A War With Wind and Waves: Tempest Tossed in Lake Pepin

        We thought we were done with lakes, we thought our research and reading had told us the river would stay just that, a river. On the map, looking down, Lake Pepin looks like a wide portion of the lake that extends around 23 miles.  As we left the town of Hastings, we calculated that we should be able to cross the lake in one day. After all, we crossed the infamous Lake Winnie, a journey of 13 miles across open water, which at the time was near freezing and fomenting violently.  We paddled as the sun came over the horizon. The night before we had barely slept, it was a hot muggy night,  the roar of freight trains and barges along with the hordes of mosquitos outside our tent only allowed us around d 3-4 hours of sleep before we needed to go. Today we planned for a long day. Our aim was the town of Pepin, the childhood home of Laura Ingalls, famous for writing little house on the prairie.

The geography in this part of Minnesota is quite interesting. The river has cut through the landscape over the eons to produce tall steep mountains, whose faces rise very steep from the river bank. Covered in densely green forest, both Toby and I made the comparison that it looked like a scene from the Jurassic park movies.  Most of the early morning was spent drying to actually get into Lake Pepin. We had to maneuver around the paths of a few barges, navigate their wake, and still somehow keep our forward motion.  It was almost noon when we reached the beginning of the lake.  We had paddled for 6 hours, the last 3 dealing with the passing wakes of fishermen speeding by on their boats.  Various types of boats create different wakes, some more manageable than others.

We have yet to enter a lake and find passive and calm waters. Toby joked that the universe knows we are entering a lake, and turns up the dial on the wind and waves.  We entered Lake Pepin intent on reaching the opposite shore 5 miles away, before we would curve around a bend and then paddle another 5 miles to the next opposite shore.  Although the sun was bright, the wind has picked up. It sometimes blew from the southeast, sometimes from the south west.  Usually, the waves align themselves with the winds, allowing us to appropriately manage how badly we are tossed, but not here. The waves were moving south west, while the wind was blowing south east, making us paddle excessively.  hard to keep the boat straight. After a hour of hard paddling, I looked back to see that we had barely even left the inlet we came through, crawling along at maybe 2 miles per hour. Somehow, we reached the calmer waters near the shore, and drudgingly hugged the shoreline around the bend.

I couldn’t help but loath the plethora of boaters around us, Fat burly men sitting in their cushioned bass boat, trolling along with their equally plump and obviously bored looking wives,  who would go back to their R/V’s, sleep in soft beds and maybe even take a warm shower. I dipped my paddle in the water and pulled back, “Well, they aren’t not having as much fun as we are”, I smugly thought to myself as we hit a large wave, sending the bow, and toby, splashing into the water.  The wind began to pick up, this time, seemingly negating every paddle stroke forward.. In consequence, the size of the waves also increased. We assumed we would not have any bigger waves than what we saw on Lake Bemidji or Winnie, but as we keep being reminded, the Mississippi does not lend itself to predictability.  We were hitting waves head on, which sent Toby up in the air and then down in the water. As the waves rolled past him, they came over my side, soaking my shoes and pants, and worse, pooling in our canoe.  There was a sail boat, curing in our vicinity, seeming unaffected by the waves and even enjoying the wind, although I felt some envy, I felt better than in case we would become swamped, someone was at least watching us.  We pressed as hard as we could, but seemingly could not make forward motion.  Three hours later, we had progressed less than one and a half miles. The wind picked up more, and we realized we were not going to make it to Lake City, I saw the sail boat enter a little harbor on the shore a quarter miles to our right.  We cautiously turned our bow back toward the entrance and let the wind and waves push us there. Entering the harbor was like entering a different universe, the water was calm and so was the wind, there were two men taking at the harbor shop when we pulled our canoe to shore, looking tempest tossed and grateful to be on land.

We walked up to the shop and before I couldn’t even ask anything, one of them yelled, “Ya’ll look like you need some help.” “Well, I think we just might”, I said, not quite sure what kind of help yet, but I sure felt like it. The man was the owner of the harbor and took us in his shop. He said he’d get truck to drive us around to the town of Wabasha, the end of the lake.  We just couldn’t pass this up.  I paddled the canoe to the boat put-in and while I did this, Toby managed to rescue a lady yelling that she was locked in a restroom.  The man giving our weary souls a ride around the lake was the owners father. He tied our boat down and we got in the truck.  I have never met a person who was so hard to make laugh, actually, he didn’t laugh, barely even smiled. If he was trying to be encouraging he failed immensely. He informed us of the river ahead, all its dangers, crocodiles, whirlpools that can suck you under, and certain dam that “if you take the wrong channel you’re coming out of the river in a body bag.”, I replied, “well, my wife would kill me if that happened,” expecting at least a slight chuckle from a age old quip, he replied even more stoically and seriously, “Well, she wouldn’t have to because you’d be dead already.  I decided to stop trying, and just enjoy the ride.

We manged to negate at least 15 river miles by taking this ride, 15 miles of awful violent lake, with permission from the local police, we pitched our tent in a small park gazebo very relieved to be safe after a long day. Our sleep was deep and restful, after the previous night being sleepless, and the day being quite taxing. All night we heard a party going on somewhere, music, screams, and horibble karareoke. Regardless we slept, then came the one of the most unexpected and awkward interactions this trip. I was still sleeping, but managed to hear people approaching the gazebo, I was waking up I heard this conversation between a guy and girl. “ This place looks so creepy, like place to get murdered!” “NaahH” said the man, “it fine, there is no one here” slurring through his sentence.  At this point, I was awake but super groggy, expecting them to walk by and keep walking. “Oh my god, there is someone here!, lets go!” , said the girl quite worried. At this point I figured the best route for me was to keep sleeping. “Whoaaah cool, are you guys camping?!?” It took a moment to realize that he was talking to us. Who talks to random people they can’t see who are most likely sleeping in tents? Drunk people is the answer. By this time Toby was awake and we both answered quite enthusicaticly. “Yea!, we are canoeing the Mississippi and need a place to stop. “ DUuuuude, awesome man, that’s so cool. Where’d you start?” “ The source” we yelled. “Dammmmmn! Well, we were just coming here to have sex, but you guys are here.”  We started laughing haltingly, “Uhhhhh well, sorry, ummm there is another gazebo here in the park”,  I don’t know why, but I groggily added “but feel free to stay” as if they were friends stopping by to chat. I instantly regretted that my knee jerk hospitality.  “Oh no no no, lets just go home, the girl said” “ Well you guys are awesome and have a good trip good luck!” “Thanks man!” we yelled, “have a good time…”, they walked away and toby and I looked at the clock, 2:30 am… Not what we expected.

Today we are waiting out thunder storms; we have a warmshowers host waiting for us in Wiona, and look forward to sleeping in doors.  The river has not had beat us yet, but now we are racing against the clock. Wish us luck.