Day 69: T 11/20- Helena, AR

  At this point we were almost out of water once again and planned to stop in Helena to refill.  The small town has a couple of ramps, but they were tucked behind some industrial buildings and clogged with the inevitable barge traffic.  We made an improvised landing on the outside of the harbor and walked up, but there was no spigot to be found.  We didn’t want to walk all the way around the harbor into the town proper, so we settled for boiling more water and took off again.  For you history folks, apparently Helena was dubbed “Hell-on-Earth” by the Union army when they camped there.  There’s some interesting information on the town that may be worth looking up.

  After our stop we headed almost due south for several miles, fighting a stiff cross wind.  It wasn’t the worst wind we had fought, but exhausting nonetheless.  We ended up doing 28 for the day an camping on the AR side once again. 

  Since we haven’t talked a great deal about the natural surroundings, I’ll throw a note in here.  As we traveled down river, changes to the ecosystem were gradual and easy to miss over the long haul.  The nice northern woods were gone at this point and we traveled through strange trees and other flora.  The sandbars along the river were mostly bare and had bur bushes, some fluffy grass and sometimes scrubby bushes- you can tell I’m an ecologist, right :p  At the high water line, the trees were small and grew close together, indicating young growth for several yards into the woods.  Regular flooding of these areas inhibits long-term growth.  So, the forest always seemed dense, overgrown with weeds and not at all like the open woods we are used to back home.

  Wildlife consisted mostly of herons, deer, coyotes and small, burrowing critters.  And spiders!  There were an unbelievable number of eight-legged monsters all over the place.  They dug holes in the sand, built webs under our rain fly in a matter of hours and would float on the breeze across the river on thin lines.  These were the worst; the lines would coat our hair, arms, paddles and dog and once their lines were on you, you knew they had made it into the canoe.  We almost bludgeoned ourselves with our paddles trying frantically to kill the little buggers as they made a dash up our legs (by we I mean mostly I, Aaron wasn’t nearly as girly about it).  There were also big hairy looking guys with long legs who would float on the water until we came close.  At this point, they would pop up onto their toes (or the arachnid equivalent) and sprint to the canoe; we think they were looking for a ride or a meal, but we’re not sure.