Day 4 Mississippi River

8-26

I woke up this morning, as expected, to the sound of rain. Knowing that I had a rather short day ahead of me, I rolled over and went back to bed. The second wake up call was once again to the sound of water falling on the roof of my shelter and the trees surrounding me. After a dry breakfast of a peanut butter banana tortilla, I hit the water with heavy mist in the air and thick cloud cover. For the first hour or so of the day I flirted with my rain jacket, putting it on when the rain came, taking it off when it paused, and debating if I should put it back on when the mist returned. After a few roundabouts like this, I finally decided to call it a day and keep the rain jacket on. Smart move. It rained on and off all day. While having wet gear is a major bummer, if I can keep my stuff dry and keep myself warm, I actually enjoy rain. They say there's no such thing as bad weather, you know. Just different kinds of good weather.

The positive of the rain, both today and in the past few weeks, is that water levels are rather high. This means an easier time navigating the thick bog and shallow stretches of the river. I can't image doing this stretch in low water.

The paddling today was beautiful, despite the fog/cloud cover. I spent it flushing all kinds of waterfowl from the shores. Everytime a group got up I instinctually sighted them up and determined if I could have downed them with my 12 gauge. Let's just say there would have been fresh meat on the menu!

I reached camp around 5pm, pitched my tent and made minestrone soup for dinner. I made contact with a fellow just outside of Bemidji who offered to have a hot breakfast waiting for me at his place right off of the river if I could make it there by tomorrow morning...you don't have to tell me twice! That means an early wake up call and some AM paddling tomorrow before I hit the first city on the Mississippi, Bemidji, MN.

Day 4- success.