After arriving at “Gypsy Camp and Canoe”, we set up our tents and ate dinner, then met with our respective instructors at 7:00 pm for introductions, safety, communication, housekeeping and basic parts of canoe/paddle orientation.
Then we turned in, and were wakened at 1:30 am with lightning, thunder and a drenching rain. Sam and Duane’s tents both leaked, and by the time we were enthusiastically advised to leave at 6:45 am by the event organizers, they were ready to go. I was just waking up, but got with the program as we were informed that the Illinois River was overflowing its banks and was flooding into the camp, so we had to get out in a hurry.
It was drizzling lightly when I stepped out of my tent into my pre-positioned muck boots. The water almost covered the foot part of the boots. I was able to pull the stakes and lift my whole tent with its contents onto the back of my truck, and I unloaded it from there into the back seat. After it was unloaded, I took the tent apart and rolled up the wet rain fly and tent and stuffed them into the truck bed next to the canoe with the folded poles on top.
By then the sirens were blaring as the fire department arrived. My two-wheel drive truck could not get traction on the slick, submerged surface of our campground, and Sam towed me out with Duane’s strap to where there was some gravel mixed with the mud in the camp’s road bed. This was a new kind of wet exit, but we successfully improvised our way through it.
After clearing the campground, the three of us drove up to Siloam Springs, and then over to the outskirts of Fayetteville, where we stopped at a gas station for breakfast and debriefing. We talked about how we thought it would have been a good idea to regroup at the lake where we were planning to do our first day of training anyway, but since it wasn’t a pre-planned contingency, the urgency of the flooding did not allow for that kind of thinking. We talked about going to the Kings River or Buffalo River or Mulberry River, or any other river on the way home, but since Duane and I had canoes that were not yet customized to our needs and did not get the skills tuning we were hoping for, we didn’t want to tempt fate on high flows. So we decided to just go home.
Sam and I stopped at the deceptively tiny storefront of Ozark Outdoor Supply in North Little Rock and spent some time there with one of the old-timers, who showed us their “kayak forest” in the back storage area. There were about a dozen Liquid Logic kayaks in the “forest”. Sam felt inspired to buy a splash jacket / rain shell, so the 9 hours on the road were not completely wasted.
Photos of our “escape” morning follow.
Kent Walters, Author