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Mississippi Inukshuk (in honor of Bob O'Hara)
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Our camp friends at the launch party
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Day 8: Up the Minnesota we go! (Entry by Scott and Todd)
(May 8th, 2005) It’s May 8th and our ‘Day 8’ and we are writing to you from our tent on the northern shore of the Minnesota River near Savage. We have to cover the last few days so here we go!:

Day 4, May 4th. We paddled from Anoka to the U of M west bank. It was a beautiful day and the river was beautiful right into the Twin Cities. The only ugly part was a scrap metal heap and industrial area in north Minneapolis, some of which was falling into the river. To be fair, some of the industrial area looked much better managed than other parts…

We portaged around the Coon Rapids Dam which was refurbished in 1996 and now is comprised largely of rubber. Yep, that’s right, a rubber dam. Pretty cool. The ladies we met at the visitor center were great, as were the naturalists we met outside. We also went through upper and lower St. Anthony Falls lock and dam(s), the 1st of which was a 50 foot drop, the largest drop of any lock on the river (so we hear). Locking through was very cool and when we came out there was a small crowd gathered on the bridge that cheered us along.

Bridge count: 14 on this day, 23 total on the Mississippi
3 dams today for a total of 4 on the Miss.
We saw one really cool solo canoeist paddling upstream, and two more canoes at our take out point, which puts us at 4 canoes on the Miss and two powerboats.

Days 5 and 6 we rested, re-packed, planned the launch party, ate Scott’s parents’ food (thanks Mom and Dad!).

Day 7, this Saturday, was the day of our big launch party. We started by paddling from the U of M west bank to Fort Snelling State Park, a distance of about 6 miles. We invited people to paddle with us and we had 16 boats!!! Mostly canoes but some kayaks too. We saw the U of M rowing team, so that was about 7 rowing skulls (I think that’s what you call them)…and a couple canoeists too. Also two motorboats which puts the Mississippi totals over 4 days and about 84 miles at 4 motorboats, 4 canoeists and a bunch of fancy rowing people.

We also went under about 8 bridges so that’s 31 for the Mississippi.

And everyone had a great time going through Lock and Dam #1; a 38 foot drop. So that was 5 dams on our journey on Ole Miss.

We also saw a fair number of folks who were at least semi-permanently dwelling in make shift shelters along the river, the coolest of which by far was the guy living in a hard to reach cave. It looked like a pretty cool place.

The paddle was tougher than anticipated due to a stiff headwind and little current above the dam. But everyone made it and kept the open side up.

The launch party itself was a huge success. We were worried about rain but all we had was a little while we were paddling. We arrived and my Mom had food ready for everyone who came (about 130 people). Everyone ate and the people my Mom had assembled to serve the food were just great. The ‘new-timey’ band ‘Pert Near Sandstone’ played and everyone loved the music.

Our MC Chad Brancamp got things rolling with the speakers and all of them were fantastic. We raised a lot of money and met our goal of raising $750 which will be matched by the Millhones. We had our official ceremonial launch at about 3:15, a little earlier than we had expected….that meant we had to re-do it at 4:00 when WCCO TV came…then this morning we had our actual launch so I think we’ve had about 4 ‘official’ launches now…we highly recommend this and are considering having an official launch every morning.

Today, Day 8, we paddled up the Minnesota and it was great. We are able to maintain a pace upstream of about 2 miles per hour. The current isn’t too bad as the water levels have dropped considerably. The river was beautiful as always despite us being in the Twin Cities still and there being the possibility of barge traffic in these first 16 miles on the Minnesota. When we launched this morning, we can assure you, it absolutely did not happen that our canoe slipped away from shore without us in it at one point while we were loading it. And we didn’t chase it down the shore and Scott did not get in the water thinking he would have to swim it down but only had to wade in up to his waist. No, that is all just a silly make believe fantasy story that you should purge from your mind.

This evening we had a little storm but all is well.

Motorboat count: 12 today
Canoe count: 0
Bridges: 3 (35 W, 494 and 77)
Dams: 0

Enjoy the pictures!