Notes From Art and Sandy

Notes From Art and Sandy’s great Canoe trip down the
Arkansas river

5/30 - 6/4

Art:

Denver to Colby

Cold wet drizzle and rain. Canoe on the car top
shifted and almost fell off twice. Things we noticed
along the road on the drive from Denver across Kansas:
Cows, interstate lanes ¼ mile apart at times Waitress in the coffee shop in Limon has lived in Limon for several years but does not like it there. Not sure what holds her captive there but did not want
to pry.

While trying to adjust the canoe strap, I accidentally run the strap through the open window cinch it down (instead of going over the window frame) which essentially cinches the driver side door shut. Well this would not have been all that bad beyond the embarrassment of not being able to open the door, but some how when I cinched it down this way, it slightly bent the window frame screwing up the weather strip, and forever causing the window to pop and click when opening it.

Sandy needs to stop to use the bathroom every hour :)

We arrived in Wichita with a squall coming through town. As I write this we are doing some last minute errands while waiting for the rain to let up so we can launch dry. All the surface streets in this part of Wichita (North West) are covered with perhaps a foot of water curb to curb in some places. Rain should let up in about an hour and hopefully we can launch.

Not sure how we are going to get half the stuff we have in the Canoe… it fills up the entire car. Sandy is in the Food 4 Less now getting more food I guess? Food 4 less sounds cheesy but the people going in and out look respectable. More respectable than the stores in Sandy’s neighborhood back in Thornton Colorado

Launch Tuesday 5/31

The river that flows behind Chris’s house was a bit low. It picks up more water downstream in Wichita where the Little Arkansas joins. We were told the first portage was a small dam near downtown Wichita that you could paddle very close to before pulling out (thus saving portage distance and with Sandy’s load of luxury items this is a big deal)

We saw a sign on a bridge and just beyond that was the dam, right under the same bridge where the first is , unless we missed a sign? We could hear the rush of water and what appeared to be a perfect take out point
on the left before the dam. The take out point turned out to be an illusion, it was high ground beyond the dam. We were forced to back paddle and run over a nice young Hispanic kid’s fishing line to get out of the river. We had to motion to him to drop his line in sign
language due to our ignorance of Spanish , he did not realize we were making a mad desperate dash to shore, because he likely thought we would run the dam?

The portage was in a melting pot of a “park” near downtown Wichita… a great place for all the neighborhood men and boys to fish all day. Only problem there were no public restrooms of any kind. All these fine gents tend to drink large quantities of beer and pee under the bridge near the abutments. The urine stench was over powering going under the bridge, which was the shortest path to move our gear (and we
had a lot of gear right Sandy? :) Coupled with the fact that a recent rain had made the ground wet, it was the closest thing on earth you could envision as what it would be like to walk through a giant urinal. Really, really gross. Made us think- why in the world did we start on the North side of Wichita?

Prior to the portage it was kind of magical from the river looking up at all the buildings and what appeared to be a modern down town convention area with bike trails.

We just both laughed historically after getting back into the Canoe , after the portage, it was a real
adventure just not we had imagined !

A near spill on a protruding piece of rebar, a tightly
walled channeled river with no camping spots had us concerned as darkness fell. Our estimated time through urban Wichita was supposed to about an hour. Two hours later, with complete darkness approaching, we pulled out under the next bridge in smelly muck. The Canoe at this point was tucked into the shadows of the night among weeds , trash and
broken cement. We would be clearly visible at first light. We had seen homeless camps and graffiti under other bridges and knew that it would be seen from many angles early tomorrow . We went up to the road to find three very low budge hotels. I am sure these
could be rented by the ½ hour in this part of town.
The motel we picked advertised 21 dollars a night, we
chose this one not for the great price, but because it
was the only one that did not have half the sign burned out, a touch of class above the others. We thought of taking a cab to someplace a bit more up-scale, but wanted to be down at the Canoe at first light.

Sandy:

Monday
We started out by having to break into my house via
back door. It took Art about 1 minute so now I
feel real safe! I guess I’ll use the bar from now
on. Left Denver around 3:30pm (not bad) & started the long
ride down I-70. First heard and saw canoe moving
about 2 seconds out of town. Stopped to adjust and
tie down about 4-5 times before we lucked on a TA
(travel authority?) store with trucker tie-down stuff.
It was pretty freaky listening to the canoe move around glad we finally got it to stop!

