Redhorse Access to River 'Round Conservation Area

The weather, while still unusually cool, was finally beginning to lean toward Spring.  Our next chance to get out on the Meramec River would be Saturday, April 6th.  The forecast said we'd actually reach the 70s for once!  I decided we'd try the next section upstream, the 16 miles from the Redhorse Access to the River 'Round Conservation Area.  Like always, I got the map ready, we bought food and drinks, we packed, and went to bed early the night before.

We arrived a few hours earlier than normal.  It would be the longest trip we'd attempted so far and I was unsure how long it would take us.

The river was maybe a foot higher than normal, if that, and unusually clear compared to where it runs through our town.  There was around 3 feet of visibility.  The boatramp at the Redhorse Access led into a deep spot that was wide, but not too wide.  There were lots more rocks and far less mud than at most points of the river that we'd seen so far.  From the elevated top of the boatramp, straight out from the its tip, about 40 feet into the river, we could see the great big, wide, white head of a boulder just beneath the surface with the water gently gurgling and bubbling all around.

I inflated the raft, packed up, kissed the wife and son goodbye, and pushed us off.

When I was researching the course of the river for this trip on googlemaps I kept noticing long stretches of shimmering water for much of the first half of the trip.  I assumed that googlemaps had just happened to have gotten their images when the wind was blowing or something.  There couldn't be THAT many rapids and for that long!

Yeah, there actually could!

While these rapids weren't dangerous, they were mainly clear with very little debris, the water was very, very fast.  It was like the whole river was spread out really wide and squished to a foot or two deep rushing over a huge gravel bar for long stretches.  It was cool to watch the rocks beneath us just zip by, but occasionally we chose the wrong path and ended up getting the raft stuck in ankle deep water over a particularly shallow spot.  There were some sections where the river hit a gravel bar and just went every which way.  Sometimes there would be as many as 5 paths!

After a few miles of those shallow rapids, we came across a dredging machine, which had obviously been doing its work.  The river quite jarringly deepened and uniformly widened, and the current nearly completely stopped.  It was like floating across an extremely long, 100 foot wide lake that had no current.  I had to do a ton of paddling.  At least it was very clean and mostly free of debris.

Soon we came across the highway 47 bridge.  It marked the 1/3rd point of our trip.  There was a private ramp and we saw a few boaters here.  They were all nice enough to slow down for us.  But with fairer weather, this was just going to become something we were going to have to deal with.  Luckily for us, the wind had really started to gust from behind us, which was shoving us down the river at a surprising clip!  There was almost no need to paddle for quite a ways!

We came across this gorgeous overhanging shelf and spent a while just drifting underneath it, feeling the rock and looking up above our heads at all the cool, smooth, intricate surfaces, wondering how deep the rock went, and whether or not there were deep, underwater caves just beneath our feet.  I wish we could have spent so much more time there.  It was beautiful and the air was cool under its natural, stone umbrella.  And the water made that sweet sound like low pitched singing all along where the water met the rock.  It felt like paddling through a cave.

Studying the waterway in googlemaps, I had noticed a fairly sharp, 180 degree bend in the river right around the halfway point of our planned journey.  I could see some beaches and knew there had to be some bluffs to force the river to bend to its will like that.  I figured that would be a good place to stop and have lunch.  Boy did I guess right!

The beach just seemed to go on forever, and there were gorgeous bluffs on the other side.  The river just barreled around that corner, churning and gurgling over unseen boulders below.  I paddled in the shallows along the beach until I ran aground.  I got Lilly out and tied up the boat.  She ran up the mountain of millions upon millions of weathered stones.  

As I stood there taking it all in, I thought to myself, "I wonder if I could find any arrowheads here..."  I then looked between my feet.  There was one!  Boy that was easy!  I called Lilly over and explained what I had found, and what arrowheads were, and how they were made, and who made them.  She was amazed that real Native Americans had lived right here, in the middle of nowhere, where we were standing!

