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2012-05-02 tl;dr: Plenty of eagles today. And rain. And wind. I stopped in Havana to get some work done. I woke up with the dawn's light glowing through my tent's walls. Except it was the insanely bright lights of a towboat. And it was one o'clock in the morning. Oddly enough those towboats are quiet. I went back to sleep.The day started pleasant enough with a forecasted 30% chance of rain. It then proceeded to rain for every bit of that 30%. Afterward it got windy and hot. I saw no pelicans today, but there was no shortage of eagles. I arrived in Liverpool just before a major onslaught of rain, and walked around the small town in the rain looking like a freak trying to find hot food, only to learn that the restaurant had closed six months earlier. I met another boat placing those nets. I asked what they were trying to catch. It turns out they were studying Asian carp. The boat I saw back in Peoria was also studying carp. The sand banks are once again a blissful remembrance. Back to mud for the most part. A pontoon boat decided it was going to drive into one of the side lakes. I thought it was going to be stuck, so I waited a bit in case they needed me to drag a rope someplace. But they knocked several years of the life expectancy off that outboard and finally made it back to deep water. I was prepared to paddle all day and, maybe, finally achieve forty miles on this river. But then I stopped at the Nature Center in Havana, where Debbie, who works there, volunteered her husband Henry to shuttle me over to a local motel in his pickup truck. That was very hospitable of them. I could have never dragged the kayak that far. I didn't really want to stop, but I was already up to five open work issues since Monday, and that was stressing me out. |
  WAKE UP  storm rolling in   storm has rolled in  beaver  this boat had no name  eagles  crawfish monster  BEAU BLESSEY  another eagle  PAT PICKETT through a wet camera  it rained a little   almost stuck in the mud  |