Our first day in Missouri!  We slept in.  I explored over the berm and realized that tilled land was closer than I’d imagined it could be.  This is where fertilizer enters the river; nitrates/nitrites and phosphates seep through the soil a few hundred feet (or less) into the river, or, when the river floods, it takes these chemicals right with it. More about the effects of this here. 
 
Leanne was moving super slow when it was time to pack up, so I just enjoyed all the frogs and toads and butterflies at this little landing.  The day was hot, though, and there was no good shade at this landing.  When Leanne stood up she was woozy. She vomited once, and I decided we should get to a doctor in Hannibal since this was the 2nd time in a week that she had vomited out of nowhere.  I was pretty sure she was having some sort of overheating event, and wanted to get her some anti-emitics and IV fluids. I helped pack her boat and we set off.  The lock was only 5 miles away, but she was too weak to paddle, and vomited again.  I decided we needed to get her to a doctor immediately.  She called her father who figured out the nearest clinic was in the town at the lock; Canton.  Meanwhile, I tied her boat to mine and towed her the five miles to the lock.  The lock was closed for maintenance until evening, but the workers were super friendly, and offered to help portage around.  When I asked if there might be someone who could help us get to the clinic, they didn’t bat an eyelash.  Immediately we had a fellow (I think his name was Joey? I feel really bad I don’t remember) drive us to the clinic, wait for us, drive us to Dollar General for some Gatorade and groceries, and drive us back to the lock.  At the clinic, they did some bloodwork, called in a prescription in Quincy and told her what we already knew—she needed rest and hydration.  I decided we wouldn’t head to Quincy until morning, and that we’d use the evening to rest and hydrate.  Thus, we went directly from being badasses one day (50 miles!) to being very humbled (5 miles) the next. 

The guys at Lock 20 were awesome.  They let us camp wherever we wanted, and offered the tractor barn as cover if we wanted too.  We took them up on that, but still set up our tents inside (bugs were bad).  We had incredible electric storms pass overhead that night; two thunderheads and attendant lightning were visible on the horizon over the setting sun (one of the photos/videos I was saddest to lose).  My tent doesn’t stand on its own—you have to stake it out to support the arches.  Since the floor of the tractor barn was concrete, I was pretty happy with my macguyvered solution to set heavy metal plates I found in a metal recycling bin on the stake-guides.  

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.  

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.  

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. 

We took a field trip with Dean and Eric to the Swiss Valley Nature Center where we enjoyed the nature center itself, and then took a brief walk down to the creek where Dean did a benthic invertebrate search to show us how the types of invertebrates found can be used as indicators for the health of the water.  

When I spoke earlier with Chuck Isenhart and Dean and Eric, they shared with me a great deal about the water quality issues of Iowa.  Since 1993, Dubuque has declared itself a national disaster area  8-9 times due to flooding.  Therefore, Dubuque is trying to work on decreasing flooding by implementing some of these tactics:

• Sediment ponds and flood control structures
• buffers along rivers to sink water
• take land out of production
• use flowering plants and sedges along waterways rather than other crops
• filter and impound water
• stormwater ordinances
• bioswales and permeable pavers to replace asphalt

Thirty-one states and 2 provinces drain into the Mississippi River, and Minnesota and Wisconsin are considered to be leaders in protecting their lakes, but all the states in the Mississippi River watershed do things differently, and assuming all MN and WI's tactics is not as easy as saying they should.  Political pushback can be great in some of these states because the culture is one of fearing that someone will dictate what the land can be used for. What is crucial is working together across boundaries to use rational boundaries instead.  Rather than dictating what farmers can do with land, legislators want to implement a "we'll help you if you help yourself" planning principle.  Looking at the ecology as a whole, not just measuring nitrogen run-off, is one way to encourage and measure solid planning. 

Chuck Isenhart was clear about a few points: 

• We are being proactive in the area
• We are building partnerships in the area to deal with issues
• These are BROAD issues--we are looking to deal with ALL of the potential problems, not just a few
• For long term changes, we all need to talk about current practices that generate the problems.
  
  

Words matter.  That's what Jonathan Brown, our tour guide and plant manager, reminded us.  The plant that we toured used to be called the Water Pollution Control Plant, but that implies a negative.  Instead, the plant is now focused not on reducing pollution but recovering water and other byproducts of sewage waste; hence its name: the Water and Resource Recovery Center (WRRC).  It's a mindset change:  sewage is not just waste to throw away, it has important and valuable resources worth recovering.  