I fetched the cooler and my chair and found a place for us to eat, next to a big pile of sand on top of the mountain of gravel, where Lilly had already begun to dig and play.  

It was about this time the wind started to become a problem.  It was great when it was shoving us down the river.  Paddling had been easy.  But these gusts made it difficult to eat.  We couldn't put our food down for a moment, for the wind would gust and blow it away.  I hadn't started to worry yet, but the thought did cross my mind, what's going to happen when the river turns and this wind is gusting against us?

I figured we'd cross that bridge when we got there, and that surely the wind would calm down as the sun got lower.  After eating and letting Lilly play for a bit, I packed everything up, shoved off, and we zoomed around the sharp corner, hugging the inside as well as we could, being propelled by both the gushing current as well as the wind, slamming into the bluffs and turning hard to push us once again.

Soon after, we came to another, much longer, much taller, beautiful line of bluffs.  Here, we met our first fellow kayakers, a group of three.  Two of them stayed behind to fish, while another sort of tagged along for maybe a mile as we journeyed.  This stretch was just gorgeous, but the wind was becoming something of a problem by now.  It was ramming hard into the bluffs and shoving us downstream, not quite, but almost uncontrollably.  The wind said it was time to move on, so we moved on!

A while later we passed under the former, and current, Mill Hill Road bridges.  The old one was dilapidated, but somehow, seeing those boards falling apart was kind of beautiful.  Its amazing that that's how bridges just used to be built!  And then there was the new Mill Hill Road Bridge.  I haven't seen that many bridges that curve like that.  It's unique for this area.

And this is where the wind became a real problem.

Formerly, when I would prepare for a float, I would watch the weather like a hawk.  The two variables I prayed for to be favorable were temperature and precipitation.  As long as it wasn't too cold, and as long as it wasn't raining, we'd be fine.  Or so I thought.  I had never given any thought to wind speed and direction.

We had nearly reached the end of our float.  And so far the wind had just been SHOVING us down the river.  It was very nice.  I didn't have to paddle much at all, except to keep us on course.  But at this point in the trip the river makes a very long, very round circle, a full 360 degrees.  And as soon as we started the turn, we ran smack into the face of those oncoming windgusts which HAD been helping us.

It was horrible.  The wind was just howling in our faces.  I was actually having trouble lifting the paddles and pushing them forward while out of the water, to row.  And row and row and row as I might, in the middle of rapids even, we almost weren't going anywhere.

Later, after finishing the float, a couple on a motorboat pulled up the boatramp and asked us "How on EARTH did you guys make it though that wind?  WE were having trouble in that wind!"  It was just bad, very bad.  Ever since then, we've actually had a few opportunities to float, where the temperature and precipitation were fine, but because there was going to be wind gusts, I just decided against going.  It's all fun and games until it's gusting right in your face, against you.  No thank you.

Along with the towering riverbluffs, we started to see several caves along this stretch too.  Had the river maybe been a bit higher, or had we seen a way to get up those banks, I would have loved to have taken Lilly at least to see them up close.  But it was too dangerous to try to scramble up those banks with her in tow.

Eventually, we made it through those horrible winds and to the boatramp at the River 'Round Conservation Area.  Can you tell I was tired?  I was so tired that I was a bit disoriented at that time.  I kept thinking the ramp would be on the right bank, for some reason.  I guess its because the river makes such an enormous circle.  I remembered beginning one of our previous trips from that very ramp, but I guess I was just too tired by that point.

It was an absolutely fantastic trip.  We rocketed on top of clear water across stretching gravel bars.  We saw more bald eagles, beautiful bluffs, umbrellas made of stone, and endless beaches littered with millions of smooth stones.  We found arrowheads, and saw old-timey wooden bridges.  We battled the wind itself and won!  Although there had been a handful more motorboats and kayakers than before, we still went miles and hours without having to share the river with anyone but the two of us.  The 16 miles from Redhorse to River 'Round were some fantastic, beautiful, memorable miles!

Oh, and as an addendum, there was a time when I would see people loading and unloading their flashy, powerful bass boats on the Meramec.  And I'll admit that for a time I was jealous.

