Naptime.
Our goal today was to go 42 miles in order to beat both our previous records (37 for me, 41 for Leanne). We decided we’d do best if we got an early start, took a late afternoon nap and continued into the evening. So, we woke up at 3:30, and were on the water by 4:40. Paddling early into the sunrise is so lovely. We had a nice north wind which helped us a bit; we sailed about 8 miles with our tarp/paddles contraption. A father and son (Don and Josh) canoeing from Prairie du Chien WI to Quincy IL, shot video of us sailing as they passed us. We listened to Tina Fey’s Bossypants for a couple hours as we sailed, but when the wind died down, we had to paddle ourselves to Keokuk, where we were going to rest. Those couple hours in the hot sun were slllllooowwww. Leanne didn’t know how I was paddling so slowly. I was doing what I could and it wasn’t much. The pool before the dam got wider and the water got slower and it seemed like forever before we finally tied up at the Keokuk Yacht Club. What a wonderful rest we had there, though. A group of people had just been to a funeral and they gave us extra sandwiches, vegetables and a fruit plate left over from the funeral. We gladly snarfed it down, and listened to stories about Pat (their aunt/mother/cousin) who had died. The fruit plate was especially delicious. After some time online and being refreshed with food, we set our sleeping bags out on the grass for a nap. The Yacht Club owners offered us a shower, a place to stay and the opportunity to lift our boats out of the water to clean them if we wanted—which made leaving a few hours later really difficult! But we felt like we had just had such a great rest in Burlington, and we were really dedicated to making our 42 mile goal that night, and we were only about 12 miles from that goal. So we left just after dark.
We had gone through a couple locks at night before, but the turbulence after this lock was intense and rather scary. Out of nowhere, a standing wave caused by who-knows-what under the water sucked me into it and it broke over me—the closest I had come to being knocked over so far. Leanne was able to miss the worst of the turbulence. We were both surprised by it and glad that we were traveling together at this point. The water was perfectly calm after that initial turbulence, but I was cold and wet for the rest of the evening. We made our goal of 42 miles and found a dock on the map at 45 miles. When we arrived at the dock, we realized it was a barge dock, not a boat dock. There were no lights, and as we shined our headlamps into the dark, we laughed at how creepy it seemed: fog steaming up from the dark water, eyes reflecting back at us from the trees and the muddy riverbanks (frogs, raccoons, opossums), the looming shadow of a crumbling factory with no lights… There was no place to land at the “dock” and so we found ourselves, at 2 in the morning, continuing on to the next landing, 5 miles downstream…which meant we would paddle 50 miles! We arrived 4:20am, meaning our day had been 23.6 hours long, with a 5.6 hr break in the afternoon/evening—or 18 hrs of paddling. But we did it—FIFTY MILES on the upper Mississippi River!
We had gone through a couple locks at night before, but the turbulence after this lock was intense and rather scary. Out of nowhere, a standing wave caused by who-knows-what under the water sucked me into it and it broke over me—the closest I had come to being knocked over so far. Leanne was able to miss the worst of the turbulence. We were both surprised by it and glad that we were traveling together at this point. The water was perfectly calm after that initial turbulence, but I was cold and wet for the rest of the evening. We made our goal of 42 miles and found a dock on the map at 45 miles. When we arrived at the dock, we realized it was a barge dock, not a boat dock. There were no lights, and as we shined our headlamps into the dark, we laughed at how creepy it seemed: fog steaming up from the dark water, eyes reflecting back at us from the trees and the muddy riverbanks (frogs, raccoons, opossums), the looming shadow of a crumbling factory with no lights… There was no place to land at the “dock” and so we found ourselves, at 2 in the morning, continuing on to the next landing, 5 miles downstream…which meant we would paddle 50 miles! We arrived 4:20am, meaning our day had been 23.6 hours long, with a 5.6 hr break in the afternoon/evening—or 18 hrs of paddling. But we did it—FIFTY MILES on the upper Mississippi River!
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