Day 69

Late into the night I woke up shivering in my silk sleeping bag liner. I quickly pulled out my sleeping bag that I haven't used in a month and wrapped up. When I woke again early this morning the river was covered in a blanket of thick cool fog so I went back to sleep. A few hours later I was awakened by the sound of a tractor brush hogging the levee behind me, I quickly packed up and hit the river. The river was starting to make more tight curves of over 90 degrees and I noticed the current becoming less organized with each one. About a dozen miles down river and just before the confluence of the St Francis river I paddled through a hard bend where the current created a large swirl 250 feet across with smaller whirlpools around the edges. This swirl represented the death of the wonderful current I had ridden the last 70 miles from above Memphis. Shortly after the St Francis river punches into the Mississippi at a right angle and the Mississippi boils and fights the muddy St Francis for the next several miles. At noon I could see the Highway 49 bridge about 6 miles down river at Helena. For the last several miles into Helena the river slows to a crawl and the water was filled with Asian carp, tens of thousand swam just under the surface of the water and splashed as I paddled towards the casino on the Mississippi side of the bridge. Having tied up the canoe and climbed the steep over grown bank I arrived at the casino doors. I made my way to the all you can eat buffet and ate way too much, fried catfish, turnip greens, ham, butter beans, fried okra, creamed corn, mac and cheese and a gallon of sweet tea. When I made it back to the canoe I was stuffed and paddled out into the lazy current trying to keep to the shaded west bank. The last few hours of the day I spent on the edge of the channel and out of the way of heavy barge traffic. Around 7:30 I made camp on one of several tiny sand islands on the upstream side of a long wing dam, south of a place in MS named Friars Point after the near by town. Still full from my large late lunch I took a long swim while watching the sun set.