June 3 to 6, beyond Burlington

I called my friend Chris in South Africa from my B&B in Burlington. I hadn’t spoken to him in a while. He was going through a very tough time. His younger, and sole surviving brother, had committed suicide a few weeks earlier. It was one those bizarre and very tragic incidents we never expect to happen to people we know. Apparently, he and his wife had, in a moment of dark despair, decided to kill themselves and their two young daughters with a highly toxic agricultural pesticide. It’s not entirely clear what happened next, or what the sequence of events was. Both he and his wife took the poison, but, thank God, didn’t descent into the abyss of madness far enough to give the poison, mixed into an orange drink, to the two girls. He called an ambulance for his wife, then got into his pickup and drove into a nearby corn field to die. She survived.
As if that wasn’t enough, Chris is struggling to stay afloat financially on his 3,000 acre farm on edge of the Kalahari desert. And all of this came short on the heels of a messy divorce, and the deaths of his father, mother and 30-year old youngest brother in the space of a few years. If I was prone to superstition I would begin to think he was cursed, or being punished, or put to the test by some god, like a biblical Job. I felt really bad that I couldn’t be there for him, or at least talk to him on the phone more often.
I saw two young squirrels playing on the railroad track. Did their parents not warn them that it’s dangerous? It was not a bad day for paddling. There was a 15 mph wind blowing from the west; nothing that I couldn’t handle by then. The river is flanked by beautiful Iowa farmland. The forecast called for thunderstorms in the early afternoon ― I hoped that I could avoid being struck by lightning. Access to cover wasn’t too bad; it looked like I’d be able to get off the river fairly quickly and sit out the storm in the relative safety of a few trees. There were a couple of powerboats out on the water, but nowhere near as bad as the week before.
I enjoyed looking at the farm country, whenever I could catch a glimpse beyond the riverbank, that is. The corn was standing up to a foot high in places, even though it was still very early in the growing season. Soybean fields were sprouting green everywhere, the little plants already two to three inches high. I watched eight turkeys grazing in a field near the river.
I was really glad that the weather had forced me off the river for a couple of days. I had a good time, relaxed and recharged my body, and, with hindsight, realized that I was actually quite tired and a little burnt out. The wind and the big lakes had taken a lot out of me in the weeks before, and I was definitely suffering from river-fatigue. I had pushed myself hard every day since leaving Brownsville ten days earlier. I wanted to keep my daily average distance above 25 miles, in spite of the wind, and that made for long days of hard paddling. My nerves were getting a little frayed, and to me that’s always an early-warning sign that it’s time to take a break. And Burlington turned out to be the perfect place to hang up my paddles for a few days. I can’t claim that I had planned it that way. Just plain old good luck.
Speaking of luck: on Wednesday, May 30th, I camped a mile upstream from Muscatine, Iowa. On the Friday, when I was safely in Schramm House, a tornado ripped through Muscatine, turning over trailers and knocking down trees where I had slept in my two pound tent less than 48 hours earlier. According to reports on the news, the wind got up to 150 mph at times!
For a while I thought there are no bald eagles in Iowa. I couldn’t recall seeing one after I had crossed the Minnesota-Iowa line. At first I thought this was because the Iowa bank is quite heavily industrialized in places, but so is the area below St. Paul, and there were plenty of eagles. Then, over breakfast on Sunday, I learned from Bruce’s friend JD that the eagles migrate south along the river when it freezes over further north. They settle around the pockets of open water in the more protected backwater areas, where they nest and feed for the winter. So the good people of Iowa had not exterminated all their bald eagles after all.
In spite of the increased industrialization (and more litter) on the Iowa bank, I remained impressed with how clean and unpolluted the Mississippi is. People who know me will vouch for the fact that I am, ahem, a little squeamish when it comes to dirt and germs. Yet I had no problem stripping naked at the end of each day, and wading into the river with my biodegradable Campsuds to wash off the day’s sweat.
A mother duck tried to lure me away from her brood of six tiny ducklings. She seemed panicked and ended up splitting the group, which caused her to get really flustered. One of the babies picked up on her panic, and took off towards the middle of the river. I tried to hold back to give them a chance to regroup, but they kept milling around in front of the kayak, and I had no choice but to push on and scatter them even more. I’m not sure what kind of duck it was; it was shaped a bit like a wood duck, but with different coloring. My knowledge of birdlife is not entirely encyclopedic….