Art notices everything on the road changing scenery, cloud formations, irrigation equipment, and tries to figure out what each is for or why it exists, etc. His mind is constantly searching for answers.
It is interesting to observe I don’t think I have traveled with someone more inquisitive than me
before.
I like to stop all the time because I get tired of
sitting and so I’m always the one to be ready to
take a break. Driving doesn’t wear him out, which
is like a foreign concept to me.

Stopped at Best Western in Colby “the oasis on the
Plains” (I swear to god it said that!) The hot tub
was perfect after sitting in the car for hours especially after my 1st 10K! : )

Learned that I’m a breakfast person and Art is not.
I just can’t get going without food 1st thing. Also, I
think I start vacationing right when we got in the
car. I slow down and relax more on schedule stuff.
Drove through what looked like urban east coast city to
get to Chris Collins house nice canoe guy that is
helping us and is about ½ second from the river. So
now we are wating out the torrential rain and street
flooding to get started down the river.
I'm looking forward to time spent starting at the
stars and pondering the universe.

5/31 Art the lodging night 1

Valuables with us we were walking to our smoke
encrusted room when who should pop out of the room
next door ? A character right of a Jeff Foxworthy
sketch. No exaggerating here, exact words. Hey Marge
get a shirt on and get here. You gotta see this They
look like crocodile Dundee! Where you all from? I
expected his shirt to say something like I’m with
stupid, but he held his beer about chest high, and
Frankly I was just too tired to strike up a
conversation and he was too drunk to even be remotely
interesting. So we made minimum polite quick
conversation and ducked in for the night.

Sandy:
Tuesday
Well, I guess I have to wait a little before I get to
stare at the stars. We left Chris’s house around 5:30
or 6pm last night, thinking we would be through Wichita and into open river by 8pm. Well, that did not happen by a long shot! We started off well it was still damp from post-monsoonal rains and it was
not too cold, just about right to be on the river.

Very shallow though we had to paddle through lots of
sandbars and got seriously stuck several times. Saw
lots of blue herons and kingfishers very cool!
Meandered through some beautiful sandbar areas at
first, and then moved into downtown Wichita. Started
to see people bicycling and walking down park paths
and then scattered fishermen. We were looking for the
place that we were supposed to portage around a waterfall. Almost went over it because we did not see it like a mirage of sorts until we were 150 feet away silly really.

So then had to back paddle hard and land on a scummy, rocky shore with fishermen none of whom warned us of the death trap, by the way, - and portage under a bridge back to the river about 1/8 mile. It was foul
and disgusting under the bridge it smelled like urine and I kept waiting to step on a needle. I lost a sock somewhere and did not bother to try to find it, as it was so polluted.
Good news is that we did not die! And then the fun continued. At this point it was around 8pm and we knew we only had about one hour of daylight left. So we are paddling like crazy to get downstream. Had to go under about eight bridges total my finest moment
was almost flipping the canoe when we hit some rebar at least I know my paddle floats! Ended up desperate at around 9:10pm and decided that we had to leave the canoe, take what we could, and run for the hills! (or a hotel : )) Figured we would never see the canoe again, Art is more trusting or at least figured it would be hard to steal : )
So we wander out like two hobos, with the canoe stashed below a crummy bridge, and find the Sunset Motel. Absolute, complete dive hotel with the requisite cast of characters living there. Saw an old couple with their dog even though it was no pets and then got accosted by a drunk two rooms down. He had his chick put on her shirt and come
out to see us. Unbelievable, he thought we were straight out of Crocodile Dundee!

Art

Derby and Beyond June 1 2005

June breaks with slightly better water than the previous day. Five hours of paddling and we make 12 river miles, likely 15 total, as we must zig zag across the river to stay in the channel with each
bend. Our boat draws about 4 inches of water. So we need about 5-6 to stay clear of the small underwater dunes. Bountiful sand bars as the channel has far fewer pilings and artificial jetties. Not sure if the
Army core of engineers ever did anything official to make a channel or if what we see is ad-hoc? As we get
out away from the urban areas and out into the country
the cut banks and sand bars take on a familiar rhythm.
We are able to read the channel quite easily now.

We see numerous turtles, a beaver, perhaps it was an otter, but I think most likely beaver. It just poked its head up a few times to check us out before disappearing for good as we approached a bridge. Not too many saplings on the banks where I saw him, I think
he augments his shelter with driftwood or more likely
lives dug into the bank? King Fishers diving, many
Egrets, Herons, Cardinals, Great Blue Herons on every turn, hawks , turkey vultures. On the sandbars we can
see clear signs of Raccoons and Deer. Saw what I thought was a bass, later was told there are no bass in this river, but to me it was bass! It jumped clear out the water over a foot to nab something off an overhanging leaf just off the bow of our boat. No warnings just water explosion and fish where you don’t expect it.

