Posts Tagged ‘Maple Island’

Maple Island / Mud Island

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

After 48 hours at home, I am heading out the door to rejoin the Monsta Movie Expedition. While home here, I have tried to repair torn and burned tents, and broken poles, but the only hope seems to be to order new poles and to leave the rain fly repair for post expedition. Also, I had the great pleasure of leading a sunset river trip with the Reimer’s of St. Louis last night.

Jimmy takes a swim in the Maple Island back channel.

Jimmy takes a swim in the Maple Island back channel (on purpose, hee-hee).

Deb, Jimmy and clan got a real taste of big muddy adventure. The put-in at Maple Island was a deep bed of mud due to the fallen water levels. All the fellas and the ladies (woo! hoo!) lent a hand and got knee deep in the goo to launch. The main channel of the river was lined with tow boats waiting to lock through. One in particular had jammed his 15 barges into the bank of Maple Island blocking the back channel, all the while running his engines to maintain position. On our return route of the classic sunset circumnav, we had to paddle out into the main channel and around this ill-positioned tow with the wash of his engines creating very turbulent if not treacherous waters. The Reimer crew put their heads down and paddled hard upstream into the flow, while shrieking as the Clipper canoe rocked and rolled across the chaotic waves.

Highlights of the evening were the variety of birds we witnessed: a brown pelican, many great blue herons, egrets and swallows, a couple of woodpeckers and signs of beaver, deer, coyote, and raccoon during our brief stop and walk in the woods. To top it off, Jimmy and I took a sunset swim hoping but failing to get all of the mud off. Now it’s back to Monsta Movies Expedition. I go from a muddy Maple Island to the real “Mud Island” in Memphis.

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Flooded Forest

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Two weeks ago, we paddled one of our favorite routes with Joni Doyle and her son. We put in at Maple Island access on a scorching late afternoon. Temps were in the mid 90’s. As we made the turn into the back channel for our return upstream, the flooded forest invited us in. We paddled between willow, cottonwood and maple trees. At various points, we were pulling the canoe with our hands wrapped around the trunks and squeezing between. The rewards of our effort were immediate. The temperature dropped 20 degrees and the magic of wetlands appeared. Later we stopped along the cut bank of the island and climbed out of the canoe for some exploring. The mud squeezed between our bare toes as we walked inland. The colors and light were enchanting. But the highlight of the trip was the swimming. Three times, we walked a hundred yards along the bank. Then jumped in, floating and swimming along with the current back to our canoe. Refreshing!

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Watch the birdy

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Watch out all you lower Mississippi River rats, there’s some muddy water heading your way. We had a 15 foot rise in four days on the lower Missouri and Middle Mississippi River. It’s flood stage around here. And what are we going to do with all this mud and water? We’re going paddling, of course.

Maple Island / Mississippi River Birding Tours
After last week’s awesome Wings of Spring event, and to help develop our partnership with the St. Louis Audubon Center, we are now featuring sunrise and sunset birding tours of Maple Island. Maple Island is a pristine river habitat located just below the Alton Dam on the “free flowing” Mississippi River and is part of the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Our bird tours by canoe enable you to experience some of the best birding habitat in the USA. Sunrise trips usually put-in at 6:30 AM and finish at 9 AM. The sunset trips put-in at 5:30 PM and return at 8 PM. The basic fee is $30 per person. We have special group rates for this trip. Contact us to schedule and customize your trip.

Canoe Rendezvous and Mississippi Water Trail Dedication
On Saturday, May 16, 2009 Big Muddy Adventures will be a featured partner in the 3rd Annual Great Rivers Canoe Rendezvous being held here in the Great Rivers region. This year, the Army Corps of Engineers and its partners will be opening and dedicating the next sections of the Mississippi Water Trail. This great effort will extend the water trail and all of its benefits, right down to the Arch in St. Louis. Of course, that means, Big Muddy Adventures should be your guide to the trail. Nobody knows it better. Nobody cares for it more.