Power boaters do seem to like one another. Maybe it’s just their herd instinct that makes them flock together like sheep. I counted 20 boats, moored hull to hull, along a narrow strip of sand, on the tip of one small island. And this in an area where the river is several miles wide, with literally dozens of islands and sandbars only minutes away by powerboat. Now I’ve always thought that boating is about getting away from other people, but I’m obviously misguided.
I did the first five miles below Burlington in what seemed to be no time at all. My perception and experience of time seemed to be changing. I couldn’t tell anymore whether an hour, or two or three had passed, and my normally good ‘feel’ for speed was gone.
Twelve miles below Burlington I passed one of the many small cottage communities that line the west bank. A boisterous group was gathered around a cluster of charcoal barbecues, and a Sunday afternoon fish cookout was in full swing. It smelled wonderful, and even though I had a large brunch just a few hours earlier, my appetite stirred noticeably. After the usual back and forth shouting: “…where are y’all coming from…going to etc.” they invited me to stop for lunch: “Hey, you want something to eat? We’ve got fish!” So, of course, I said no thank you. Don’t ask me why. I waved them goodbye, and continued on my merry way, saliva dribbling from the corners of my mouth. Still, it was a kind and generous thing they did; not their fault that I was stupid enough to decline.
I think the book’s title should be “Shut up and paddle”. That’s how I feel sometimes. “Paddle! Don’t panic” would be a good one too. Or maybe I should go with “How to lose 20 pounds in two weeks.” I’m losing weight at an incredible rate; I can almost feel my flesh shrinking. I am not consuming anywhere near the calories I need everyday. I estimate I burn about 6,000 on average every day, and when I add up everything I drink and eat it comes to less than 3,000. Big deficit―I don’t know how long I can sustain that.
It started raining fairly heavily about two hours after I had left Burlington. Fortunately the wind wasn’t very strong―around 10 to 15 mph from the south. The rain stopped soon enough; it was one of those so-called ‘scattered’ thunderstorms. I was starting to feel that ‘scattered’ means wherever I happen to be on the river. I get rained on a lot. The sun came out 20 minutes later, and I was dry and warm in no time. Polyester rules!
There was a lot of debris floating in the river: leaves, branches, trees, the inevitable plastic and polystyrene flotsam, and a bloated, dead dog. The water was a nasty red color and very muddy. It must have been quite the storm that passed through the area. Thank goodness I was sitting out the storm in safety and comfort in Burlington at the time.
Sandy had given me a supersized bag of homemade oatmeal cookies for the ‘road”. I ate half the bag in one sitting. I needed those calories.
Dan Geiger paid me a nice compliment at the end of my WCCO radio interview Saturday night. He said, “Don’t worry, this guy knows what he’s doing.”
Hurricane season officially started last Friday, the first day of my Burlington R&R break. Talk about good timing: on Friday a tornado tore through Muscatine, Iowa, where I had camped on Wednesday night. According to the news report the wind got up to 150 mph, and overturned a trailer, ripped out trees and caused a lot of property damage. A two pound tent pitched on a sandbar is not a good place to be in those conditions.
As soon as the sun came out powerboats started appearing on the river, seemingly from nowhere. Do powerboats have nests along the riverbank, I wonder? Where they lie and wait for the sun to come out and for unsuspecting kayakers to pounce on. Soon I was bouncing around in the wake, working hard to keep the kayak in a straight line and my head pointing the right way, i.e. upwards.
I had stocked up on food at Tom’s Market in Burlington. It was a rather interesting shopping exercise. I normally shop based on healthy choices and value for my money. This time I was going for the highest calorie/weight ratio, which made for some interesting selections: cereal bars with the highest sugar content (hint: the cheaper brands contain the most sugar), canned fruit in syrup (surprisingly hard to find; most brands are canned in juice nowadays), beef jerky and Spam. Yes, Spam: a can of regular Spam has more than a 1,000 calories. Add apple sauce and you can paddle 20 miles on a single can of Spam. I still had a good supply of energy bars and chocolate left, so I had that covered, but I was a little concerned about getting enough protein in my diet, even with the protein supplements I take every day. When you push your body that hard day after day, you have to feed your muscles, otherwise you start losing muscle mass and strength very quickly, something I could not afford. So I also needed to find something with a high protein/weight ratio. Tuna and salmon in foil pouches fit the bill perfectly, and most varieties are pretty tasty. Let’s just say my diet is somewhat eclectic.
