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Day 12 (Entry by Scott)
(May 12th, 2005) Hi everyone! It’s Day 12 and it’s a nasty, rainy, cold day and we woke up exhausted so we decided to stay put for the day. We are somewhere south of Blakely on the river; we hope to make La Seuer tomorrow and St. Peter the day after that. The river has been rising which makes it even harder to paddle.

Yesterday our big excitement was paddling along next to shore and all the sudden hearing a cracking noise. I was in the bow and realized that the tree on the shore in front of us was about to fall into the river. So I did the most intelligent thing I could think of—stare at it with my mouth agape. Todd then said ‘Scott I think we better get out of the way!’. This seemed much more intelligent than my approach so I frantically started paddling and Todd ferried us across the current to the other side. Sure enough the tree crashed not 30 feet in front of our boat and started coming down the current. Wow so cool!

We also rounded a bend and scared a big, black beaver who then leapt into the water near our canoe.

Two days ago we were playing a game in the canoe where we had to come up with food items for every letter in the alphabet. Todd’s idea for ‘X’ was ‘Xylophone shaped pasta noodles’ which sent us both into such fits of laughter that we couldn’t paddle for a while. We also do a lot of singing in the canoe which helps keep my mind off sore muscles. We’ve been eating all the food Corey and the boys gave us and enjoying it a lot. I think I ate about 7,000 calories yesterday!

We aren’t always able to send our pictures; it depends on how good the satellite phone connection is. Hopefully you’ll be able to see some of the ones I’m trying today: a big spider on our tent, beautiful purple flowers in the field we ate lunch in yesterday, Todd climbing down a muddy bank using a rope to get to our canoe, etc.

We’ve been testing the water almost every day since we started to see how dirty it is. We have a device that we stick in the water, press a button and it gives us a number. We aren’t experts in what it means, but Chuck Rose, a professor at St. Cloud State University, will analyze the numbers. They represent some parts per million (or is it thousand…?) of sediment in the river, which is a basic indicator of how dirty it is. Sediment comes from both natural and man-made causes; it comes from mud and silt as well as nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizer and by-products from sewage treatment plants. The Minnesota River has never been a clean river as it drains a huge silty valley, but it has gotten worse since large scale farming in the last century. In fact it is one of the dirtiest rivers in America. Here are the numbers we’ve recorded so far, which give you an indication anyway of what stretches of what rivers are cleaner or dirtier:

5/2 Boy Scout Landing on Mississippi: 123
5/4 Confluence of the Rum River with the Mississippi in Anoka: 153
5/7 U of M West Bank/Bohemian Flats on Mississipi: 183

You can see that on the Mississippi, the river gets dirtier the farther down it you go, which makes sense because more sediment gets added to it. Now look at the numbers on the Minnesota (remember we are going upstream):

5/8 Highway 7 bridge on Minnesota River: 343
5/9 2 miles west of Shakopee: 414
5/10 Jordan boat landing: 347
5/12 Mile 65 just south of Blakely, MN: 402

Here two things are of note: first, the Minnesota does have a lot more sediment than the Mississippi and second the numbers fluctuate, probably because of what’s getting dumped near those sections (near Shakopee we did see a lot of water coming out of some pipes near the river).

Yesterday was our first on any river where we saw no boats at all and in fact no people (except for a few cars on a road). So we are still at 14 boats on the Minnesota, all with motors.
No dams yet on the river.
2 bridges yesterday putting us at 12 total. (Bridges give an indication how developed an area is)…

I’m wearing two winter hats…hopefully it warms up sometime. We wish to say a special hi to Ms. Tindle’s 5th grade class—study hard and be nice to Ms. Tindle she’s a cool teacher!