2009 Namekagon Trip Map

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2009 Namekagon--Drive Home

The drive back to St. Paul was rather uneventful. I failed to comment on the landscape on the west side of Namekagon Trail. There were deep depressions, almost dead-end valleys, sandy, barren, with no growth other than low bushes, almost like sage brush of the western plains. Foreign-looking in this woodland of deciduous trees interspersed with stands of white pine, quite intriguing and attractive.

I stopped once more to tighten the front strap a little more and then no more need to stop till Joel's, not even for gas. One 15 minute slow-down ahead of the construction site on Interstate 35. And the Vikings were winning. I can't follow a football game, I always asked who scored during a beer commercial because it featured a raucous crowd. Unfortunately we had to find out that the Twins lost their Friday night game to the those damn Yanks.

By 3:00 I was home and by 3:30 most of the gear was stored or readied or drying or cleaning. And at 4:30 I was driving James to hockey and went for a quick run with Mellie.

2009 Namekagon--Group Site 8.4 to Namekagon Trail Landing

 Love those early morns on the river

I got up at dawn, not because I especially wanted to but rather because there was 90 lbs. of dog that wanted to get out and at 'em. a beautiful morning, not a cloud in the sky and no additional snow. But the temp was definitely below freezing: a measurement a little later revealed 21.5 F (-6 C). But not a breath of wind, so fairly easy to bear.

 

Nevertheless, my first task was to get that fire going again. There were a few embers left under the ashes, and with a bit of old news print, some dry sticks saved for that purpose and more of the green twigs, to repeat the technique from the previous night I had a good fire in no time and the water heating for a good pot of coffee.

 Mellie smells a bear

I was quickly joined by Joel and then by Craig. Hot coffee tastes very well indeed on a cold morning, especially when accompanied by breakfast tacos. Craig and I are adherents of dish-less meals, wherever possible. Same as with the steak on a Kaiser bun: egg, cheese and sausage transferred to soft taco in hand and from there to mouth: fewer dishes to wash.

We made short play of breaking camp. By 9:30 it was hard to tell that someone had camped here and by 10:10 we pushed off. The four remaining miles would not take long. Enough time to make a quick foray up the Totagatic River (not very long as the current proved swift and the landscape not too exciting). We also stopped at Group Site 5.1, a nice spacious and level area with plenty of space to toss a Frisbee and other games. Only a few hundred meters on, our cars awaited us, still covered in snow. Due to the temperatures we were thankful to have invested in the shuttle. We recalled the previous year when Joel and Arnulf had to wait for more than an hour in pouring rain for the cars to arrive. Within less than half an hour we took a quick group picture. Joel and I bid Craig farewell and we were on our way back to the Twin Cities.

2009 Namekagon--Group Site 25.3 to Group Site 8.4

Where are my x-country skis?I slept well, waking up occasionally to change positions, as can be expected when lying on a Thermarest. I made a point to poke an ear out of my sleeping bag, and indeed, I heard the whisper of snow flakes hitting the rain fly. Around 6:30, Mellie decided that it was time to get up. I looked up and noticed diffuse moon light filtering in through the top of the tent. At least it's not cloudy, I thought. By now, Mellie was hard to constrain, her tail wagging vigorously. As I unzipped the tent door, I was in for a shock: everything white. We got at least an inch overnight, enough to cover up everything. Fortunately the fire was still smoldering and it took not much to revive it. It turned out that Craig had gotten up at 4:30 to take a leak and put a couple of logs on the dying embers. Just what the doctor ordered. I recall smelling the smoke and even the flare up of flames some time during the night. The snow made Mellie go wild, or maybe it was the cold. Anyway, she was running tight circles around the fire pit.

Breakfast was on Joel this morning, this year's officially sanctioned bacon from Hormel was quickly starting to look and smell delicious, leaving more than enough drippings for the blueberry pancakes. Delicious! It was a challenge to do the dishes, pack up and get ready to go because of the coat of snow. But we did it. A quick measurement revealed a temperature of 25.8F, apparently colder than last year.

At 10:10 we pushed off. We had been thankful for the sunny morning skies, but as we began paddling downstream, the cloud cover increased and we were quickly reminded of the absence of the warming sun rays. What more, a south westerly wind started slowing us down. We ticked off the landmarks in form of camp sites and boat launches, all marked with the distance to the Namekagon-St. Croix confluence. Frequent sightings of eagles, blue jays, king fishers and the odd flock of ducks and geese punctuated our progress. When we reached the Whispering Pines landing, about the halfway point of today's 16-mile stretch, Joel and I were so preoccupied with trying to make out what was written on the sign by the landing that we got hung up on a large rock in the swift current, just a few meters away from shore. A precarious situation, our still heavily loaded canoe slowly turning across the current. Joel quickly turned the canoe so it pointed downstream and held it in that orientation. Then we began gently rocking and pusing the canoe back and forth and eventually slid off the rock. The 45F cold water came a little too close for comfort. Craig, who had passed us while we were trying to free ourselves had completely missed us passing Whispering Pines but was glad to hear that this milestone lay behind us. We took a short break about 5 minutes downstream from Whispering Pines. We decided then and there that we would take a lunch break at Howell Landing, about an hour ahead. We had

Fall colors framed by snow. I thought this was supposed to be Indian Summer.

to work a bit harder because the wind picked up even more. Our lunch at Howell was quite uncomfortable, due to the cold and blustery weather. This is where we measured the high temperature for the day: 33F. Howell is a nice spacious area, with picnic tables and a shoreline that could pass as a swimming beach. Craig told us that when he and his family passed through on Labor Day weekend just 5 weeks earlier, the place was busy with sunbathers, picnickers, parties that were taking out or putting in. Unbelievable at this point! The only one who seemed unphased by the shore leave was Mellie, who spend the entire 15 minutes exploring.