Just before Dallas City on the Illinois side I got rained on again. Thunderstorms can form and move rapidly in these parts. I learned early on that it’s no use trying to outrun them. This storm was pushed towards me at a healthy clip by a strong south wind, and the rain moved up the river in a solid veil of water. I couldn’t see anything beyond the storm; everything was grayed out. The rain started coming down with a vengeance, driven straight into my face by a strong southeast wind. The visibility was terrible; I couldn’t see anything more than a few yards ahead. Pretty soon the kayak was pitching and rolling in three foot waves, and I had my work cut out to keep going in the right direction. Thunder rumbled through the clouds a few miles to the east, but not close enough to worry about, so I stayed on the water. The storm lasted about 20 minutes.
I’m running low on AAA batteries. For some reason I had packed more AAs than I’ll use on three trips like this one, but very few AAAs. My digital voice recorder runs on AAAs (and chews them up fast), as does my VHF radio, not exactly an unimportant piece of equipment. I’ll need to buy a couple of packs in the next town I can get to from the river.
Watching TV in Burlington, I was intrigued by the upbeat way the news and weather reporters announced the start of hurricane season. They all made it sound like they were announcing the start of baseball season, or the holidays: “….and yes, Dianne, tomorrow is the official start of hurricane season!” Pack a cooler! Woohoo! Obviously none of them have any appreciation for what it means to the people on the ground when a hurricane rips through a community. On the other hand, it is consistent with how news is presented nowadays. Smile for the camera: “Making news today: Five US soldiers got killed in a roadside bomb blast today…” Ooh, look at me! I’m such a good news anchor; I’m so attractive; I’m on TV ooh ooh ooh! Look at me! I don’t have a clue what I said just now. I’m so pretty! Talking heads, most of them.
My main source of weather information, warnings and forecasts is the NOAA weather channel on my VHF radio. It automatically tunes in to the nearest regional NOAA station, so you always get local information and forecasts. I cannot emphasize too strongly how important accurate and timely weather information is if you want to survive a trip like this. During the first three weeks on the river, paying heed to the weather forecast and weather warnings kept me out of harm’s way on at least four occasions. Don’t ignore the forecast!
The weather report includes the river’s water level at specific points, and the water temperature. River level is not critically important to the kayaker, but it is good to know if the river is rising or falling when picking a spot to camp for the night, and to safely clear the many wing dams in the river. And of course, I want to know of any floods upstream or local flash floods. The river level typically starts dropping this time of the year, and continues to do so until the fall. The water temperature was in the low 60s when I set out from St. Paul; it’s up to around 73 degrees now. At least I don’t have to worry about hypothermia should I end up in the river.
I figured out a way to safely use my digital voice recorder while I’m on the river. It fits nicely in the Aquapac case I got for my handheld GPS. The plastic is ‘dialed’ in to a frequency that allows sound waves to travel through without distortion, so I don’t need to remove the recorder from the case to use it. The cord attached to the case is long enough to go around my neck, so I can’t lose the recorder overboard.
I certainly feel much stronger and more energetic after my three day rest stop in Burlington. The break did me a lot of good.
The Burlington Hawkeye ran a story on the weekend about a fisherman who had caught a 74 pound Chinese carp in the river near Oquawka, IL, the day before I passed by the town. That’s a mighty big carp. The picture in the paper showed the guy straining and barely able to hold the fish up for the camera. His back was bent and twisted at a crooked angle and his legs were bent like a retired rodeo cowboy’s. The fish was clearly causing him more pain than pleasure at the time. His nine year old daughter was posing with daddy and his big fish, and, as the Hawkeye pointed out, she weighed 20 pounds less than the fish. The things you learn on the Mississippi…..
Judged by the general tone of the paper, George Bush isn’t too popular in this part of heartland USA either. Apparently there aren’t many FOGs (friends of George) among the local media barons. The front page lead story in Friday’s paper was on W’s recently announced plans to curb global warming, and let’s just say the story was reported with no less skepticism than you’d get from NPR and other members of the liberal media.
