Days 17&18

Day 17 Palisade

Took a day off to relax and clean up a bit. Three more paddlers arrived at the campground today. Jeff and Susan and then James French strolled in. It’s always a pleasure to meet new paddlers and learn a few things from them.  We all ate dinner together at the Rustic Trail Bar & Grill. A very nice woman from the Lyons Club bought all of our dinners! What a gesture! The generosity of some people is amazing!

After returning to the campground, the clouds looked pretty ominous.  In no time the sky opened up and the rain fell extremely hard! Lots of wind as well.

Not too long after the rain stopped, two young men appeared under the bridge in a canoe soaked. They were two west point cadets trying to paddle the river in 58 days! Nice kids, I wish them the best of luck!

Day 18

We got a late start leaving Palisade. We could have paddled straight to Aitkin, MN but we settled for a camp site 21-22 miles down instead. The water was glass. Not a bit of wind today. Once we arrived to Hassman camp, we learned it was not in our best interest to stay. The landing was gone. It was crazy hard to climb up. With gear? Impossible. So we decided to go a couple of more miles and check out the area around a flood diversion channel. Just our luck it has houses on both sides so we couldn’t stay there. Right across the river the shore looked flat and unoccupied so we camp on the bank of the river. It wasn’t too bad except for the mosquitos. We woke up early and paddled 10 miles to Aitkin.