Joe & Isaac's Adventure: Episode 1 - Chapter 5

In the stretch of river between Crow Wing State Park and Little Falls the river begins to change dramatically. First of all it starts to straighten out! What a thrill to finally be able to look ahead down the river more than a hundred yards and not see the next bend! For hundreds of miles we had paddled that canoe through twists and turns along a sinuous convoluted track that had us doubling back on ourselves so many times all we could do was head for the next turn and hope it came out in the right place. Finally now we could get started in the morning and expect the sun to be on our left and feel like we were going somewhere.

The river also widens and becomes shallow -- one reason this trip requires a canoe. Only a canoe or kayak can make it through the shallows and riffles. We did a good job of reading the water and steering the canoe. We didn't hit any big rocks (there were plenty to hit) and we only got hung up once on a gravel bar. The river here is too shallow to be threatening. If you turned over you could just stand up. However the current is fast enough and there are enough big rocks in the river that one mistake could easily dump you over.

This is one of the most beautiful, but decidedly weird sections of the river. For over twenty miles the river passes through apparent wilderness. In fact it is running down the eastern border of Fort Ripley (US Army). The abundance of wildlife along the river here is amazing. On an average day Isaac and I would see three or four deer along the river. As we paddled this twenty-mile stretch we stopped counting deer after about three dozen. The weird aspect of this portion of river is the noises that come from the Army. Every so often we would hear a series of loud booms -- some kind of practice artillery fire we assumed. Once we heard machine gun fire that sounded quite close by. I found it somewhat frightening actually and I started hoping they knew to point those things away from the river. It was one long hard day of paddling from Crow Wing SP to Little Falls. We were about to enter portage hell.

The goal of our canoe trip was to paddle down to the head of navigation. Isaac and I intend eventually to travel the entire river on the water, but not by canoe. Having reached the head of navigation the first third of our trip is complete. We intend now to switch boats to something larger and safer. But only a canoe or kayak can make it down the Headwaters section of the river. One reason for this I mentioned just above -- another is the portages. Technically the head of navigation is directly below the Coon Rapids dam in north Minneapolis. I say technically because the river is still quite shallow there and for a few more miles, but a small motorboat could manage. From that point you can put a boat in the river and travel all the way to the Gulf without taking the boat out of the water. Above the head of navigation are a dozen or so dams that require you to take your boat out of the water and transport it around. For a canoeist these dams are spaced out every three or four days, sometimes as much as a week apart, above Little Falls. From Little Falls to Coon Rapids there are five of them, six if you portage Sauk Rapids, and they come at you nearly one or two a day. An average portage is two or three hundred yards and some part of it is always up and down hill. Isaac and I would typically require three round trips between both ends of the portage to carry our gear and then one final trip to bring around the canoe. At each portage we had to haul around 400 pounds of stuff, sometimes over very hazardous terrain. Then we had to re-pack the canoe. This was not fun!

We portaged both the Little Falls and Blanchard dams in one day. As I mentioned earlier, the portage at Blanchard was simply awful. It is, I believe dangerous beyond reason and I think the MDNR should address it as a serious problem and effect a correction. It was late afternoon by the time we were back on the river below Blanchard and we were beat. Fortunately the river here is simply gorgeous and the canoeing is wonderful. We had another ace on our side as well to lift our spirits. Remember Steve and Paul from chapter three, the two young men who were canoeing as much as sixty miles a day and heading for Steve's home on the river above St. Cloud? Well before they left us in their wake Steve took our map and marked it where his house is located. He wrote in a little note describing how we'd recognize it and told us to be sure and stop if we got that far. We dropped in on Steve then that evening. We found his house, tied up to his dock and walked around the house to find him and his wife out in the front yard. Here again is another example of just how wonderfully we were treated. We arrived unannounced and unexpected, still Steve and his wife dropped everything to take care us. After those two portages, I can hardly describe how good that cold beer was Steve handed me right away. I didn't even care that it wasn't a Budweiser -- almost (I'm from St. Louis after all). We stayed the night and Steve got up early to fix me fresh coffee. It was the morale boost we needed to make it through portage hell. Thanks Steve!

