Mighty Mo

My father dropped me off at Kaw point park in KCKS at about 2:30 on Tuesday. I slid off the Kaw and onto the Missouri to be whipped out of sight in just a few minutes. I was headed for Columbia, MO and wanted to be there by Thursday night.

The water was calm- through the city the river was not as pleasant of an experience as I hoped it would be; The water was covered in a fine brown scuzz and reeked of death and sewage. The banks were made of steel and wood and tar and old, tossed tires.
The sun felt good though, and I knew the river would be nicer downstream.

Tires, basketballs and all sorts of plastic and glass floated downstream with me.

I examined a few cleaner bottles for any messages that might be hiding inside... A message in a bottle is not too hard to find on the river.
Wine bottles almost always carry them; There is no other way that a sealed wine bottle could be found floating so far off the bank! The usually float with the neck pointed to the bottom of the river, and the dark green one which hides a not the best is most common.
The water was like glass- as smooth as it gets!

I was passed by a downstream barge which made a smaller wake than the upstream USGS boat- I stayed on the boat- and upright- through both bouts of waves. The same barge came at me again from downstream. I crossed the river in front of him and took his waves in the slower water. I crossed again and encountered a nasty quarter-mile where the barge's wake had collided with the choppy, fast spill of some loud mill.
Sun set on me somewhere about a half-hour after my short break at LaBenite park, under the 291 bridge east of KCMO.
I was not traveling fast; the river was just about the lowest that it had been all year and I felt no need to paddle too much; I granted myself an easy goal for the day- Cooley Lake Access (MDC)..

The sun ducked behind the trees and the night life began to emerge. I saw a few deer on shore and the coyotes started up on the near shore. Carp began skimming the shallow areas for food and EXPLODE at the surface when I got too close.
The first one spooked me pretty well!
The moon had shown for half an hour before I decided to get off the water.
I slept on the bank- somewhere in between The last mill on your left and the Cooley access.

The morning was warmer than I expected. I woke up to a very pleasant sunrise a hoped into my kayak immediately. A thick fog smothered the river and ten or twenty feet of the bank; The water was just as smooth and calm as when I left it.
I passed Cooley pretty quickly... some fishing and target shooting made the place as loud as the city.
I paddled for an hour or two before I spotted a gravel bar- the first of the trip!
Spent a good hour here- sorting through all of the lost treasures. Stones, Glass, Bones and Fossils- all sorts of goodies!
The sandbar- under a bridge and across from another mill- was a huge one! The river was at about 8.7ft and you could have walked for a long ways past the edge of it and into the river.
I found a couple of fossilized bison? teeth and a bunch of crystals. .. One of the teeth is well over three inches long and two wide, COOL!
A creepy dead monkey doll- its hands were missing... And a scan of a few of my treasures from the same gravel bar... A tooth, some polished glass with wire in it, two pieces of champagne-coloured Carnelian? and a clay bead thing. Indian?
I was very picky with what I took- still I loaded a heavy handful of material onto the back of my boat!
I got back to my little orange boat and shoved off for the far end of the river. IT was choppy!
... That was the first thing I noticed. The water was very choppy! The river had been calm when I left just an hour earlier!

A wicked headwind made matching the rivers' current hard! I tried for a few minutes, but wasn't going anywhere fast...

I pulled into the gravel bar again, only a few hundred feet from where I left it. I waited- hoping that like most winds on the river, this one would lighten up soon.
It didn't. I made another go of it- Battled the growing waves and the nasty wind until I was ready to pass the tip of the gravel bar. I swung in again; I knew I would not be able to do a day of this!
I tried calling my mother hoping to be picked up. No signal. The wind and waves only grew while I was on shore. ..
There were two options- I could cross the river and paddle upstream again to some public access I saw back about a mile, or I could TRY to go downstream another mile and then go 4 miles upstream on the Fishing river to the nearest MDC access. I hope my maps are right! I decided to try for the MDC access, in case I couldn't get a phone signal, I would at least be close to 210hwy so that I could find someone who did.
On the water- one last try. I ripped the paddles through the water, and still I was pushed upstream. The sun was out- there would be no storm to cause such a wind (not forecasted!)

I could see all sorts of leaf and plastic debris floating just under the surface- it all just cruised downstream with the current that I had taken advantage of yesterday.
I got on the island again- I was becoming frustrated.
Still the wind grew. I'm sure that it blew at a constant 25+mph and I saw whitecaps on the river for the first time in my life. They are the waves that had burst over the front of my boat on my last two attempts to get down from the island.
I feared tipping if I were to try it again. A gust hit me and I turned from it. A huge wall of sand had developed with the wind and was thrown off the other side of the sandbar. I walked the kayak as far to the left bank and downstream as I dared- the water was up to my thighs when I jumped in. The steep bank broke the wind here. The waves were not as bad and I could go downstream to where I needed to be. I paddled hard for about twenty minutes until my phone lit up. I called and got through- my mother would be at Piggs landing, up the fishing river, between 5 and 6...
It was somewhere around 1pm. I was somewhere downstream of mile marker 335.7 and the river was at 334.0.
It was minutes before the 334.6 mm came into sight. I rounded the bend and the wind that had driven those horrible waves into the far side of the river hit me again. Still, not at badly as if I had stuck with the fast part of the Missouri.
I was only ~100yrds from the river before I saw it- It took a second to get to.

The Fishing river was like a harbor. I stopped paddling and listened to my heart beat.
The river was still. Thick Trees to the east blocked too much wind from getting at me. It looked more like a mucky oxbow lake.

I was very relieved to be off of the Missouri and took a steady pace up the Fishing river. It seemed not to flow at all.
I watched turtles plop into the water from off their branches and enjoyed the leisurely float trip I thought I was going to have today.
Trains flew through the area- you could always hear one...
I passed under two bridges before I encountered any kind of a current. It flowed slowly- reminded me of the blue river as it drains swope park. I maneuvered around some trees and up a fast little rapid. Another. A scared a carp from a plum of mud that rose from a still, shallow area on the river.
Hit PIGGS LANDING, underneath the 210 bridge around 3:30. No cell phones.
Cooked a meal and watched a cool racer (snake) and a huge mantis who visited me on the curb of the ramp. Basked in the sun a while.. I glanced down around 4:50 to find that my phone had an entire bar of signal- It was worth a static call to my mother, who was well on her way!
Didn't make it to Columbia, but that just means I have to try again!