Yeah, and then I realized I can do this with my boat and all of my gear.  Oh, and my gas bill while on the river itself is $0.

I'm not jealous anymore.

Pacific Palisades Conservation Area to Route 66 State Park

At the very end of that month, Saturday, March 30th, the forecast changed quickly.  Suddenly, just before the weekend, they were saying we were going to have warm enough weather to float again!  I hadn't originally planned to float this area, but because the break in the cold weather was so sudden, I had little time to prepare.  From all of the reviews I had read, downstream from the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area wasn't much worth floating.  Many people complained about how "trashy" and "industrialized" this stretch of the river was.  Regardless, we didn't have enough time to prepare for any of the other trips, and I had experience hiking much of the first quarter of this float.  So we ran to Wal Mart the night before, got the food and drinks we'd need, whipped up a quick map for my phone, and packed for the 13 miles from the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area to Route 66 State Park.

While I hadn't planned on floating this area because of the poor reviews, I was actually glad we could work it in.  The trip would start in the area where I had spent years fishing and hiking.  I would finally get to explore many of the places that I could see, but never reach from the shore.

The weather in the days before had been very cold and snowy, and the morning started off very cool, foggy, and dreary.  Looking downstream from the boatramp at the Palisades Conservation Area, it reminded me of something from one of the Lord of the Rings movies.  Right at the boatramp the river is usually deep and the current fast.  However, it was around 4 feet above normal from all the melting snow, so the river was wider and the current faster than even normal.  The river is generally so wide by this far downstream that it really wasn't a problem for it to be up though.  It was actually kind of nice because as long as we stayed in the middle we'd be certain to not hit any submerged obstacles.  It would also make paddling easy because the river would be ushering us downstream quickly.

Right across the river from where I spend most of my time fishing is a long highwater lake.  When the river was very low, and the gravel bar extended far into the river, I could see its opening.  But I could never see up into it.  And there was no way to get to it.  We paddled up into it and explored.  It goes quite a ways back!

You can walk along the right shoreline almost the entire length of the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area.  I've probably hiked and fished every inch of it.  But at the lowermost righthand corner of the boundary of the Conservation area, the river splits around a small island and the shoreline stops.  Even if you cut through the woods there's a long lake that curves all the way back to where you started, so you can't hike any further.  I've had great success fishing from the very last tip of shoreline, within a stone's throw of the island.  But the current is so fast right where it splits that I'd never DARE swim to it.

When we got to the island we took the righthand current around it until we reached a beach on the very backside tip.  We parked the boat and hiked up the hill.  The island is tiny, but it's very, very steep and at least 40 feet high, depending on how high the river is.  It's uninhabited, except for birds and probably little mammals.  It was fascinating exploring it.  I took a picture from the top of the island, where the river splits around it, looking upstream along what is normally a sandy shoreline.  The current right there is incredible!

Looking up that lake that hooks around back through the Palisades Conservation Area. I've hiked and fished this area for years now so I was very surprised that for a moment I wasn't sure which way to go! It's hard to describe, but because the river split around the island and then flowed into this lake, the water was flowing literally four directions at once, kind of like an H or an 8.  Usually you can just follow the current, but the current was flowing 4 different directions.  It took me a minute to get my bearings and head back into the Meramec.  I wish we would have had time to go up into it to explore.  I've seen a few half-sunken barges while hiking the lake's shoreline.

Just like the other floats there were plenty of beautiful river bluffs on this trip.  If the river would have been lower, and it wouldn't have just been me and my daughter, I would have loved to have swam here, or at least fish!

So this is the part of the river that most people were complaining about.  For a few miles there are just cars and trash and broken down bridges and junk scattered here and there.  It's really disappointing.  But at least the majority of the float wasn't that way.

