Another Johah 4:8 day

Once the sunsets and night arrives on the river the temperatures cool down considerably and the effort to propel the canoe is much more bearable. There is still a large group of canoes and kayaks in our general vicinity which makes night travel a little safer because help is nearby if the need arises. Of course my partner, Daniel, can’t stand to have another boat in front of him so we are continuously pursuing and passing the other boats even in the dark.

As I have said before, night or after dark is my favorite time to be on the river. The stars are brighter and the full moon puts out a lot of light which is then reflected off the water. As we watch the surface sometimes a whirlpool or other funny current slips up on us and will give a few seconds of excitement just to remind us that the river is in charge. Our canoe “My Dianna” is sleek and quick but to get that she gives up stability so the funny water always give us some excitement but Daniel and I have adapted to her pretty well and are never close to capsizing.

The 26 miles between Waverly and Miami go by pretty quick and we pull in at Miami where Wayne and Jesse are waiting for us and we decide to take an hour nap. With the hot dry summer there is no need for a tent so we just inflate our air mattress’ there in the parking lot with the plan to take an hour nap.
I asked Wayne and Jesse to make sure some car didn’t run over us. In my mind I thought we should have stayed on the water but once I laid down the fatigues of heat and effort of the day brought sleep swiftly. In what seemed like a few minutes someone was kicking my foot to wake me to get us back out on the river. With landing our canoe and moving it up out of the way of the boat ramp, then getting set up for a nap, the nap, then repacking and a bite to eat took us two hours.

Of course, it’s still dark when we set off down river for the 36 mile ride to Glasgow. An interesting but sad fact about Glasgow, Glasgow was the home of the oldest bank in Missouri and it failed this past year. The bank had been in business since 1852 and was still managed by descendants of some of the original founders.

Sunrise on this stretch of the river reveals more sandbars and wing dikes that I haven’t seen before. The sandbars are inviting and they would make a great place to get out and stretch your legs while looking for treasures if one was not racing against the clock. Sunrise also brings back the heat, without a cloud in the sky today promised to be just as hot as yesterday. Its going to be hot, not as hot as Jonah experienced but nevertheless hot:
"And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live." Jonah 4:8
Some of the paddlers had the same fainting problem Jonah did, not that they wished to die, but several did get overheated and some passed out. The heat had a high attrition rate on this years race.

As the Glasgow Bridge comes into view I’m reminded of the crash there last year when “Goldfish Goddess” got caught up in strainers near one of the bridge piers and was sucked out of her kayak by the current. She talked about doing underwater somersaults as the current pulled her downstream before she could get to the surface and yell for help.

Once again, Wayne and Jesse were there waiting on us to arrive. The Checkpoint here is at Stump Island Park which was an actual campsite of Lewis and Clark when they were going upstream in 1804. The Park is maintained by the city and it has showers and lots of room to set up tents.

We won’t need a tent this morning because we will be "proceeding on" as soon as we get some coffee and breakfast burritos from the ladies manning the refreshment stand. From Glasgow it is a long haul to the next checkpoint at Kat Fish Katy's but first we have to navigate the dreaded "Lisbon Bottoms" which is just a few miles below Glasgow.

2012 MR 340 Update

                                     Read Matthew 8:23-26

Once again I signed up for the MR340 even though I didn’t have a partner locked in for the race. I was beginning to wonder if I had made a bad choice because everyone I asked couldn’t or wouldn’t commit to the race. Having done the event solo in 2010 I wasn’t excited about doing it solo again. There are a lot of demons on the river particularly after 40 plus hours of paddling without sleep. It is tough enough to deal with them when one has a partner so a solo trip really wasn’t on my radar for this year.


When my good friend, the Blacksmith, told me this spring his son was going to paddle from Boonville to the Gulf a light bulb went off in my bald head. I ask for his son’s phone number and then gave Daniel a call to inquire if he would be interested in the MR340. To make a long story short he was and we became a team, the latest variety of the Sons of Auxvasse Creek. This would be the 7th race for the Sons of Auxvasse Creek and each team has been made up of different individuals except for the two races Daniel and I competed in this year.