Two miles past Dallas City the wind started picking up again. Yet another thunderstorm was moving in from the southeast. Before long I was bobbing up and down in three foot waves and paddling against the wind. Luckily for me this storm was moving across the river in a northwesterly direction, and it missed me. The river was still very unsettled, with lots of debris floating everywhere, and the water had an ugly rusty red color.
The bridge above Fort Madison was the second double-decker bridge I saw over the Mississippi. The other one is located just below the Davenport lock. Both bridges have a lower level for trains, and an upper car level. They seem to have been built around the same time, late 1800s/early 1900s I’d guess.
Seen from the river, Fort Madison is an ugly, dismal place. Rust-stained factories, utility lines and a power substation litter the Iowa bank like a debris field. The whole place has a disjointed, post-apocalyptic look and feel to it. The industrial area morphs into a bastardized waterfront/strip mall along the riverbank, that is only marginally easier to look at. South of the city is what I presumed to be the original fort that gave Fort Madison its name.
Below the fort there is yet more industrial sprawl, and a seemingly endless row of moored barges along the Iowa bank. I was glad to have Fort Madison behind me.
I camped on Devil Island, two miles downstream from Fort Madison. I was beginning to despair of finding a place to sleep by the time I had passed the city. It was getting dark, and the sky was heavy with storm clouds, the wind was picking up and the temperature was dropping fast. Then, almost out of the blue, I saw a narrow strip of sand up ahead, which meant a place to drag the boat out and pitch the tent. My map didn’t show the sandbar, so it was a pleasant surprise, and a relief, when I saw the dying daylight reflected by the yellow sand.
June 4:
In the news last night: A death row inmate in Texas has launched a joke contest on the Internet. He wants to use the winning entry as his last words when he dies by lethal injection on June 26. He got the idea from a fellow inmate who laughed when he was led to the execution chamber, and said, “Where’s a stunt double when you need one?”
Nauvoo perches high on the Illinois-side bluffs. Above the town the Mormon temple dominates the skyline like the Taj Mahal. The town was settled by Joseph Smith and his followers from around 1839, when they were ordered out of Missouri by that state’s governor. They thrived, but in 1844 some of Smith’s followers, resenting his power and political clout, broke away and something close to a civil war ensued. A group of non-Mormon vigilantes seized the opportunity to drive out the Latter Day Saints, and in June of that year managed to kill Joseph Smith. Defeated, the Mormon’s started the exodus that eventually ended at Salt Lake City in Utah. Religious differences and their practice of polygamy served as official justifications for driving out the Mormons. The fact that the Mormons had a monopoly on portaging around the Nauvoo rapids (which in those days made navigation on that stretch of the river impossible), and that they became very wealthy as a result, may be closer to the actual truth of what had motivated their enemies.
Interestingly enough, during the past couple of decades, the Mormons bought up land in and around Nauvoo, and in 1999 they started work on the new Nauvoo temple, on the exact same spot where the old one stood. The temple was dedicated in 2002. Who said there’s no money in religion?
Near Keokuk, Iowa the landscape takes on a gentle, rolling quality. Impressive houses, many in the mansion class, overlook the river from their vantage point on the bluff. The lake above the Keokuk dam was the last of the big Upper Mississippi lakes I had to cross. What a relief! The 16-mile crossing wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated. The wind stayed below 15 mph, and while choppy enough, it was nothing near as rough as some of my earlier lake crossings. Having said that, it had the same demoralizing, discouraging effect that all the big lakes on the Mississippi seem to have: you paddle and paddle and paddle and you never seem to make any progress or get any closer to the other side. But I did it, and it’s behind me now.
The lock at Keokuk (Lock # 19) drops 37 feet! The downstream gates are lowered into the river, instead of swinging into the lock, the way they do at all the other locks. I figured there is too much water pressure for it to push 37 feet of water back into the lock. Dropping almost four stories in a few minutes is not a comfortable feeling. I sat like a tiny plastic duck in a giant bathtub, hanging on to a floating moorage buoy for dear life. The water dropped so fast it felt like the kayak was falling away from under my bottom – the same feeling you get when flying in a small aircraft in turbulent summer air.
Past Keokuk a massive petrochemical plant lines the Iowa bank. It covers several acres, and steam and miscellaneous vapors pour into the sky from its many cooling and ventilation towers, most likely pumping its share of mercury and other noxious fumes into the air.