While looking over the river on googlemaps I noticed what I thought might be another island a little bit before the Allenton Access.  I figured we'd try to take the left path around the island instead of sticking to the main channel, just to see what it was like.  When we got to it, the water was high enough to navigate it, but it was really narrow.  As it turned out, just beyond our view a tree had fallen and was blocking the entire waterway!  And the current was going so fast, I had to make a decision really quick, whether or not to try to get up the shore and drag it over, or try to ramp it.  The shore really wasn't an option because the bank was still pretty steep and I knew it would be slick as ice.  So we headed for the lowest part of the tree and I started paddling as hard as I could.  We slid right over it without a problem!  From now on we'll be sticking to the main current of the river!

In all the 69 miles of the Meramec River that we've floated to this point, I have not yet seen a more beautiful spot than this.  Looking at the river on googlemaps I knew this would be a pretty spectacular spot.  I could see that the river snaked one way, and then snapped back the other sharply.  The river just slams right into this bluff and makes a hard left turn.  It's almost like the water sings as it rushes past the smooth stone wall.  There's a gorgeous gravel beach over to the left and the bluff just goes up and up.  There was a bald eagle nest just before the bluff too.  I bet it makes a great place to perch and look for fish from that high up.

By this time we had arrived at about the halfway point, the Allenton Access, and it was time for lunch.  We pulled up onto the boatramp and set up table on one of those huge boulders they have at most of the Conservation Areas here in Missouri.  It was nice to have a clean, wide open, dry place to eat lunch.  After lunch, she ran around stretching her legs, as I packed up.  We then pushed off to finish our adventure.

Between the Allenton Access and our goal, Route 66 State Park, there really weren't many landmarks to judge how far we had left to go.  Just lots of deep valleys and very steep, high banks, punctuated by the occasional beach.  The river basically just made one big, long bend to the right, and then one to the left.  The Highway 109 Bridge was about the only marker to tell us we were getting there.  After that I was just paddling and paddling and paddling thinking "Holy cow!  Are we there yet?  Where's the boat ramp?"  It's hard to tell how far you've got to go when there's not much to go by.

Other than how dreary the weather was, this was a fantastic trip!  We saw more eagles, taller bluffs, got to explore lakes and islands, and almost got tangled up in a tree blocking our path!  Lilly was a very brave, and adventurous girl.  We had made it all 13 miles from the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area to Route 66 State Park.

I can't say I agree with most of the poor reviews I read about this section of the Meramec.  There definitely are areas that have a lot of junk.  But the majority of the river is clean.  And so far, this stretch has had some of the most beautiful places I've seen on the river.

River 'Round Conservation Area to Robertsville State Park

We didn't have a break in the cold, snowy weather for another, full month.  Saturday, March 9th was our next chance.  The forecast predicted mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the lower 60s.  I decided we'd float the 11 miles from the River 'Round Conservation Area to Robertsville State Park.

I had been watching the hourly forecast like a hawk for weeks. Every forecast said there would be no rain. Woke up to rain. Even while we were driving there in the downpour, the weather on the radio said "No rain today!"  I was worried that the rain would raise the river too much, but when we got to the boatramp that wasn't the case.  The water was even surprisingly clear, (for that part of the Meramec at least), in spite of the rain.  The river was shallower and skinnier here than at the Robertsville State Park, or the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area boatramps.  While there was a noticable current, it didn't seem as strong either.  We put on our ponchos in case it started raining again, and shoved off from the boat ramp!

Because the river was narrower, and shallower, there were quite a few more obstacles in the beginning here than the last float.  Thankfully the current was slower, so it was easier to maneuver around them all.

All along the riverbanks there were trees that were in the process of being washed away, still stubbornly clinging to whatever they could grab.  Their roots looked really neat and sometimes looked like monstrous faces!

Like the last float, there was no shortage of beautiful, smooth riverbluffs.  Many of these were hollowed out like swiss cheese.  We wondered and speculated about what kinds of fish and animals might make a home in all those holes and just how far some of them stretched.

There weren't a whole lot of rapids and obstacles on this trip, but there were a few.  This set was exceptionally loud.  We could hear it from quite a ways away.  The river was more than wide enough to avoid this one though.