Daniel did make the trip from Boonville to the Gulf with Mark, a friend of his from Warrensburg, in 20 days. That was a pretty good training run to prepare for the MR340. Daniel and I scheduled a 30 mile trip on the Missouri River from Kaw Point to Ft. Osage to get used to my canoe and each other. My canoe is much more nimble and tipper than the canoe they took to the Gulf and I’m sure I paddled differently than Mark did on the Gulf trip. Nevertheless, it didn’t take Daniel long to adapt to the sleek canoe and me.

As a warm up for us Daniel and I entered the Race to the Dome on June 30, 2012, a 26.6 mile race on the Missouri River ending in Jefferson City. We took second in the tandem canoe division with a time of 3 hours and 40 minutes. Daniel pushed me the entire time but I managed to somewhat keep pace with him but I made it clear that I couldn’t maintain that pace for 340 miles once the big race on the river started.


At one point there had been 400 boats signed up for the 2012 MR340 but the hot weather and low water keep about a hundred boats away. On the morning of July 31, 2012 about 300 boats prepared for the start of the 7th annual MR340. For the first year the event was started in stages with the solo paddlers starting at 7am and everyone else at 8am. This was a good move and the start was much safer with fewer boats making that transition from the Kansas River to the swifter Missouri River.

With Daniel at the bow and me at the helm it became obvious to me that he was going to set the pace and I was along for the ride. In most of the previous races I have been in it was my goal to simply finish. Without realizing it, I had been paddling not to lose (which is a sure fire recipe for mediocrity) and I had set the pace accordingly in my prior MR340 events. A lot of folks drop out of the MR340 and I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t one of “them”. Not wanting to be a slacker I picked up the pace and decided I would stay as close to the pace as I could for as long as I could.

I had been working out at 5:30am 3 mornings each week with a good friend plus riding my bicycle on a regular basis to maintain some sort of physical fitness with the MR340 in mind. Within the first hour I realized that I hadn’t been doing enough to build up my core. I made a mental note to do more sit-ups and planks to prepare for the 2013 event.



That first checkpoint is always crowded because the boats are still pretty much bunched up and we took a tip from the “Anvil Toters” to make our first stop at the Corps of Engineers boat ramp, which is a few miles above the first checkpoint at Lexington, to avoid all that congestion. That was a good move they have indoor bathrooms with running water and air conditioning.



Because we were equipped with a “SPOT” GPS locater it wasn’t necessary for us to stop at the checkpoints. This was the first year for the “SPOT” option and it worked great for us. Not only did it free us up from physically checking in at the checkpoints our ground (crew which consisted of Daniels father, Wayne, and son, Jesse) could keep pretty close track of where we were on the river.



The river level is down because of the drought and I thought it was much more scenic than it had been in prior years. When I was going upstream with the Lewis and Clark boats it was a rainy year as well so the water was high then as it has been most of the time since. With the wing dikes sticking up out of the water and the sand bars it just looked more like what one might expect from a big river even though the view from the river above Boonville is mostly the back side of a levy.



We planned to stop at the Waverly check point, which is 74 miles into the event, to get our boat set up with lights for night travel. We actually got there at 7:45pm just under 12 hours after the start. We refilled our coolers, got fresh water and ate a burger at the boy scouts food stand and headed back out on the river at 8pm. We had not made any firm plans to sleep so we decided we would just play it by ear. The next checkpoint would be at Miami and we could decide if we wanted to take a nap or proceed on when we got there.



Once it gets dark the Missouri River becomes a new world. The race is always scheduled during a full moon and the moonlight reflects off the water which creates more light than one would imagine possible. It is easy to see any kind of debris on the river or the buoys marking the channel. Night is my favorite time on the river. The stars are much brighter, one can see lights of the river towns off in the distance, and occasionally a train’s headlight will reflect out on the surface. This year the big benefit of night was the cooler temperatures. With 100 degrees and no shade during the day the darkness and cooler temperatures was very welcome.

Gateway Bike Tour 2012

Part of my training regimen for the MR340 is biking to build endurance.  There are a lot of paddlers that are much better and stronger than I am and they will get a great jump on me in the first 24 hours but after that first 24 hours we are all about the same.  Every year we have been in the position that we pass nearly every canoe we see during the last 100 miles of the race which I thinks makes "Sons of Auxvasse Creek" one of  the best of the worst and its where endurance makes a difference.

My adventure friend and long time buddy, Tom Young, and I are always planning some sort of adventure and this year we came up with the "Gateway Tour" which was a compromise to fit into our schedules and to see some new country.  We planned to start at the Arch in St. Louis hence "Gateway Tour".

