River and Bayou

A restless night last night. Had to get up during the night several times to check on the canoe. Once I found it laying almost over on it’s side when large wake waves from a barge had pushed it up onto the shoreline. So I woke before sunrise, packed up my tent and gear, found an old plank to stand on while loading the canoe so I wouldn’t sink too deep into the mud and sand, and was underway just after 7 AM. I was so anxious to get away from that mud hole landing (and possible private property) and back to the relative safety of the water that I didn’t even take time to make morning coffee!

I didn’t have a clear idea how far I was going to paddle today. I wrote in my notes that Buck Island offered excellent camping at all water levels, so that was a possible destination. But Helena was only a few miles beyond Buck Island, and if I was making good time, I might try for Helena Harbor and the only public accommodations in town (a B&B) about a three-quarter mile walk from the harbor’s boat ramp. I only had to negotiate two bends (Mhoon and Walnut) before a relatively straight shot down Harden Cutoff to both Buck Island and Helena, so I’d let the river and barge traffic dictate where I’d stop tonight.

I was a pretty straightforward day of paddling. I stayed as close to the fastest flowing water in the main channel as barge traffic would allow, often crossing the mile wide river from left to right bank and back again to stay in the fastest water on the outside of the bends. (Despite the river being so low, the river is so wide it still takes me 15-20 minutes to cross from one side to the other, by the way.) Fortunately, I didn’t have to contend with a lot of tows today, which made avoiding the slower moving water more possible. (Downstream tows, tows coming up from behind me, try to stay in the fastest water and hug the outside of the channel, upstream tows prefer the slower water on the inside bend of the channel.) There were a few large eddies and their areas of rough water in the bends that made things interesting. But for the most part, my canoe is a sweetheart and handles the rough water really well.

Along about noon, while hugging the right bank descending, I came to the mouth of the St Francis River. The St. Francis is the first major right bank tributary on the Mississippi River below the Meramec River near St. Louis, which is about 450 miles upstream. There looked to be an old primitive landing and some nice shady trees right there at the confluence of the Mississippi and St. Francis, so I stopped for a hour or so. I gave some thought to camping there for the night, but it appeared to be a pretty popular party spot (lots of empty beer cans and old campfires) so decided to push on rather than risk trouble with a raucous Friday night crowd.

After resting a bit in the cool shade, I pushed on. Hugging the right bank, I paddled past several bank-side sites that would have offered a good place for the night, but the allure of Helena and a night in a B&B was too much. So I paddled past all of them and into Helena Harbor.

I only got about halfway up the harbor, to a point where I could see the two harbor boat ramps, and realized Helena was out of the question for tonight. The bottom of the old ramp closest to town was completely invested with mud. The newer ramp on the other side of the harbor was accessible, but would have required an almost two mile walk around the north end of the harbor to get into town. And neither offered a place where I could safely leave (or hide) my canoe and gear overnight. So out of the harbor I paddled. Back to the river with hopes of finding decent spot to camp before it got too dark to be on the river.

Now just south of Helena is US Hwy 49 Bridge. It’s the only bridge over the Mississippi in over a two mile stretch between Memphis and Greenville. And near the left bank of the river at the first Mississippi Exit from that bridge is a casino resort. It’s just a few hundred yards of bushwhacking up of and over the river’s bank, boulder revetment, and thirty foot tall levee. And my imagination was running away with me. If I somehow could get over there before it got dark, find a place to hide the canoe, climb up the levee embankment, and navigate my way through a couple hundred yards of poison ivy and dense foliage, then maybe they’d have an air-conditioned room and some ice-cold drinks for me for the night.

And of course, none of that was going to happen. But an afternoon in the scorching hot sun can make a person not think all that straight. I wasn’t quite delirious, but I wasn’t thinking all the clearly either. So for the first time in the trip, I lowered the canoe’s electric trolling motor in the water, and ‘raced’ across the river to the east bank. Five minutes later, as I gazed up at the tangle of shrubs, foliage, rocks, debris, and sea wall I would have to content with in order to reach the casino resort, I said “You’re nuts!”

And now, with that hope completely dashed, I paddled under the US 49 bridge to a low exposed sandbar where I decided I’d spend the night. I didn’t see much choice, to be honest. It wasn’t sunset yet, but I wanted to be off the river when darkness fell. And after a twenty-eight-mile day today, I didn’t feel like going much further.

So I paddled over to the proudest part of the sandbar, pulled my canoe out of the water (thankfully the sandbar was firm sand and not mud), and rigged a tarp over my chair for shade as I waited for the long evening rays of a settling sun to descend. Then, in the waning daylight and to the sound of thunder off to the south, I set up my tent. I ate a meal-ready-to-eat, then crawled inside with a rope tied to the canoe attached to my wrist. Because if the river rose even a little bit, I’d be screwed if my canoe and gear started to float away without me knowing it.