Many miles of this length of the river were more like this.  Long, straight or slowly curved stretches with steep banks and tall valleys on each side.  It didn't help that it was so cloudy that day.  Very, very dark.

Every now and then the river would open up though.  We stopped on a seemingly endless soft strand of beach on the right bank and made lunch.  It was in the mid 60s, but because much of the river was in shadow, it felt colder.  It was very nice to get to sun ourselves and fill our bellies with warm food on this beautiful beach.

We passed several landmarks on this float.  First, an old railroad bridge, and later the Highway O bridge.  Its fascinating to see the underside of bridges like these, especially the old ones.

About 3/4ths of the way through the float, the river became noticeably shallower and the current really picked up.  Other than a few places where the river split around, over, and through gravel bars, our paths were mostly clear.

And then the river widened again, and deepened.  I recognized the landscape as that of the beginning of the last trip we took.  And then we spotted the tip of the Robertsville State Park boat ramp barely sticking out of the steep, muddy bank on either side.  We had made it the 11 miles on our second float!

This was a very beautiful, and mostly easy float.  There were bald eagles watching over their nests and soaring over the river, looking for fish.  Countless, glossed riverbluffs.  Sandy and gravelly beaches.  And long stretches of mostly obstacle free river.  There weren't too many gushing bends that I remember.  Lots of steep, towering valleys that cast their shadows over everything.  Tall, vertical, striated layers of red and orange and brown and white sediment carved away by the turn of the river.  Like last time, we only saw a handful of people, and just one motorboat.  It was fantastic enjoying the scenery, just me and my daughter, all by ourselves.

Robertsville State Park to the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area

Saturday, February 9th turned out to be not too cold.  When I saw that the forecast predicted clear skies and temperatures in the upper 50s, I knew we had to take advantage of this fleeting opportunity.  Although I knew the water would still be chilly from the sub-freezing temperatures we had been experiencing, I figured that if we wore proper clothing, stayed in the sun out in the center of the river, and didn't get wet, we'd keep warm enough.  I thought we'd float the 11 miles from Robertsville State Park to the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area first because I had kayaked it once before, it was very close to home, and I was still uncertain how our new raft would hold up out on the Meramec River.  

While it's no Colorado River, the Meramec has it's fair share of obstacles.  Chutes, gravel bars, downed trees, submerged logs, boulders and more are common sights all along the river.  The Meramec is prone to sudden, violent flooding, which fills its waters with all sorts of fresh debris just below the surface.  One spot might be clear one weekend, but filled with snags after the latest flood.  Although it had solid reviews, and looked and felt tough to me, I had no idea whether or not it would hold up if it rammed into a log or rock, or got stuck on the gravel.  And though it felt stable out on the lake, I didn't know how hard it would be to flip.

It's unfortunate, but people die in the Meramec River every single year.  I wanted to take our first trip as safely as possible, while still having fun with my 5 year old daughter, Lilly, of course.

The Meramec was much deeper and wider at the Robertsville State Park boatramp, than where I usually fish.  The tip of the gravel bar that I frequent is very shallow on the left bank with a sudden, very narrow, deep channel far to the right.  Here, the banks of the river made something like a bowl.  The river was at a normal height, but it was deeper than I had expected and I could see the current chugging along out in the center.  It was a little intimidating at first.

But as soon as we got out in the water it was smooth sailing.  Because the water was deep, there were no obstacles out in the middle, although the steep banks were littered with them.  As I could see far downstream, and there were few obstacles, I quickly relaxed and we started enjoying ourselves.

While most of the river was deep and wide and clear, there were a few chutes and shallow stretches.  None of them were that bad.  As long as we kept to the inside of the curve we avoided most of the trouble.  There was one bend that was a little too fast for my abilities, and we ended up stuck on top of a huge log in the middle of a rapid, but after calming down, and a bit of wiggling, we slid off and were on our way.  After that I made a point of looking farther downstream for the ripples in the water that mark barely submerged logs and rocks.  While going through the next few bends I found this to be supremely helpful.  Rafts in general are very sluggish and difficult to maneuver, especially in a fast current.  But as long as I spotted the obstacles and paddled very hard to position myself exactly where we needed to be way ahead of time, all of the bends were much easier to negotiate.