One of the issues we had to deal with was the Missouri Bankers Convention which I had to attend since I'm on the committee that plans it and it started on Wednesday.  My wife and daughter were going to attend with me so it didn't make sense for me to take a vehicle to central Missouri then have them drive down in a different vehicle in a few days.  To get around the two vehicle issue I decided to ride Amtrak to Jefferson City where my son is in training at the Highway Patrol Academy.  I could send most of my gear ahead with him and meet up with him to load the bike up with my camping gear and other stuff I always think I have to have to avoid dealing with it on the train.

My beautiful wife, Dianna, took me to Independence, Missouri to catch the train which was a neat experience.  There was one other individual on the train with a bike, he was headed to St. Louis to meet up with a couple of friends and they were going to ride the entire Katy Trail out and back which is an annual trek for them.  The train staff were very accommodating of the bike and the trip was very enjoyable.

I departed the train in Jefferson City just below the Governors house which is a pretty good climb to get out of the river bottom where the tracks are.  I always head to the Lewis and Clark statue at the capitol when in Jefferson City to pay my respect to Corps.  Then off to a bike shop to get a new mirror for my helmet which I broke when getting off the train. 

The local bike shop is near Central Dairy which is a must stop when in Jefferson City but on this day I had to pedal past because I know a full belly of ice cream is not conductive to riding a bike for 40 miles.  The bike shop belongs to the family of one of the guys I became good friends with during our river travels for the Lewis and Clark reenactments during the bi-centennial.  I acquired my mirror and had a nice visit and then headed out to the Highway Patrol Headquarters to see if I could find Matt's vehicle to recover my panniers for the bike.  He was parked in a restricted area so I just moved on knowing I would have a chance to meet up with him in a few hours at my brothers house near Fulton.

Jefferson City has a few bike routes and I was able to find my way back to the Highway 54 bridge which recently added a bike lane at a cost of $5,000,000.  I'm support bike routes and trails but my opinion is $5 million is a little pricey for a bike lane across the Missouri River.  But its there and I will use it.  It hooks into the Katy and just north of Highway 63 there is a spur that gets on on the way north off of the trail onto old Highway 54.  There is still some traffic but nothing like the new 4 lane highway.

I pedaled into the Holts Summit McDonalds and was disappointed to see the 15 cent (I just discovered my computer don't have a cents symbol) hamburger sign gone.  It was and old sign from the original McDonalds in Jefferson City.  I guess too many folks came in for the 15 cent deal.  After a quick meal I got back on old Highway 54 and headed north into New Bloomfield where I had to cross over 54 before heading north again.  I was pedaling into a headwind which made for a little more effort but the sky was overcast and it was in the low 70's which made for a cool ride, sometimes even chilly ride.

Just a couple of miles before Fulton a small dog came out barking and chasing me, I didn't know he had a buddy until I felt him grab my right foot.  I wear a relatively heavy hiking shoe and the dog was unable to penetrate the shoe but its always a shock when a dog grabs you.  I have been dog bit on two previous occasions while bike riding and they both broke the skin so I guess I was fortunate this time.  I usually carry pepper spray and sometimes a pistol but in this case I didn't have either because of Amtrak regulations.  I got off the bike and threw a few rocks at the dogs and got back on my way.

I grew up near Fulton so I know my way around the little city pretty good except some of the streets are not there now.  Anyway I went by the Churchill Memorial to pay respects to the old "Statesman" and to look at the wall President Reagan made the Russians tear down.  Interestingly the west side of the wall is brightly painted in German graffiti while the east side is a dull gray. 

Then on to my brothers, Robert, house to get a shower and clean up to go to one of the grandsons ballgames.  Matt's girlfriend had driven down from Lawson so she, Matt and I met a Roberts house while he and his wife, Pat, were dining out in Columbia with friends.  The three of us took off for New Bloomfield where the baseball game was in progress when we got there.  It was a good game and my grandson, Grant, made some good plays.  One of the other grandsons, Chase, was there but he was pretty busy exploring since he not in the same league as Grant.  The oldest grandson, Dawson, was with his mom at another baseball game in Columbia.  We all managed to meet up at Aries Pizza in Fulton for a post game meal where I attempted to load up on carbs for my bike ride before heading back to Robs house in Calwood for some sleep.

