Kansas City River

AUG. 12
A float by Bill; some photos I found from the beginning of August. Bill and Ruth invited me to float on the Missouri River for an afternoon. The weather couldn't have been better! We launched a mammoth 3-person Canoe from Kaw Point - The confluence was our first obstacle, but the heavy boat kept a smooth course through any turbulence beneath us. We traveled under the first few bridges and a trail blew its whistle on the bridge upstream of city market. There was a good story to the name of our vessel, but I forget both.
Bill tried introducing us to a betting game. "Train-Car Poker"- He explained that the game was played by betting on the last car, the second to last car or the third. When the tail-end finally shows up and reveals the identification numbers of the last three boxes, the numbers- I think that there were like five digits to a car- were played as a poker hand. Bill's last car, "Number-one" started with a lucky pair of 7's and a pair of 2's. Ruth chose to bet on Number 3, which beat my silly second car with a pair of 5's.
The City Market overlook was identified and we tied-off to one of the old wooden pier-supports just down from the overlooks hefty cement ones. We scrambled up the rip-rap, alongside the pillars, and overcame the weeds and briers to hop a fence and walk the stairs the rest of the way. Ruth and Bill posed for a photo, and I took a few of the downstream bridges. The river was beautiful all dressed-up in it's summer greens and with those fluffy afternoon clouds. We glanced across the bridge that connects the overlook-island with the rest of the world. Ruth spotted a small group of friends and everyone met to catchup. Bill tried explaining to me what little he knew of the folks and we showed our finest smiles for Ruth's extended family.

The sun sank into the thicker clouds as we approached another large bridge on the water. I lost another round of Train-Poker and Bill told us that all of the commotion that appeared to be on the next bridge was the beginning of construction for the new I-35. The next bridge was the last one before our take-out. We neared the construction, where they had a HUGE crane floating on a barge, and more equipment and materials on others. The sun vanished below treeline. Bill spotted a beach that he remembered camping on; Ruth told Bill that the large sandbar was not the one that he remembered. The disagreement was definitely a good excuse to stop and investigate. The dark sandbar held only a set of tire tracks and a block of dock-foam, and after Bill was convinced that the sandbar was not the one he remembered, and that night really was coming fast, we launched the dock foam and gathered our things. The canoe could not catch up with the minutes-head-start that the block of styrofoam had with the current and with only a quarter-mile of river to go before our takeout on the opposite bank, the three of us put some effort into paddling for the first time on our four-mile-run. Bill steered us across the river so that we paralleled the nightly shore with only an easy bit left to float. A spark of lightening lit parts of the Northwestern sky and it appeared that we would be on dry land just in time as the unexpected storm approached.

Of course you could hear the surprise and tension in his voice when a gusty front-wind broadsided our placid canoe. The winds whipped across the river and down it's channel, and with nothing to obstruct it, it hit hard. For a moment the wind seemed to push us ashore- it was all-of-the-sudden so loud! My instincts were to get to shore and only a few hundred feet of water flowed between us and the boat ramp. the boat-ramp projected from shore to form a slower current upstream of the thing, and a much faster one around it's point; I wanted to get the boat to shore quickly and I didn't like the looks of the speedy current forming on the ramp itself. I started to paddle towards shore, though I made little progress with two other determined paddles on board. Bill was headed for the ramp! The wind changed directions and thunder and pouring rain started against us at the same moment. We were in the storm way too quick!

Bill shouted a few things that I did not hear and we beached the boat just upstream of the ramp. The scene was chaotic, but we managed to carry the boat and our things up to the lot- tied it to the cables between cement blockades and hid the canoe on the river-side of a block that outlined the parking area. The rain continued and it wetted each of us more than we would have hoped. We piled paddles and packs into Ruth's little car and she got us back to Kaw where the bout of exciting weather had already come and gone. Ruth yelled her goodbyes from the driver seat and left Bill and I to retrieve the boat with Bill's big truck. I asked bill to allow me a few seconds with my tiny camera and the dramatic night scene of Kansas City's Downtown engulfed in the storm.The damn thing didn't do much good for the photo's potential; I gave it up after three very different exposures. It was a beautiful thing, though!

Through Downtown and the city market area that we visited via the river. Bill made one last swing of his arm to point down the way that would take me to the same Overlook-

We loaded the boat in the rain again; the canoe was flipped and moved away from the cement so that Bill suspected aloud that someone had tried to steal it. My immediate thoughts blamed the boat's position on another stray gust of wind that may have come with the storm in our absence. I kept it to myself.

We lifted the canoe in an a light rain, and fastened it to the bed as heavy rain turned heavier. One heavy mess of rain forced traffic to slow down on the ride home.