The mud was finally gone! The river now runs through a rock bottom bed. From Little Falls all the way to Coon Rapids the river runs through shallows with occasional riffles, only getting deep enough for larger motorboats in the pools behind the dams. Islands and groups of islands now appear frequently in the river. This is where the canoeing is best. If not for the dams and the dam pools Isaac and I would have been in canoeing heaven. Behind each dam the river pools up for a couple of miles into a good-sized lake. The combination of these lakes with the fact that we were rapidly approaching some mid-size and larger cities meant pleasure boats. Pleasure boats are very expensive high-powered craft that serve no useful purpose. Often they are confined in a fairly small space, for example the dam pool at Sartel. They are used by the idle rich to go around in circles very fast -- sometimes drunk. To us in a canoe they were a sisyphean plague. Some powerboats create a large enough wake to roll a canoe over, and so each time a large powerboat would pass us at high speed we would have to turn the canoe ninety degrees so that our bow was perpendicular to its wake. This of course interrupted our already slow progress forward. Isaac and I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to cross the lake at Sartel on a beautiful sunny summer Sunday afternoon -- everybody was out on the lake. Sartel is an upper-class suburb of St. Cloud. In the Sartel dam pool both shores of the lake are bordered by expensive often mansionesque homes each fitted with a private boat dock. I know this is a generalization, and I'd probably bite my tongue if I weren't still a little annoyed: The only powerboats that showed us any consideration and slowed as they passed us were fishing boats with usually an angler or two on board. They would throttle back their engines and wave at us as they passed. We waved back enthusiastically in thanks. The people driving the big expensive pleasure boats were ill-mannered oafs.

About halfway across the Sartel lake we came upon a huge sandbar behind an island. It was easily the size of a football field and anywhere from only ankle-deep to knee-deep. Frustrated by the crossing so far we decided to take a break. We got out of the canoe, stuck a paddle deep into the sand and tied up the canoe. Isaac was quite amused at being able to seemingly walk on water right out in the middle of the lake. At one point he took out one of our portable chairs, set it in the sand and plopped down for a rest.

Once we cleared the dam at Sartel it was an easy paddle into Sauk Rapids where our next trial awaited. Exhausted by our encounter with the pleasure boats and the dam portage we decided to let the rapids wait till morning. Just below the confluence with the Sauk river and right before entering St. Cloud proper there is a set of class 1 rapids that extends for about a quarter of a mile. Isaac is at that wonderful age where he is not only impervious to physical harm but capable of almost super-human performance. Myself, I was scared of the rapids, but, like Isaac, I sure didn't want to start off the day with yet another portage. Especially since the St. Cloud dam was just a few miles away. Isaac wanted to canoe through. I wanted to look first. Although he could probably take me in a fight now, Isaac still respects my parental authority so we looked first. Not out in search of thrills, my plan was always to avoid risk if possible. The rapids didn't look too bad, but it also appeared that we could avoid them by walking the canoe down the shore on the end of our fifty foot rope. An acceptable compromise between portaging or possibly dumping over in the rapids. Shortly after we began this task a couple in kayaks came by and ran through the rapids with no difficulty. We watched them intently and decided we could do the same. So we climbed back into the canoe and followed the route the kayaks had taken. We came close enough to some very big rocks to give me a good scare and we took in some water but we made it through. A few more miles and it was portage time again -- the dam at St. Cloud.

The portage at St. Cloud is easy enough although somewhat disgusting. The up river portage site is the far south end of Munsinger Gardens, St. Cloud's riverside park. Unfortunately, like so many other parks including ones in St. Louis, a large flock of Canadian Geese have moved in permanently. Isaac and I became accustomed to renaming such places Goose Poop Park for our own amusement. While canoeing during the day Isaac and I would go barefoot. Stepping out of the canoe at "Goose Poop Park" there was no single square foot of river bank we could step onto that wasn't fouled by a big gooey goose dropping. When there was grass at the portage, as there was here, we would pull the canoe through the grass with a rope. Here at Goose Poop Park the canoe slid through the grass almost friction free. I'm going to editorialize here for a second, this goose situation has really gotten out of hand. They're beautiful birds for sure, but under the circumstances I'll bet they're also pretty tasty.

In the river between St. Cloud and Monticello are the last of the MDNR canoe campsites. We stayed at a site below St. Cloud that we enjoyed so much we decided to rest an extra day. There was a natural sandy beach where we could swim. The water was clean and clear now and the fishing was great. Even we caught some fish -- three walleye which I cleaned and fixed for dinner. The day we stayed to rest we met a man and his two sons who stopped for a while to swim. We were surprised to see them arrive in a small motorboat since the river was full of rocks and riffles and still pretty shallow. The man told me that a pocket full of shear pins was required and that after years on that stretch of the river he had learned pretty well where the rocks and gravel bars were located. Only one other small fishing boat interrupted our solitude. I did some napping and reading. I had a copy of Thoreau's Walden with me.

Canoeing is a form of meditation. It can be difficult each morning to get started and you can be sore enough that you may have to force yourself to begin. But after about an hour you settle into a rhythm that soothes you to the very core. Your sore muscles rebound and rise to the task. The beauty of the surrounding natural world never tarnishes and the river... A river is a very special part of God's creation. It is a miracle always happening. When I was a boy I used to think that the people of India were odd in their behavior towards the Ganges river -- treating it as sacred. I know better now. After a week or more of this practice day after day the world's problems and your own personal problems fade. Sitting there in the sand, listening to the running water and reading Walden, I was completely happy. If only it didn't have to stop, but rivers do eventually end.