Until 1956, Dubuque's sewage flowed directly into the Mississippi River, untreated.  In addition, industry like meat packing companies would discharge their waste (including grease and blood) directly into the river.  A sewage treatment plant was built in 1956, and its efforts were redoubled with advent of the Clean Water Act in 1972.  At that time, the WRRC's influent saw 2000mg/L of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and had an effluent of 300-400mg/L BOD.  At that time, Dubuque's population was close to 750,000.  The population is much smaller now, about 60,000.  Currently, influent measures 300-400mg/L BOD and effluent measures just 10 mg/L BOD.  Thus, the effluent from the city has greatly improved over the past 40-50 years.  

So how is this all achieved?  Sewage is treated in a series of 4 pools and chambers which successively heat and then cool and stabilize the inflent rendering the material cleaner.  Anaerobic digesters release methane which is cleaned and used to power micro turbines which heat 75% of the plant.  This methane recovery saves $250,000 per year in electricity and reduces the plant's carbon footprint.  The anaerobic digesters also yield high quality biosolid for farmland.  Biosolid is very similar to compost, but comes from human waste rather than vegetable matter.  Adding biosolid to the land improves the tilth of the soil, increases organic matter and allows for slow nitrogen release. Liquid effluent is water with only 10 mg/L BOD and is released into the Mississippi River.  

The WRRC's goals are 
#1: Improve public health
#2: improve health of the environment
#3: give back by regaining good from the process (water, energy, biosolids).  WRRC is still working on decreasing the amount of N and P released into the environment, but the expensive infrastructure (they've invested $70 million and need several more million dollars to reach all their goals) only recovers and cleans so much.  WRRC is hoping to eventually be able to recover phosphorous from waste water too, so that doesn't go into the river.  Currently, phosphorous used in fertilizer is mined, so it has economic worth.  As phosphorus is the limiting factor for algal blooms, removing it from wastewater effluent would help in decreasing the size of the Gulf of Mexico's Dead Zone.  Though it must not be forgotten that phosphorous comes much more from agriculture than wastewater.  Indeed, money invested upstream (decreasing N and P used in the first place) will likely be wiser and more effective in the long run. 

When asked about plastics, Jonathan Brown said that macroplastics are filtered out, but that there are no microplastic filters at WRRC.  Small pieces of plastic likely get rolled into the biosolids, or else exit in effluent.  He also expressed his dismay for "flushable" wipes.  "Yes, they're technically flushable--they will go down your toilet, but they don't break down easily and they clog our filters all the time."  (Hint:  Don't use "flushable" wipes!!!) 

One of the several organizations I'm partnering with on this journey is Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, or ASC.  This organization mobilizes the outdoor community to gather and share scientific data, driving conservation around the world. They have several projects running at any one time, and I was lucky to find them the year that ASC is collecting microplastic data in freshwater waterways around the world, as it aligns perfectly with the mission of my journey.  

In two years of research, ASC has found microplastics around the world, in some of the most remote oceans. These plastic particles attract toxins like DDT and BPA, and then enter the food chain when ingested by aquatic life. With this information, ASC recently expanded the project to freshwater, because data in that field is lacking. A 2015 report compiled by the GESAMP called microplastic pollution “an emerging issue of international concern.” Microplastics are particles of plastic less than 5mm in size, which have been shown to be highly prevalent in marine environments (Cole et al., 2011). Microplastic particles can act as a mechanism for the transfer of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) into marine organisms (Zarfl and Matthies, 2010) and in turn are harmful to the marine food web and may increase public exposure to toxins (Wright et al., 2013; Chua et al., 2014). It is believed that microplastics are doing similar harm in freshwater environments, but there is a need for further scientific exploration.

ASC has four teams of Mississippi River paddlers contributing to the ASC Microplastics Project this summer! Emily Stifler Wolfe of ASC says, "What a cool opportunity to gather a really valuable dataset that can be used to leverage a reduction in plastic pollution."  Emily also offered, "You are the ideal adventurer for ASC: You're competent in the outdoors, you're on an extended expedition on which you'll be able to gather otherwise unobtainable data, and you're creative, so you can help us spread the word about our work."  I am super happy to be contributing to this effort, and look forward to volunteering my time to write the paper that will accompany all this freshwater microplastics data collection.  

Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to mobilize the outdoor community to gather and share targeted scientific data, catalyzing conservation efforts worldwide. A trained wildlife technician and notable explorer, named “Adventurer of the Year” in 2008 by National Geographic, Gregg Treinish established ASC in 2011 to offer outdoor adventurers a way to help protect the natural world they loved. Since its foundation, ASC has sent thousands of athletes to collect data for hundreds of scientists working on seven continents and in all five oceans. These partnerships have led to the discovery of more than a dozen new species, provided key information to guide climate change decisions, and helped protect threatened wildlife habitat. In total, ASC has saved the conservation community millions of dollars by mobilizing volunteers, while also providing a unique learning and engagement experience for project participants. Our work has been featured in more than 100 media outlets. In the year 2015, ASC has already saved the conservation community 3005 days of work through the efforts of its extensive volunteer network.