I reached the lock, I only had to wait 30-40 minutes for the northbound barge to lock through.  There were so many moths under the lamppost that it looked like it was snowing.  The lockmaster had a lovely handlebar mustache and joked that I should hitch a ride from my faster friends next time.  As soon as I got through, I saw the lovely warm orange glow of a campfire that Jake had built, and dove for it.  I arrived to camp around 10pm, tired, cold, a little wet, and hungry.  Julie boiled some water for ramen on the campfire for me, I was able to dry and warm myself by the fire, and I was never so happy to have my river family friends there to greet me as I came in.  The site was sandy but flat, and spacious.  They had seen a beaver earlier, and there were raccoon prints all over the place, so we were extra careful to put away our food.

In Dubuque, I met water quality specialists Dean Mattoon and Eric Schmechel who gave me some test strips to measure nitrite and nitrate concentration along the way.  I have enough strips to measure these parameters every hundred miles; every time I take a microplastics water sample.  So far, I have been measuring dissolved oxygen, conductance, total dissolved solids, and transparency.  I am really excited to add these test strips to my regimen, and the timing couldn't be better.  While I haven't measured nitrites and nitrates before now, when I measured them in Dubuque (northern Iowa), the measurements were zero and very low, respectively.  As Illinois and Iowa are the states that provide the majority of these pollutants to the river, This is a fortuitous place to begin measuring for nitrogen.  

Why are nitrates and nitrites important to measure?  These are the chemicals (along with phosphorous) that agriculture uses as fertilizer.  The fertilizer runs off into the water, along with animal waste, soil erosion, and sewage, causing algae to grow like crazy in the delta of the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River.  The algae becomes so thick that it crowds out plants that expire oxygen.  This creates a hypoxic (low oxygen) area where animals are not able to breath and live.  The dead zone is the 2nd largest in the world, and this year was the 2nd largest measured area--larger than the state of New Jersey.  In addition to devastating the ecology, this phenomenon has major negative economic consequences for Gulf fishermen who must travel farther and farther out to sea to find fish and shrimp.  

Some of the solutions to nitrate and nitrite run off include (thanks to Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College)

• Using fewer fertilizers and adjusting the timing of fertilizer applications to limit runoff of excess nutrients from farmland [and urban fertilizer application too]
  
• Control of animal wastes so that they are not allowed to enter into waterways
  
• Monitoring of septic systems and sewage treatment facilities to reduce discharge of nutrients to surface water and groundwater
  
• Careful industrial practices such as limiting the discharge of nutrients, organic matter, and chemicals from manufacturing facilities
  

I'm going to tell the story of today with photos.

Photos speak for themselves.  The museum is marvelous.  Very interesting exhibits.  We spent several hours there.