There are a number of great canoe and kayak events planned. BMA will be providing canoe rentals and guiding for the “social paddle” that is planned. Also, we will be running guided trips on “Angela’s Ark”(see below), an authentic 19th century flat boat. These trips will take you up Piasa Creek, a storied tributary of the Mississippi River. For event details, you can go to the web site of the event. To get involved via Big Muddy Adventures, contact us.

Angela’s Ark
Big Muddy Adventures is excited to be providing a completely unique and awesome, “old timey” river experience. Join us on an authentic early 19th century flat boat. “Angela’s Ark” is a hand hewn and constructed flat boat, the kind that Mike Fink made famous. It accommodates up to 10 guests. It is moored at the Great Rivers Land Trust’s newly purchased, “Piasa Harbor” complex. Contact us and we will schedule a Big Muddy Adventure on an especially cool river craft.

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Flocking Together- Wings of Spring

Friday, April 24th, 2009

The 2muddy.com site is now coming together. The time for such things as web dev has been in short supply. Alas, it will await another day, yet again. Why?

It’s Wings of Spring and John Ruskey and the Mighty Quapaws are coming upstream via the “double nickel” I-55 with the King Beaver, the Ladybug and a pile of gear. We’re going to be paddling and guiding for this cool event. Three trips, Sunrise, MidDay and Sunset. And some canoe carving in between. The registrations are good and it looks like there’ll be a lot of folks getting some river time and some birding in their lives this weekend. Many thanks to Dr. Patty Hagen and the St. Louis Audubon folks for allowing us the opportunity.

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100 Billion Plastic Bags!

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Not a day trip, overnight or expedition is concluded without some recognition that our waterways are the conduit for which an unbelievable amount of the “throw away society’s” discard travels, then collects itself. Winter paddling trips provide the most glaring view of this. This annual low water season combined with frozen banks and bottomlands enable us to get out and explore places that are normally mud sucking morasses. Thursday’s short journey to the bottom end of Maple Island provided just such an example. At three different locations along the three mile stretch, large rafts of driftwood, pushed above the bank during this past year’s flooding, resembled nothing less than a land fill. Above all, the plastic bottles, barrels and bags revealed an eyesore of epic proportions.

Jon Bowermaster, one of the world’s foremost explorers, recognized this same phenomenon recently in Antarctica, believe it or not, on an island where penguins, seals and birds are the only inhabitants. In a follow up post, he notes the shocking truth about plastic bags.

In the U.S. alone, more than 100 billion cheap plastic bags are distributed every year, bags which never really go away, many of which end up in our waterways. Less than one percent are recycled.

1 % of 100 billion annually! That means 99 billion bags are not being recycled. Outrageous! Jon then shares his personal resolution to “go cold turkey” on plastic as much as he possibly can, beginning with a commitment to carry his cloth shopping bags on all shopping trips. Certainly, this is something that we can all integrate into our own stewardship plan. Big Muddy Adventures certainly is, and moreover, we are taking this a step further by carrying and filling large trash bags (albeit plastic ones) with the plastic we find on all of our trips.

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Maple Island and Pelicans

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Yesterday, we paddled from the Alton Dam-Maple Island access, where the free flowing Mississippi begins, to the Confluence Canoe and Kayak Access in the late afternoon. Truly Audubon’s delight! 50 + Amercian Bald Eagles, 25 Great Blue Herons, 2 flocks of twenty or so American White Pelicans, a few large flocks of Canadian Geese, a thousand or more sea gulls, and towboats making busy, busy, while we moved downstream into a magnificent sunset meets river horizon, all that and the remnants of the ice pack lingering about, making some of the route seem like we were paddling through a slushy.

The pelicans have been a pleasant surprise these past two weeks. I hadn’t seen them since the middle of the Fall. Their graceful glide in the air is one of my favorite bird flight sights. At the Maple Island channel entrance, we came upon a flock. They flew off in a ruckus. All but one, a poor pelecanus americanus whose right wing was damaged beyond repair. I watched with much sadness as this great bird flapped furiously. We slid silently by as he swam slowly in the eddy, warily watching us, a castaway, destined to remain there until its circle of life is complete.

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