2008 Fall Trip Namekagon

Nobody can say it quite as well as Craig:

Hey All
Great trip guys! Missed ya, Jeff. Thought you might appreciate some post-trip, round-up chat for some sort of closure.

We met around 2:30 at Riverside landing and got on the river about 5:00 or so. Christian brought his brother, Joel, and his loving Lab dog named Nel or Mell or maybe Smell...was never sure...sorry. We missed Craig's first choice for the Fri. night camp site while scouting and concentrating on a full-fledged class I rapids near the put-in. It was an easy read and no one took on any water. It was starting to get on the darker side of dusk when we found a rare, suitable sandy-spot to pitch tents for the night. It got down to around 24 degrees according to Christiann . However, by 10:30 am we were scrambling for shorts and t-shirts. Joel made some mighty tasty wild blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and Farmland bacon. (btw-"Farmland" is, from now on, the official bacon of our trips.) Saturday we found the next "sanctioned" camp site, which we had been looking for Friday night. It was just about a quarter mile down from our camp.

Wonder what the official high was for Saturday? Temps musta ranged from a low of 24 to what, 70 degrees? Saturday was a dream with sunny skies and a nice current. Got to see dozens of 2 lb+ fish swimming up stream. By 2:30 we'd reached our "tough-guy" goal for the day and made camp. This was a well marked site and an official St Croix group campsite located on a cleared island-like piece of land. Plenty of room to soak up the sun, stretch out and enjoy the grand panoramic view of the St Croix. Christian made unforgettable Porterhouse steaks on the tripod grill. Christian's brother was easy to be around and very generous with collecting wood. Joel and I are both looking forward to learning more German so that we can talk with him the next time. We sat around the fire occasionally talking politics and just Biden our time. Some issues were hot topics while others were simply Palin in comparison. We think it only got down to 33 or something like that Saturday night.

The next morning we ate and broke camp at the crack of mid-morning. Around the first bend we had to negotiate a class I rapids right before the Thayer Landing/ Hwy 48 bridge. The clouds rolled in and we got a good drizzle for the last hour of the trip and found our take-out landing around 1:30. We saw lots of eagles. For the record, I think we covered 20 miles in less than seven hours total. I'm sure I missed a few things but that's the big picture. Couldn't get the google-earth stuff from your GPS, Christian. Must have to download something ... sounds cool though.


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Great camaraderie, wonderful trip. Mark your calendars.

Craig