We even saw a snake trail running 100 yards from the
woods to the river in the sand. This was our campsite
for the night, a broad massive sand bar where the
Arkansas takes a 90 degree sweeping turn to the east about two miles south of Derby

Derby lies about 3 blocks east of the river. Before reaching our camp site sand bar, we beached up on a nice sandbar next to the Market Street overpass. We had a great lunch at Subway and dessert at the DQ
before returning to our wilderness where I know write
from a dry river channel sheltered by a grove of trees. Across the river about Â ½ mile downstream a farmer is cultivating or harvesting something? Winter wheat? His spread must be 3 or 4 hundred acres as it stretches for about a mile along the river from the looks of it.

Sandy:

Wednesday

Last Night took a shower to get the river grunge off
me.

June 2 Mulvane

The morning on the sandbar was reminiscent of waking to a tropical Island. Cool breeze going through the trees with a view of the river over the sandbar about 150 meters away.

The dry channel where we camped was separated from the main river by a wedge of heavily wooded higher ground which no doubt formed an island during spring floods.

Our channel was an oasis within the oasis.where the trees lining both sides gave us morning shade while river itself looked as if it was back lighted visible at both ends. For here, bending around us the river made a wide 100 degree turn.

We untied the Canoe (Big Red “expletive “), from a driftwood clump and pushed off at about 8:15. Smooth rowing for about a mile and then the river straightened out for the first time. The bottom went
from soft sand to rock with no visible channel. Every time we found deep water no sooner did we start scraping rocks. Hauling the canoe in bare feet over a sandbar was fun. Scraping it over rocks in bare feet
is painful. I was forced to don my water shoes, an old pair of banana boat style sneakers, which dump about a quart of water in the canoe as I hopped in and out like a schizophrenic when we got stuck.

Finally a sandbar off to the right appeared and so did the channel. The next few miles to the Mulvane bridge were idyllic. About a mile from Mulvane on the right a structure caught our attention. We had become accustomed to the occasional red neck farmer dump site, man made objects on banks were quite commonly an old car or shopping cart, treasure chests of odd junk with untold stories behind them that we could only imagine. This time the object was a cleverly built tree house mounted on a fallen tree still partially attached to the soil on the bank, perhaps 10 feet above the river. The entrance was from a small san bar on the river where the downed side of a fallen tree lay the roots still attached higher up on the bank.

Scrambling up the trunk on all fours you could access the house from the tree trunk via a mini ladder making
up the last few feet to get into the doorway. The corrugated front wall was pocked with 20 or so bullet holes shot through from the inside toward the river.

Most interesting was that the only access was from the river with no obvious route or trail leading from the bank. As the bank was very steep and inaccessible.

We docked the boat on a sandbar near the bridge
leading into Mulvane Kansas. Entering a Midwestern
small town from an unorthodox portal brings a certain excitement . First of all you have no inkling of the local economics, there are very few accurate early indicators coming down the river. As we walk into the outskirts of Mulvane..we can see the large grain elevator and some light industry on the edge of town. A body shop and a company that makes gauges make up the anchor businesses in a small industrial park. The industrial park melds into a row of early 1900’s style Midwestern houses. We feel like visitors from another planet. Our feet are wet and sandy in our shoes, our river hats are caked with mud and malformed from river splash. We are walking down a country road at midday. Nobody walks into a farm town like this? It’s as if we came via some secret underground passage and popped up from a hidden man-hole. We walk past a high school kid scraping paint from the fro not the local Ma & pa hardware store a sure sign Wal-Mart has not invaded yet.

Laurie’s Kitchen in rustic downtown Mulvane is where we decide to eat. River hopping etiquette requires you try to eat non franchise whenever possible, local diners are perfect. The place has a healthy end of lunch crowd, a sure sign the food must be hearty and filling.

We decide to try and stay in town tonight, figuring our canoe will be safe. It was a hot mile walk from the Canoe to town and we want to explore a little bit. There is a small museum and who knows what else around the corner. Our waitress informs us the only lodging in town is Aunt Sue’s B&B which lies 3 miles outside of town on a small farm with cabins. We call and poor Aunt Sue has a huge church group coming to dinner otherwise she would break free and pick us up. We defer to plan B and find a nearby Enterprise Car rental, who can deliver a car to us so we are set for the evening. Chris offers to drive down and bring us our car , but that is out of the question.

