Stranded Upriver

It was a beautiful summer day BK (before kids) and our friends were visiting us from out of town. We decided to go river rafting on Wisconsin River. After booking our rafting trip, a young girl explained the river route to us. She showed us some pictures and told us they were taken, oh, about 4 or 5 years ago. And these photos only give a general idea of what the landscape looks like, because every year it changes with the dunes.
We had two choices to pick from for the rafting trip – 5 hours or 3 hours. As the young girl continued to explain the river route, she told us as she showed us a picture that if you are doing the 3 hour route this is where you will land. She explained that if you are doing the 5 hour trip then you will go past a beach of “nature” admirers.
We all felt, 3 hours was plenty of time. So we put on our life vests and set of on two canoes down the river. Wisconsin River at this part is quite shallow and has a gentle flow. We started rowing and maneuvering to keep the canoe centered. We had maybe gone about an hour or so, when I noticed the “nature” admirers. I told our guests, I think we have gone too far and have to return to our landing site for pick up. The pick up was of course scheduled and we had to make it or be stranded and figure out a way to get back to our cars.
So now we started canoeing upstream. Oh, what a workout. Before it seemed like the river was just a gentle flow, now it seemed like it was raging with currents. Anyhow, we kept creeping up the river slowly, really working our arm muscles. A couple of times we spotted what looked like a landing site and rowed up. One of the landing sites turned out to be a public landing site for boat owners. So off we went again. Another landing site didn’t turn out to be much of anything. Now we were at a total loss. We didn’t know if we still had a ways to go to our landing site, if we had altogether missed it or what?
As we were rowing we saw a man fishing by a small sandy area. We rowed up to him and asked him if he knew where the pick up site for this rafting trip was. He pointed further upriver and said, just around this little outcrop here. So we said thanks and started rowing upriver again.
By this time my arms were hurting something bad. So I bent my head and started rowing as hard as I could. After a while I lifted my head and saw we were in the exact same spot as when we were talking with the fishing guy. The guy was laughing so hard, he was bent over double. I apologized to him for ruining his fishing; he could only wave his hand at us as he continued to laugh. Meanwhile, since we were talking and not rowing, we were now 10 yards down river.
By now I felt ready to just jump out of the canoe and drag it to shore and just wade through to our pick up landing site. Not that the river shore was a clean walking path. This is when a couple in a motored canoe drove up to us and asked if we wanted help going to our landing site. They told us they had been keeping an eye on us to see if we needed help. We gratefully accepted their help. It turned out our landing site was just as the fishing guy said, only a few more yards upriver. We got there safely and then had to sit around waiting for pick up, since we were now an hour early.
Apparently when we chose the 3 hour rafting ride, it meant we just had to sit in the canoes and not row, but simply use the oars to avoid any rocks or shallow spots in the river. If I hadn’t spotted the “nature” admirers’ beach, in 3 hours we might have reached the Mississippi River!

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar Aug 3, 2009