Club Mud
Start: 150
Finish: 118
Day Total: 32 Miles
Segment Total: 160 Miles
It was a chilly night sleeping last night. I stayed warm, but getting out of the tent in the morning was something I didn’t really want to do. I had to dig a couple extra layers out of my “Warm Clothes Bag” The best part of the camp site is we were able to put our boats on our portage wheels and haul them fully loaded to the site. At that point it’s almost like car camping. I only unload what I really need so there is less to pack up in the morning.
Our near goal was St Genevieve, MO 27 miles way and Chester, IL 40 miles away. The cooler start was ok once we got in our boats and got moving. We were able to do a comfortable 5 mph pace for most of the day. At mid-day the river bent to the East, it which point the 10 mph wind we had at our backs turned into a head wind. This stayed true for much of the last 20 miles of paddling.
We decided to stop at St Genevieve, since that had a boat club and was a mile walk to town. On the map it showed a small creek that we would enter river right and paddle .25 miles to the boat ramp. The stream was narrow but I felt confident we could make it through. As we padded it got narrower and shallower until I 200 yards in, I got stuck in the mud. I climbed out of my kayak to see if I could pull it the rest of the way and we greated with thick sticky mud up to my knees. We spend the next 45 minutes battling the mud and wind to backtrack to the Mississippi. We finally arrived, pretty spent, but at the same time laughing historically! We paddled another 5 miles to a really nice beach were we set up camp.
My Internet is super weak so I won’t be able to add any photos. I’ll try to ad some later
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