The next morning I recovered my panniers from Matt's vehicle and Rob took me to Toms house where we loaded up our gear in his truck and headed off to meet his wife at the St. Louis airport where they would celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary very briefly before we hopped on the Metro.  Incidentally Dianna and I would celebrate our anniversary the next day by text message.  Do we have great women or what?

If you would like to follow more of this trip you will have to go to Tom's blog at:  http://bigmuddyriver.wordpress.com/

"O. The Joy! & More River Angels

Final approach at St. Charles!!!!!!!

Greetings from Lewis and Clark friends.


As I was looking for a spot to land to get out of the way of that big barge coming at me at a snail’s pace I noticed a gap in one of those wing dikes that run parallel with the river. From my view point it was like a huge upside-down uppercase L. To paddle all the way to the opening at the end would put me pretty close to the barge so I decided to take a shot at that opening in the dike.

Because of the high water I couldn’t really see the wing dike but I could see the water going over it except for the gap where the water was smooth. As I closed in on the opening the current became swifter than I had anticipated and I missed that gap by about 4 feet which put me into that rushing water that was going over the top. In the few seconds I had to prepare for the “white water” I pull all the effort I could muster in the paddle strokes and when the canoe cleared the rough water the canoe actually fell a couple of feet into the trough that had formed behind the dike. The landing was rough but I managed to keep it upright and coasted into the calm water and was able to land uneventfully on the shore.

As I watched the big barge go by I ate a bagel and some spam. I was amazed by how well those bagels held up and how good they were with that spam. I couldn’t remember spam tasting that good. I finished my lunch off with the last of the peaches I had purchased from the real “river rat” on that first evening out.

Once the beast passed by I headed back out to the river thru the opening at the end of the wing dike. Back out into the current I could feel the wind building like it did last year. It seems to be much more difficult for one person to paddle into the wind than two and it takes a lot of effort and concentration to keep the canoe moving in the right direction to obtain the maximum benefit of the current.

In a few minutes one of the safety boats staffed by a couple of “river angels” pulled alongside me and said “we saw how you jumped that wing dike” and then asks if I would like to drop in behind them so they could break the wind for me for a while. I don’t think it’s legal to draft on a motorized boat but since I wasn’t a contender for one of the top spots I figured (correctly) no one would care. I thought they might let me follow them for a mile or so but they stayed out in front of me for about 10 miles which was a great relief other than the smoke from their cigarettes which seemed to hang around my canoe when they would light up. Despite the smoke it was a good tradeoff.

When we went under the Washington, MO Bridge they had to peel off and go back upstream to cover their section of the river. I think the wind may have been just as bad as last year for this stretch of the river so I really benefited from the break afforded by paddling in the draft created by the second “River Angel(s)” I encountered on this trip.

The final checkpoint is Klondike and it’s just a couple of miles below the Washington Bridge so I pulled in refreshed but about 10 hours behind schedule. I didn’t get out of me canoe. After a brief discussion I headed downstream for the final 27 mile dash to the finish line.

This final 27 miles it the best part of the route. There is more current here because of all the tributaries have entered the Missouri River by this point. With the added current and the extra adrenalin this last few miles go quickly. I arrived at the finish line at about exactly the same time Chad and I did last year. Of course I had the benefit of the extra current because of the high water and we started an hour and half behind schedule in 2009 because of a storm in Kansas City.

To paraphrase Captain William Clark of the original expedition: “Boathouse in view! O! The Joy” I had been in contact with one of my re-enactor friends earlier in the day by cell phone so several of my buddies with the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles (Lewis and Clark re-enactors) were there to meet me at the river below the Lewis and Clark Boat House. They helped me out of my canoe and some carried it over to the staging area while I was getting hugs and congratulations from the rest.

One of the re-enactors Colonel Ed Scholl, USAR, Retired gave me a copy of his book, Lewis and Clark in the Twenty-First Century, which he had published about his experiences on the 8,000 mile 4 year journey with the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles as we re-enacted the journey on its 200th anniversary. In it he inscribed “To Russ: A fellow crew member and now a friend for life. You traveled & paddled 340 miles for my book. Ed Scholl as Pvt. Hugh Hall.”

