I love having an active paddling group. While we’re often connected by racing, we also just have a love for outdoors. Mark organized a weekend camping trip. Danelle seemed excited so we decided to load up the boat and make room to help others. We were off to the river!
The general plan was that several of us would meet at Weldon Springs boat ramp on the Missouri River around 5pm. Then those of us that were there, would carpool up to the Klondike ramp about 10 river miles upstream. With the carpool, somebody would be there to help retrieve cars when we finished Saturday afternoon. It didn’t take long and a group of us were loading boats with overnight gear at the bottom of the Klondike ramp.
As usual, Danelle and I were the only canoe out there. We didn’t mind and we had tons of space to carry gear.
We had five boats heading out to float about a mile down to a sandbar to set up camp for the night. When we arrived, we organically found the area where we would set up our tents. We started a fire using the end of a tree that was lodged on the island.
Notice the table in the right of the photo above. It was part of our camping kit. A cool Coleman one that folds up quite small.
One of the things I always seem to miss the memo on is food. When I bring Pop-Tarts, everybody else cooks a meal over a fire. Note that I generally bring easy stuff for food. Danelle and I decided to go fancy. I brought a dutch oven and a bag of match light charcoal. I had a bag of frozen dinner that just needed to be heated and popped it into the oven. It looked fancy if you didn’t notice the bag I poured it out of. Meanwhile, others had simple meals, the opposite of me [again].
We had two people join us that couldn’t make the first wave of boats to the sandbar. They chatted via phone with somebody in our group so they knew where we were. We also had some lights to help guide them in. As they approached, I freaked out as the red and green navigation lights on the boat they approached with split in half. I freaked out until I realized they were in 2 kayaks each with a separate light that happened to be one red and one green.
I worried that I packed too much stuff in our boat. The guys that showed up, one of them had a propane fire pit and a 20 pound tank to fuel it. I knew they would be fun guys to hang out with.
In the morning, we had some lovely fog. I made a fancy large meal and fed just about everybody with our leftovers.
After breakfast, we quickly packed up camp and paddled the other 9 miles back to Weldon Springs ramp.
It was just the right length of camping to get the experience without taking up the whole weekend!
Hogan Haake