I had saved a map of our float on my phone, and had been keeping track of our progress.  Bend Bridge was one of the first major landmarks I had made note of, and marked the halfway point of our River Adventure.  We had driven across that rickety old, one-lane, wooden bridge many times and I had been looking forward to finally seeing the underside of it.  It was also encouraging to see that we were making good time.  The current had really been pushing us along!

We soon floated past the Catawissa Conservation Area.  We pulled into one of the small highwater creeks on the right bank that shoot out from the river to feed the lakes so we could get out of the current and feed ourselves.  The banks of the creek were so steep that we were in shadows at nearly noon.  It was dreadfully cold being out of the sun, so we ate as quickly as possible and paddled back into the current where we gladly soaked up the sun again like so many turtles sprawled out on a log.

Next we passed under the aging railroad bridge that cuts through the heart of Catawissa, and marks the lower boundary of the Conservation Area.  It was another landmark I had noted, and was looking forward to seeing.  All the beams and boards, in perfect symmetry and angles to one another, were very pretty.

Several twists and turns and rapids later, the Meramec River meandered very close to Pacific, our hometown.  We heard cars as we approached and passed under the highway F bridge.  The river then hugged the edge of town, though we could never see it because of the steep 30 foot left bank.  We were glad to see those familiar bluffs that marked the outskirts of town and signified we had nearly reached the end of our voyage.



There was no shortage of beautiful, often worn-smooth riverbluffs on this float.  They seemed to dive straight into the water into unknown depths, unlike the pebbly beaches which tapered off into the stream.  I have to admit that I'm a sucker for riverbluffs.  There's just something unequally beautiful and majestic about an enormous stone pallet, chiseled by the gentle lap of the stream.

Although I know she enjoyed the trip, when I later asked her what her favorite part was, my daughter told me "Seeing Mommy and Lincoln at the boat ramp."  And although I thoroughly enjoyed it myself, I have to admit that I agree with her.  I love the outdoors, and sharing it with my daughter was fantastic, but this was the first time I had the burden of piloting the boat and ensuring the safety of others.  This new oarlock rowing was still cumbersome and new to me and it was a bit exhausting.

The trip was fantastic though.  We saw some stunningly beautiful landscapes.  Steep cliffs falling straight into the rushing current.  Trees growing straight out, hanging on for dear life.  Bald eagles watching over their nest.  Gorgeous orange and white gravel beaches that seemed to stretch on forever.  There was also a dash of adventure with the occasional gushing river bend!

I was glad that we went when we went, even as early as it was in the year, and as cold as it was still, because I know from experience that this portion of the Meramec River is obnoxiously popular come warmer weather.  When I would fish in this area in the spring and summer I would have to fish either before the sun came up, or after the sun went down.  After about 9 AM endless streams of canoes, and kayaks, and rafts, and tubes, and swimmers, and partiers, and drinkers, and awful, stinky, reckless motorboat after motorboat would clog the river till nearly sun down.  But this early in the year, we only saw one other motorboat, and fewer than 5 fishermen throughout the 11 miles we floated.  I sincerely enjoyed the miles and hours that went by, just me and my daughter floating along, her asking question after question, with not a soul to be seen or heard.

This float was also a very successful test of our new raft.  We had ran aground on gravel bars.  We had scraped over rocks.  We had slammed into, and gotten stuck on top of great logs while shooting gushing bends.  Not one of the air chambers had popped, or was leaking in the slightest.  And when I flipped it over to check the bottom, to my surprise, there wasn't even the slightest scratch.  And in all that bumping and crashing, the raft never once came close to tipping.

This had been an incredible trip, and our raft had turned out to be an incredible purchase.  We couldn't wait to use it again!