Aunt Sue’s turns out to be the local wedding and honeymoon retreat. Several small superbly theme decorated cabins overlooking a Duck Pond , with wedding Gazebo.

Sue asks us what time we want breakfast and we turn in for the night escorted back to our cabin by Sue’s pure bred Golden Retriever who spends the night on our deck defending us against unseen critters in the nearby woods.

We are the only guests this weekday so we get Sue’s full attention during breakfast . French toast with marmalade syrup, put together, they melt in your mouth.
And then back to the river and more adventure.

A bucking 20 mph head wind today makes reading the river channel almost impossible. The first thunder storm roles in around 11:00 am and pins us down on a sandbar where we don our poncho’s to wait it out. The wind physically rocks the fully loaded canoe beached up on the sand, it would surely slam us into the bank if we were in the open river.

The storm abates after about an hour and the wind returns to a stiff 15 knot breeze, the river is up an inch or two, but the head wind ruffles the water just enough to ruffle the water and hide the channel. We end up dragging the canoe over the sand bar each time we lose it on every turn.

All of a sudden long before we expect it a campaign sign appears perched in the sand. “Bill Hather for city council” White letters on a bright red sign. Chris had informed us that a friend of his would mark a good camping and take out spot on his land if we chose to stop. Over shooting this spot would leave us with 10 miles to the next accessible place ,and with rumors of low water rocky stretches ahead we decided we did not to bruise up our feet and Canoe one more day.

We make camp on another tropical island type beach of a sand bar, 200 meters wide and over a mile long. We pitch the tent quickly as the sky starts to close in on us. The first wave of storm front brings some rain and lightning and gives us time to make dinner over the propane stove complete with Smores, 45 minutes later the sky gets that shade of green that means business. Clouds roil and boil at the lower levels while the tops reach up 10’s of thousands of feet turning 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm darkness in just a few short minutes. We dive into the tent to hold it down while the wind rocks us sideways and rain beats us from the horizontal in sheets. 30 minutes later we hear a voice screaming over the continuous thunder. Bill Hather has driven the mile or so down to the river and hiked through the poison ivy and brush to our camp site to check on us. He wanted to assure us that there was no Tornado imminent with this storm but there was a watch in the area, so he took our cell phone and gave us directions to his storm cellar should conditions worsen. He also hauled our Canoe to much higher ground as he knew the river was going to come up based on the weather report up stream.

We get another respite in the weather and decide to hike up to Bill’s place to thank him before night sets in. The walk is through an amazing path cut in the woods and fields complete with all sorts sights that clearly show that Bill loves this place and makes it his entertainment. We traipse through poison ivy, past a boy scout camp, an authentic Indian sweat house and what Bill calls an artificial spring.. 500 meters of hose strung together to supply a buried livestock trough with continuous fresh water, the “pond” comes complete with lily pads and warming hut..

6/3
The storms roll in all night and the lighting is again continuous, the rain alternately pounds and lets up a bit between squalls but never stops until about 4:00 am. There is a major railroad route about a mile away that runs two tracks. Trains are within earshot every 15 minutes throughout the night , the whistles blow all night they are mysteriously comforting as they let us know the world beyond our sand bar still exists on this stormy night.

In the morning we peak out to find the entire Sand Bar under water. The river came up 6 feet at the Derby gauge a foot more and we would have lost our Canoe ,tent and the precious camp chairs! A message on my cell phone from Chris left at 5:30 informs us he may not be able to get to us as the roads are all flooded. Chris was obviously monitoring the situation from Wichita over night worried about us. We were as ignorant to the extent of any impending flood as the people of 1900 Galvesten Texas.. Later we discover the Radar history shows a wide swath of 3 to 6 inch rain fall squarely in the Arkansas river drainage basin upstream from our location.

We finally get to sleep about 6:00 am , a voice awakens us at around 8:00 … Chris made it and has the Van waiting a short portage away up on higher ground our trip is complete for now.

Art Reisman is 45 years old and is co-founder of a
startup tech business that creates speciality
Networking Equipment www.apconnections.net. Art was
born and raised in Southern California

Sandy McGregor, Age unknown, is an IT Director at
Corporate Express in BroomField Colorado. She was
raised on the family winery in upstate New York.

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