Casey and one of his sons was there to haul me and the canoe back to Callaway County where I met Dianna the next day for the ride back home after the annual Wright/Potts reunion.

I consider the solo MR340 one of my greatest achievements and I thank God for the ability to do it. However I have traveled a trail much more important, it’s called the Romans Road. It’s a group of verses from the Bibles New Testament book of Romans which tells us:

All of us are sinners and all of us fall short of His Glory

I deserve death for my sins

I can be saved from my sins, I can’t earn salvation but I can simply ask for it

Jesus paid the price when he took on my sins and died for me—no matter what I have done nothing is so bad that he has to get back up on that cross and die again. He died for me while I was still a sinner. His love saves me not religion or a church

Romans 10:9,10 "...If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."-

Anyone could get in a boat and paddle down the river but it takes a real man or woman to admit they are in need of forgiveness and to pray the sinner’s prayer. If you are not sure where the trail you are on is going to take you I would be happy to give you directions to the ultimate checkpoint.

Who is that in your boat and what is he doing?

These thoughts were inspired by a devotional I heard a few days ago and at the time I thought this really applied to us MR340 types. The biblical reference is Luke 8:22-25.

After a hard day of teaching the masses Jesus asked the disciples to take him across the lake so he could get some rest. The disciples were fishermen, comparable to today’s longshoremen, strong and tough; they were seasoned boatmen, used to being on the sea at night and had absolutely no qualms about taking off the 7 to 14 miles to cross the sea that night. After all, Jesus was in their boat.

Once out on the sea Jesus fell asleep and a storm came up, the waves were coming over the gunnels and the boat was filling up but Jesus remained asleep. These hardened longshoremen were afraid. It must have been one bad storm to scare these guys. Even though they had Jesus in their boat they were in jeopardy and they were fearful.

Is Jesus in your boat? If Jesus is in your boat and just along for the ride he can’t be of much help to you as the disciples have discovered.

These tough boatmen went to Jesus and told him, “We are afraid and we need your help, save us”. When they went to Jesus and ask him to help he responded by calming the sea and wind. He saved them and the fishermen were amazed.



Jesus saved those tough old boatmen, all they had to do was ask. If Jesus is just along for the ride in your boat you might want to consider asking him to save you. If he could save those longshoremen of long ago he certainly could do it today.

If you would like to invite Jesus to get into your boat and to save you contact me or someone you trust.

Herman

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. James 4-14



When we were returning the Keel boat to St. Charles we encountered some early morning fog in Herman, Mo as shown in this photo from August, 2005. Five years later in August, 2010 we were going to get to experience some of this fog again.

When I landed in Herman the fog was beginning to form on the river. It was my plan to take a quick nap here in Herman so I wouldn't hit the "wall" as I did a few days ago. Since it was going to be a quick nap I didn't want to put up the tent so I just lay down on a picnic table with my light sleeping bag under the shelter there at Riverfront Park in Herman. My plan was to head back out to the river in about an hour.


It was after 3:30 when I woke up cold, hungry and confused. Even if it was August the night was really cool and it was the cold that woke me up. My one hour nap had been stretched into 2 1/2 hours. I picked up my bed and headed back to my canoe, the boy scouts were selling coffee at the checkpoint but breakfast wasn't going to be ready for another hour so I gulped down a cup of coffee and prepared to proceed on. The person manning the checkpoint said the fog was going to get heavy at daybreak so I decided to get in as much distance as I could before then.

The fog was settled in but it looked like there might be 100 yards or so of visibility. One other canoe was preparing to depart so we launched together to aid each other if the fog would get thicker. Once back on the river we encountered another canoe and the three of us headed downriver. Once we were away from the street lights of Herman the fog really closed in around us and that 100 yards of visibility turned into 20 feet of visibility or less.

Within a mile our three canoes were separated and I never did see them again. I don't know if they fell behind, went ahead or simply moved over in the channel. With the heavy fog it seemed my canoe we sitting still. I'm not one that minds being alone but at this point I was more alone than I wanted to be. I knew there was debris, wing dikes and other boats out on the river but being unable to see them sure raised the tension level.

I determined to land the canoe and wait out the fog and began paddling very gently in the direction of the river bank. When I was within a few feet I could make out some trees hanging out over the water and headed to them. I grabbed an overhanging branch and eased my canoe up to the bank.