Getting Started

I've loved being in the outdoors for as long as I can remember.  My grandpa Carter was first to introduce me to fishing, camping, hunting, hiking, and swimming.  My grandpa Pratt taught me to cherish the outdoors and care for it.  Growing up in New Haven Missouri, I was blessed both to have access to the mighty Missouri River and it's countless tributaries, and to have grandparents who were eager to take me up and down every one of them.  Entire summers were spent camped out on muddy, sandy riverbanks with several poles in the water.  Or trolling Stockton and Norfolk lakes for white bass.  I couldn't count the fish I've caught, or miles of shoreline I've hiked, largely due to the influence of these seasoned outdoorsmen.

While I enjoy almost any activity out in the wood, fishing has always been my passion.  In 2012 I spent almost every Saturday from February to November, (and sometimes a few fair weekday evenings), camped out on the tip of a favorable sandbar on the Meramec River at the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area, just outside of town here in Pacific Missouri.  I only came back home empty handed once.

Although the fishing was very good last year, I had grown tired of years of bank fishing.  So in late December of 2012 I decided I wanted to get a boat.  But there were several, serious difficulties.  Firstly, I didn't have the money to buy, maintain, or fuel a motorboat.  Not even a cheap one.  I could afford something simpler, like a canoe or kayak, but then I didn't have a good place to store something that large.  I might have been able to store a very small kayak on the porch, but that wouldn't exactly be secure, and I wouldn't be able to take my young daughter with me.  And I definitely wanted something I could take her with me on.

I decided a raft would fit my needs.  It would be cheap enough for our budget.  It would be small enough to store in a closet or the trunk.  And it would be large enough to accommodate me, my daughter, and whatever guests and gear I wanted.  

But then, which raft?  I'll admit that the first place I looked was walmart.com.  I wanted to see what my cheapest options were.  However, after reading the reviews for everything they had, I realized that the bottom of the line wasn't going to survive what I wanted to do with it.  I then googled "buy rafts", "buy rubberized boats", and the like, but the vast majority of results were wildly out of my price range!  I realize that many people shoot white water far more demanding than anything I'll ever dare, and they need top of the line stuff that isn't just going to pop in the middle of some rapid and dump them all.  But good lord, $2,000 for a raft is just mind boggling to me!

Somewhere along the line I came across the Mariner 4, by Intex.  It's was the right size for my needs.  It was within my price range.  And every single review I read for it was absolutely glowing.  People talked about ramming into trees and scraping over rocks and dragging over gravel bars and coming out with barely a scratch.  They said the floor insert was stiff and sturdy enough to support any chair or tote, and even stable enough to stand in, as long as there weren't large waves or you didn't ram into a log while flowing down the river, of course.  While it's not rated for serious white water, like Class III and up, it's the only reasonably tough, reasonably durable, hard bottom raft you'll ever find for under $300.  I found mine on sale from a dealer on amazon.com for $219, and that INCLUDED shipping!

My raft arrived December 28th, 2012.  It was quickly unboxed and completely aired up and assembled.  I just couldn't help myself!  The kids loved the silliness of having a boat inside the house too!  But there wasn't much else I could do with it, aside of practicing airing it up and packing it away, which took up our entire living room and my wife despised.  We had a relatively cold and snowy winter from 2012 to 2013 here in the Midwest, so at the time it arrived, no matter how enthusiastic I was, there was no way I was going to venture out in it, at least not yet.

So I got to thinking, what was I going to actually use this thing for?  The type of fishing that I had spent the past couple of years focusing on didn't exactly lend itself to motorless boating.  I had spent the past 5 years fishing on the banks of our local river, the Meramec, which has too strong a current to paddle against.  There were a couple of lakes in the next town at the Catawissa Conservation Area where I had a bit of success fishing.  And my boat could work just fine there.  But there had to be more I could do than spend the entire spring-through-fall putting around a few, muddy lakes.

