North!

A parkville adventure!

Wow! How sore are your calf muscles after so many hours on a good sandbar?

I spent more than six hours on my feet Thursday...

The river here was the lowest I have ever seen it; under five feet! The low gauge measurement was enough to get me off of the computer and onto the water- I was hiking up a sandbar by noon.

An unusual hike to the first gravel bar; exceptionally warm and beautiful. This winter day would exceed 80-degrees in sunny Kansas City. A sand dredge was piling material on a barge right in front of the baseball diamond and a crowd gathered to watch from the short fence

Someone has marked up the riverside and trail with all sorts of purple "Keep OUT" paint- so much as to have traced the actual property line on the ground with the paint. Leaf-litter, sticks, rocks- all purple.

That's okay- if I am really trespassing here, I am one of a mob of Parkville folks who have no alternative for a river walk.

The sand and gravel seems endless here. Today the sandbars appear more than three times as wide as they are at a more 'normal' river level- though they don't feel much longer.

New logs are exposed- the dark, heavy things are definitely the first thing I notice- After that, though, my eyes cannot brake from the immediate gravel at my feet. There is so much to be found here .

Fossils, crystals, bones, pottery, and more familiar things like broken ceramics and glass bottles from only a century ago. Most of the newer stuff- the trash, plastics and even tires- all floats until it is caught by a log-jam in a flooded river; these piles of light-weight debris accumulate on the higher parks of the bank- often on the first terrace. the ones here definitely need some help- Amongst the stacks and tangles of natural things are many thousands of plastic bottles, a few 55-gal steel and plastic drums, some sports balls and articles of clothing and even what appears to be a stove.

At the start of the sandbars you can still see the barge-dredge thing; it peeked around the bend, under the 'castle' only half a mile away.

There is little to be found on the first sandbars- I slipped around two very dry wing-dikes to get to the best stretch of adventure. Immediately I found bones and bottles that had not been exposed on my last visit. Much of the bar was unrecognizable- A few objects, maybe, about seven feet inland. That yellow toy tonka-thing (it's sat here for years!) was elevated to the height of my chest when I stood at the water's edge- still tangled in a few crooked branches.
Only one set of footprints had reached as low as I had- I'm sure that their owner collected may wonderful things!

A hint of blue- i knew the colour when I saw it glance from beneath a tiny breaking wave. a single sandy scoop revealed a beautiful fossilized bison tooth! It is by far the most colourful Ive found!

It was more that three hours before I reached the end of the longest of parkville's sandbars-

60lbs of bones and a boulder of coal later...