Once I had my canoe tied up I got out and gathered up some driftwood and built a fire. With cool damp air the fire felt good and I thought it might be a beacon for some others that might be out in the fog. With sunrise still more than a hour away I pulled up a rock next to the fire and waited for the fog to lift.


When the sun came up I was totally amazed. It seemed to me the sun was rising in the west. Instead of landing on the bank of the river I had actually landed on a island and my internal compass was turned around 180 degrees. As the sun began to warm things up I could make out a canoe going by once in a while out on the river as they moved thru the fog. I was going to stay put until visibility opened up because I didn't want to encounter any unexpected objects out on the river.

Once the fog lifted I loaded up and headed downriver again. I must have lost about 4 hours but I did get in another hour of sleep so it wasn't a total loss. Once I got out into the current visibility was much better and it improved by the minute as the sun burned the moisture out of the air.

Last year we encountered some of the worst winds below Herman and this year the winds were still there. Perhaps not a bad as last year but being solo I didn't have the power that Chad and I had last year so I think I must have struggled as much as I did last year.

A few miles above Washington I could see a huge barge that actually looked like a factory building or something coming upriver very slowly. I knew this beast would be putting out a huge wake so I started looking for a landing spot to wait him out.

Hugs, Pizza and River Angels

The departure from Jeff City quickly takes me past the state capitol on the port side and I am soon past all signs of the settlements. This area of the river is familiar to me and the high water is beginning to go down. Which makes the wing dikes much more visible. They are still underwater but they don’t have as much water over them as they have had which makes them even more treacherous with whirlpools, rough water and occasional rock poking up out of the water. It is best to stay away from them.

Its about 20 miles from Jeff City to Mokane. Mokane is not a scheduled stop for the MR340 but it is my favorite stop because I usually meet someone there with one of the famous pizzas from
Wright Brothers Store in Calwood. This year Casey, Becky and the boys meet me there at about 6:30 with lots of pizza and fresh drinks. I took about a 45 minute break eating and visiting with them. They live just up the road at Toledo so its not that farm from home for them but they had to go to Calwood to get the pizza first.

While at Mokane Scott Mansker, the promoter of the MR340, is there taking a break in his safety boat. In spite of his T shirt I allow him to take a photo of Casey, Becky, Dawson, Grant, Chase and I before I head back out on the river. I get my hugs from the boys and head on down river.

Once back on the river I soon come to the most significant milestone for the entire trip, the Auxvasse Creek. The Auxvasse Creek is joined by the Crows Fork Creek a few miles up in the heart of Callaway County and its here where they form the Missouri River. When the “Sons of Auxvasse Creek” meet up with the Auxvasse Creek it is a joyful event. Shortly after passing the Auxvasse Creek or Big Miry as translated by William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) it begins to get dark.
When darkness fell one of the largest full moons I have ever witnessed came up out of the trees. It was huge and provided plenty of light to avoid river obstacles. At 8:31 I posted to my journal, I got peace like a River, God is good, 250 miles no flats.
I always like travel on the river when nightfall comes. Somehow it seems to make one blend in with the flow of the current. Once the night is established I go to my usual routine of hanging out in the middle of the river to stay away from those hidden wing dikes.

As I proceed on in the darkness a few wisps of fog are starting to appear. At about 10pm is seems I’m headed straight into a bluff which must be about half a mile straight ahead. I really don’t remember this from my prior trips on the river so I get my 1 million candle power spot light out and shine it downstream and I see this long wing dike with water going over it stretching across the river just in front of the bluff. For some reason this just wasn’t making any sense to me. I switch the modes on my GPS and I can see that I’m approaching the confluence of the Gasconade River. Even knowing this I still a little concerned about what to do next when I encounter my first River Angel.

I don’t know where she came from but a lady in a bass boat eased up beside me and asks if I’d like for her to lead me thru there. I quickly replied yes ma'am and fell in behind her. When the river is at normal level that big wind dike sticks up out of the water and it is very obvious where the river is going but with the water going over the dike I was very happy to have a River Angel escort me thru that pass particularly with the wisps of fog that were sprouting up on the river.

It seemed like no time before the bridge over the river at Herman came in view. I paddled my canoe into the boat ramp at Herman at 12:05 am on Friday August 27, 2010 which would have been my Grandmother Wright’s 117th birthday.