I crossed the Iowa/Missouri state line today. Just at the point where I reckoned the border was (it’s not marked) I got caught in heavy rain for five minutes. Welcome to Missouri. No lightning, though.
At Lock 19 one of the young lock attendants came out to talk to me while I was waiting to be locked down. He is a canoeing enthusiast, and goes on a 100 mile canoe trip in the Ozark Scenic River Wilderness every summer. It was a pleasant change to deal with a fellow paddler at the lock – he understood how difficult and dangerous it can be to wait above a lock in a kayak or canoe, and got me through the lock as fast as he could. He even radioed a northbound tow boat to hold off a few miles below the dam to give me a chance to clear the area safely.
I didn’t see a lot of wildlife along the riverbanks today. I saw one faded-looking raccoon today. Herons are the only birds that seem to thrive here; they’re like barn pigeons. Turkey vultures are few and far between; not much for them to eat, I guess.
I found myself on another stretch of the river where getting off the water was impossible. The steep banks were either lined with stone revetments or steep muddy walls, and the few islands were no more than swamps with trees growing from them. They look promising on the map, but offer no refuge or even a place to pull out the kayak onto solid ground. I had no choice but to keep going. Eventually I found a private boat launch where I could drag the kayak out and stretch my legs for a while. Well, sort of stretch – I was knee deep in mud.
The weather is getting hotter everyday. Today was around the mid-80s, and humid. I started using more water the last few days. The bladder in my hydration pack was empty by late morning yesterday and today. I know I’m drinking more (I pee more often) but I’m also beginning to suspect that one of the reservoirs may have sprung a leak. I’ll have to check that next time I fill up with water. I’m also going to need more water bottles if my water consumption keeps going up.
You don’t get anything for nothing on the Mississippi. Any notions I might have had about getting a lot of help from the current were dispelled in the first few days. The Upper Mississippi consists of a series of lakes, and with the wind and waves, conditions are more akin to ocean kayaking than river paddling. So far I had to work damn hard for every mile I logged.
There is so much history along the river; many layers of history really. I’m looking forward to reading up and researching the Mississippi’s history for the book.
There are more exposed sandbars around the islands and towheads, and along the riverbanks. The river level drops a few inches everyday, exposing more sandbars and making it easier to find good spots to camp. For a while today it was like following a long stretch of beach along the coast – I could literally stop anywhere to camp. It goes without saying that I passed the best sites in the middle of the day when it was much too early to stop for the day. And so it goes, to quote Kurt Vonnegut.
I pass several grain elevators every day, erected at strategic intervals to collect and store grain from the farms along the riverbanks and beyond, and to feed the many barges that feed the mills and factories that feed the world. These structures have nothing in common with the quaint elevators that dotted the prairies in the 19th and early 20th centuries; modern elevators are huge steel and/or concrete structures, built on an industrial scale to move and store megatons of grain inexpensively.
Pain!! I got stung by some kind of insect or creepy crawly that had found its way into the kayak’s cockpit. I hope I didn’t have a bee in the boat; I know I have one in my bonnet. Ha ha. Turned out it wasn’t a bee. I knew this mainly because I didn’t get an immediate and violent allergic reaction. Yes, I’m allergic, and no, I didn’t pack an EpiPen.
I felt tired and sluggish in the afternoon. The increasing heat and humidity are having an effect on me. Hopefully I’ll acclimatize before it gets really hot. I’ve never done well in the heat, though, so it’s going to be tough as I get further south and the temperature and humidity start heading towards triple digits. You’d never guess I grew up in South Africa.
If this was the early 1860’s, most young men who found themselves on the Mississippi would have been on their way to war, and many of them would never make the return journey. The river was a key strategic artery for both sides, and a lot of blood was spilled on and around it.
Mississippi Trivia: there are 216 unique species of fish in the river, more than in any other fresh water system in North America. Not sure how many are introduced species, but still, an impressive statistic.
Things didn’t look promising at Lock #22. There was a “double tow” (a tow boat pushing 15 barges) waiting at the lock ahead of me, which meant a wait of at least two hours, and finding a campsite in the dark. But hey, the lockmaster was a decent fellow, and he radioed the tow pilot to ask if I could go first. The pilot turned out to be a decent sort too, and I was on my way in 15 minutes. And so it goes….