The rest of the trip was pretty much a grind, despite the often breathtakingly beautiful riverscape. Craig, paddling solo had an especially hard time. His saving grace was that Joel and I would occasionally got hung up on a sand or gravel bar. Shortly before arriving at 8.8, our original destination for the day, Craig suggested it might be better to travel the extra 4/10th of a mile to the next group site, which would be more sheltered. Joel and I did a quick survey of site 8.8 when we arrived. In addition to being more exposed, site 8.8 had also a large alrea fenced off for restoration. We gladly moved on.

The Three Stooges

Site 8.4 was indeed lovely, along the narrower branch of the river by an island, well sheltered and on multiple levels. Locust trees all around the site had been recently cut, if the wood had had some more time to dry we would have been well endowed with an easy source of fuel. We started the fire with some dry pine branches, added big logs and topped it off with some locust twigs. Amazingly, the almost green twigs burned like tinder and soon we had a fire to warm our chilled bones. By now, the temperature had dipped again below freezing. Craig was making Beef Stroganoff in a Dutch oven and I was readying some molt wine. What a fine dinner! Again, we did not linger much before turning in.

2009 Namekagon--County K Landing to Group Site 25.3

We took off from County K at 3:40. beautiful fall afternoon, blue skies and hues of yellow in the trees, a certain crispness in the air but nothing that would suggest the inch of snow forecast for the night. Joel and I eased into our seats, it took Mellie quite some time to settle down, too many interesting smells and sights. She really gets in and out of the canoe with ease, without hesitation. Eventually she took a position in which her head was more or less out of the way. But 90 pounds of dog did put our heavily loaded craft a bit off kilter and it took some coaxing and shoving, yelling and pleading to get the beast finally into a position where she did not provoke me to sit on the right-most edge of the seat

Paddling went well. A succession of riffles demanded constant attention but we only had to step out once to get unstuck from a submerged gravel bank. Again, I appreciated my purchase of the Asolo FSN 95 hiking boots, completely waterproof thanks to a Goretex membrane. Three inches of water, even with a gentle current did not phase them. I think Craig appreciated the hang-up as he was soloing. He did not have the occasional luxury of taking a break.

Our wildlife sightings were dominated by birds. We quickly stopped counting eagles, there were just too many. Brown-speckled juveniles and white-headed adults, individuals and pairs. They might fly up, only to settle back on a tall tree a few hundred feet farther downstream, to watch us pass by. Other frequent birds were the kingfisher and blue jay, the former being quite shy, flying off down stream, sometimes circling back, crossing our path, complaining loudly. The jays appeared in small groups, twos or threes, their bright plumage a nice contrast to the browns, yellows ad greens of the leaves.

The stretch from County Road K to Group Site 25.3 (the number equates the distance to the confluence with the St. Croix River, as provided on the National Park Service brochure and map) was 5.9 miles. For once, we felt not rushed to beat nightfall. We made it to camp with plenty of daylight to spare.  The spacious camp site (a group site after all) hat nice, level tent spots. Pitching tents did not take much time and we were soon busy starting a nice fire. Not much work in terms of dinner prep, the monster rib eye steaks from Widmer's fit nicely between the halves of Mexican kaiser buns, a great way to have a plate-less dinner. Vegetables consisted of tomato slices, i cold have brought steak sauce but the flavor of these butter-knife steaks was such that the eaters did not notice this missing condiment. Joel and Craig insisted that these were the best slabs of meat they had ever eaten. Even if they said this to be nice to the cook, I have to say these steaks were pretty darn good! The culinary experience was rounded out by the Martinis Joel brought along. Stirred, not shaken, excellent. By the time we were done, bright stars overhead gave us the mood lighting, but not the northern lights we had hoped. By now the temps had dropped below freezing and we were eager to crawl into our sleeping bag even though it was only 9:00 PM. Mellie made a nest between Joel and me, close to our heads. I read a little and turned off the lights by 9:45.

2009 Namekagon--Drive to Namekagon Trail Landing and on to County K

I picked up the canoe, a Wenonah royalex 16.5 ft on Thursday night. I had been a little worried about the Yakima rack which I hadn't ever used before. I shouldn't have, it worked like a charm. I could not find a hook protruding from the plastic flashing of my Mazda5 to attach the front end of the canoe, so I employed a trick I had learned this summer: I attached little rope loops on either side of the chassis under the hood, let it hang out and attach a strap to the loops. The canoe felt rock solid on top of the car. I even felt comfortable enough to let my son Colin drive to hockey practice, which means something.

I took Friday morning off and ran around picking up last minute stuff, primarily groceries (steaks from Widmers!) I thought I had plenty of time but it somehow slipped away and I had to hurry to be at Joel's at noon. But Mellie and I made it and off we went. Beautiful driving weather and we made great time, much better than anticipated: Danbury around 2:10 PM, where we filled the tank and I bought a WI fishing license. We were at Namekagon Trail landing at 2:30, no one else in sight. As we took the last items from the car, the livery van from Jack's Canoe Rental arrived and as we finished loading the van, Craig arrived. The transfer to the livery van and trailer took maybe 10 or 15 minutes. The drive to County Road K took about 35 minutes. We were already glad that we would not have to shuttle this ourselves. Unloading at County K was efficient and after about 20 minutes it was off to the races.