Windy Halloween Canoe Paddle

Outdoorsy people are always a little crazy. You have to be, don’t you, to do things like climb 100 feet in the air and hang from a rope or send yourself down a roaring river inside a piece of plastic? So, it made perfect sense that I would join my friends Jen and Marcie for a canoe trip last Saturday in 35-degree weather with 15 mile-per-hour winds. Why eight other students would sign up for an RSOP trip to come with us and do such a thing is beyond me.

They seemed to all be excited though when we got together at 9am and drove to a put-in on the Lower St. Louis River, in Fond Du Lac, Minnesota. Fond du Lac is a community south of Duluth (technically within city limits) on Highway 23 that could easily be missed if there weren’t a park and a sign for a historical marker. The marker commemorates the visit of Daniel Graysolon, Sieur du Lhut, Duluth’s namesake, who came here in 1679 and met with the Sioux.

Our beginnings were much more humble as we put in near the historical marker and proceeded to paddle upriver – or rather, attempt to. Logic would suggest that paddling against a river’s current is a bad idea, but usually It’s not a problem on this part of the river. Today though, we fought tooth-and-nail against the wind for an hour to get about three-quarters of a mile before turning around.

For a short initial distance, there was lots to see. An old stone retaining wall towered above us on a river embankment, left over from a long-unused railroad track. We peeked into a back bay and found large wooden posts standing guard in the river where barges used to come to haul away stone from bedrock quarries. Fittingly, for this Halloween day, we paddled by a spooky-looking abandoned cabin on a small island that was teeming with birds. We even saw a Bald Eagle before paddling by our original put-in spot.

It took about five minutes to get back to the put-in, so we kept paddling downstream to an island lunch spot. My friend Chad shared some yummy roasted red pepper hummus with me, to accompany my PB-and-J-and-Bacon sandwich. Jen passed around a batch of sugar cookies that we enjoyed, courtesy of her grandmother. Before too long though, the wind picked up, my trip mates began shivering, and we skipped hot chocolate in favor of getting back to the van.

The day would end much like it began, with the eleven of us in our five canoes battling the current and the wind to get upriver. We made it in a decent amount of time though and were done a bit early. Jen, Marcie, and I suggested a quick hike as a way to use our extra time, but our group was already tucked into the van and excited to get back to the thermostat-controlled warmth that we had left behind for the day. Maybe we didn’t completely convert them to crazy outdoorsy folks by the end of the day, but they all seemed to enjoy this Halloween paddling excursion.