Although I had spent countless hours on boats, and canoes, and kayaks in my youth, I had only floated 3 times that I recall.  Normally, we got in a boat in order to get to a certain point on a river or lake in order to fish or swim.  The only few times I ever floated, just floating mainly for the sake of floating and seeing the river, was with my Uncle Oscar and Aunt Chris on some river down in South West Missouri, when my buddy Jared invited me on the National Honor Society float trip on the Twin River, (if I recall correctly), and once when I borrowed my Father in Law's kayak and floated on the Meramec.  All of my other experience paddling or boating was on lakes and rivers while finding a good fishing spot.

But here in Pacific Missouri, the Meramec comes right into town.  And I had spent the past few years fishing and hiking it's banks.  I knew it was a relatively large, powerful, healthy river, with plenty of beautiful gravel bars, bluffs, caves, forests, and a wide variety of fish.  I knew 150 or so miles upstream it all started at a magnificent, deep, milky blue spring.  But up to this point I had only ever seen with my own eyes the 11 miles of it that I floated that one time, from Robertsville State Park to the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area.  I had extensively hiked the left bank of the river from the boatramp at the Palisades, down to where the bank ends at the end of the Conservation area.  But to be honest, realistically, over the past 5 years I had mostly focused on one, solitary tip of a gravel bar where I had found a consistent abundance of hungry fish.  The majority of my knowledge of this vast river boiled down to the tip of one gravel bar.

But now that I owned a watercraft capable of traversing such a body, I could change that.  Since I couldn't get it outside yet, I took to researching the Meramec River and planning a series of float trips.  I read reviews written by those who had already floated it.  I located every possible put in and take out site from  the river's beginnings at Meramec Spring all the way downstream to where it meanders through our town.  Judging by how long it took me to kayak the 11 miles from Robertsville State Park to the Palisades Conservation Area, I decided that 15 miles was a good, long, morning-till-evening float for me.  So I looked at all the possible put in and take out points from the Springs to Pacific and divided the river up into 15 mile segments, more or less.  This took a good while, because the put in and take out points aren't even close to evenly spaced.  So some trips had to be as short as 9 miles, while others had to be as long as 19.  But judging by my past experience, even 19 miles was doable, if I started early enough.

Now, although we did have a fairly cold and snowy winter, we were blessed with a precious few warm afternoons.  On one of these, on the 4th of February, right after work I grabbed my daughter and threw the raft in the car and headed to the lakes at the Catawissa Conservation Area to get used to paddling this thing. I had plenty of experience paddling canoes and kayaks, but I had never paddled a raft, much less one with dual oarlocks like this one.  It was a good thing I took some time to get used to it before taking it out on the actual river, where I would have to deal with the swift current, and obstacles like chutes, fallen trees, and submerged logs and boulders.  Here at the lakes I could get used to this new paddling motion without having to deal with any of that.  

It was very awkward at first.  I was used to that double-handed, one side and then the other, canoe paddling.  I tried that at first, but even with this raft's relatively diminutive girth, I was completely unable to get anywhere.  I then tried the oarlocks, but that didn't go well either.  I kept trying to paddle one, and then the other and the boat would just waddle side to side not going anywhere fast.  Finally, clumsily, I began to get the motion down.  It's almost like you're punching both fists at the same time.  To row the raft forward you've got to push forward very hard on the paddles.  Dig deeper into the water to push yourself forward faster.  Lots of shoulder work.  Just lap at the surface for minute adjustments.  Pull back deep and hard for the brakes.  Like most rafts, mine doesn't track well at all, so every now and again you'll have to let off paddling one side or the other to let the opposite paddle straighten your course again.  

Before long I was zipping from one end of the lake to the other, and turning every which way, however I chose.  It was still all a bit stiff, but only time and practice would change that.  I was finally ready to go.  I had my craft.  I knew how to pilot it (basically).  I had dozens of float trips planned.

But there was still the issue of the weather.  It snowed late into 2013, much later than it had in some years.  Back in 2012, I was able to fish whenever I wanted by early February.  But looking at the projected weather for 2013, I had no clue when it would be warm enough to get out on the river without freezing to death!