Day 2 – Sunday(Carver to Mt. Hersey)

I’ll always remember this Sunday morning for breakfast bars and bad coffee. I had bought a stainless steel coffee pot (the percolator type) to bring on this trip. However, I had neglected to put in the amount of practice needed to make a decent cup of coffee. A note for next time – INSTANT COFFEE! We ate some breakfast bars, and started packing the bucket brigade for the day’s float. I think the first night on the ground results in the most stiffness/soreness.

Tim and I toted the canoes back down to the river, and Dad helped out with buckets and such. There was a family putting in at Carver to go fishing with some kids, kayaks, and canoes. This was the first day with a full load; we had left a few buckets and a cooler at the campsite on the day before. I finally had enough weight in my canoe to keep the bow in the water (almost). The next time we have a single person in a canoe, we need to remember to rig the canoe backwards. That way, there is more weight in the center of the canoe.

There are a few things that I remember about the second day on the water.

1. Mink with a crayfish.
2. Interesting rapids.
3. The Langley/Beard Lock and Dam.

I’ll fill these in a little better when I get more time.

There were some good views and more high bluffs on this section of the river. It was mostly a warm, quiet day with a few clouds. The sections of fast water were pretty well mixed with lazy river floats. If I remember correctly, we made it to the Mt. Hersey take-out point in the late afternoon. The campsite was a bit disappointing compared to the one at Carver. It was basically an open field that was overgrown (chest high) with weeds and briars. While we were there checking out the campground, a family actually pulled up in a van and asked, “What river is this?” We were probably 30 minutes away from the nearest telephone – maybe they were trying to get to Branson and got lost.

We left the campground at Hersey and set up camp on a rock bar a few hundred yards down the river. I think it was actually around a bend from Hersey. We set up camp and started looking around for firewood. It didn’t take long as there was a ton of driftwood laying around. While we were scavenging for firewood, I saw something out of the corner of my eye down by the river. It looked like a dog, except for its tail. It was a beaver – the only beaver (not stuffed) that I’ve ever seen. The image above is the bluff across the river from our rock bar. The image below is a closeup view of a part of the bluff.

I wanted to try a stove that I had borrowed from a friend to cook some dinner, but we couldn’t get it to light. We wound up using a Coleman stove that I had bought during the hurricanes last year. That reminds me, I need Dad to ship it back to me before we get hit again this year! I cooked some dehydrated beef stew from Mountain House that was pretty good. Of course, there were also some hotdogs left.

That night about 9pm it started sprinkling, and we could hear thunder in the distance. We started putting things away, turned the canoes upside down with the buckets underneath, and reinforced the tiedowns for the tent flies. Then around an hour later the bottom fell out. It was the worst thunderstorm I that I have ever camped through. The lightning flashes appear 10 times brighter in the darkness of the wilderness, and the thunder echoes down the river valley. Dad even had dreams that the river was rising.

It was still storming when I finally drifted off to sleep. The tents held up surprisingly well through the downpour. The only problem Tim and I had was that I had forgotten to tuck the ground cloth underneath the edge of the tent. There are a few other changes that I would make to the Eureka Apex 3XTA if I had the chance. I would start by replacing the tent doors with a mesh screen to allow for airflow when the rain fly is zipped shut. It got quite stuffy in the tent when it was all buttoned down. The other problem that we had is that there is no way to reach the zipper at the bottom of the rain fly without getting wet from the condensation. Some type of dual zipper on the fly would make it easier to unzip from the top.