Camping on the Mississippi

It was a pretty action packed weekend for me this past weekend.  And it started early.  It was my annual camping trip to an island in the middle of the Mississippi River.  As always it was a great time, but there are always bumps along the way.  The first bump came as soon as we got to the launch.  I met Eric and Nate there at around 4:00.  Eric’s parents had just given him their boat which had been in storage for 8 years.  I will give Eric some credit, and he did his due diligence with some maintenance prior to the trip.  The first trip to the island consisted for just Nate and Eric with the majority of Nate and Eric’s stuff with the exception of their coolers.  I stayed at the launch to help Eric with the next load.  When Eric returned to the launch, he mentioned that he heard an odd noise and upon investigation to the engine compartment we found more water than should have been normal.  We pulled the boat out and determined that the radiator petcock was broken.  It was at this time that Mike and Tim showed up.  Knowing that Eric’s boat was out of commission, Mike and Tim drove 30 minutes to Mike’s dad’s house to get his boat.  I drove to the nearest town (Galesville) to see if I could find a radiator petcock.  When I got there the store was closed.  Dejected, I went to the nearest dive bar and had a beer.  I think I finally got out onto the island by 8:30 that night, 4.5 hours after I arrived at the launch.  But this also left Nate on the island by himself without any firewood or his cooler which included all of his beverages.  A late start onto the island meant a late start on dinner.  We didn't eat until well after midnight.  

   

This was kind of funny.  Friday night while a group went to the launch to get firewood, Mike and I grabbed a 20 foot long fuse and rigged up packages of blackcats every foot and buried it under everyone's chairs around the fire.  Unfortunately I lit the fuse too early and as it burned the smoke came up from the sand and we were found out.  I should have waited until around midnight to light it.

Friday morning it rained, but that was alright with me, that just meant that I could sleep a bit longer.  The skies cleared by late morning.  There wasn’t much done with the day.  I had purchased some model rocket engines and made some sky worthy rockets out of the remains of the fireworks that were used the night before.   I also came up with the bright idea to also make some rockets out of roman candles that had yet to be launched.  But the rocket of the day was one fashioned out of a roman candle tube that was about 3 inches in diameter and 3 feet long with a “G” engine in it.  

 Here is video of the launch.

I also launched an old model rocket that I had, which went floating back down to earth managed to get blown off course and into a tree on the island. 

Saturday I was scheduled to leave to attend my father’s 75^th birthday party.  More to come on that party.  On Saturday morning, Bob had decided that he was going to go climb the tree to retrieve my rocket.  He was gone for about 15 or 20 minutes when we heard some yelling.  We couldn’t really hear what he was yelling and didn’t pay much attention to it.  Another 10 minutes later Bob came back to the camp all bruised up.  Turns out he fell out of the tree.  His arm was pretty scraped up as well as his back. Bob estimated his fall to be about 20 – 25 feet.  About 30 minutes later, pain was really starting to set in and Bob decided that maybe it was time to go to the hospital.  He needed help getting out of his chair and couldn’t sit down once he got in the boat.  Turns out it was quite the fall, 3 broken vertebrae and 2 broken ribs.  To be honest, this group had been playing with house money for a while now, and we were overdue for a trip to the hospital or morgue.  But Bob was a trooper and he came back to the island Saturday night.  And from this incident came the nickname Brokeback Bob.