10. Our food never rots (it freezes).

9. The locals are impressed. (ok, maybe they think we’re crazy)

8. Low water means the canoe will never drift away if not tied town.

7. When it doesn’t freeze at night, we remark how warm it is.

Hope we didn’t scare anyone (ie our mums) with the last post – it’s not all terror and danger. We’ve paddled to some of the most charming American towns one can imagine; the kind with men on ladders fixing red painted shutters, women unraveling holiday garlands for storefront decorations, lots of smiles and hellos, and church rummage sales with absolutely amazing sweaters and earrings, etc for about fifty cents each.

Yesterday night it was t-shirt weather. Record highs for the day were set in the area at midnight. It was recorded to have reached 66 degrees (19 Celsius for us Canadian-folk).

It’s the early evening, dark already, and we’re in a lock. We’re sharing it with one other boat, a sailboat, and other than the wind the only sound is the clanging of its mast. Combined with the orange glow of the lampposts, it sets a foreboding atmosphere. Something’s coming. We watch in silence as the dark water sinks lower and lower, the concrete walls growing taller around us. The lockmaster comes to check on our ropes – “you guys have any lights at all? Are ya camping soon?”

Aside from a few people in the food coop proudly sporting little “I voted” stickers on their lapels, you’d barely know it. There’s the occasional “tonight’s gonna be interesting, eh?” but for the most part the Americans we’ve been talking to have kept pretty quiet about it. Maybe they roll their eyes or heave a sigh. There’s not a lot of buzz.

Unless of course you turn on the radio (or worse – the television), which is a non-stop parade of political propaganda. My favourite radio ad goes something like this:

Paddling the Mississippi has certainly been done before. We always ask around, to get a feel for how many people do it per year. Estimates vary widely – we still don’t really know. But no matter what, without fail, everyone says “but not this late in the year!”

We’re sitting in a little cafe in Monticello, Minnesota. Kids are going from business to business trick-or-treating, yet another reminder that November is right around the corner. Not that we needed reminding. We paddled 26 miles (41kms) through a blizzard today – big, soft swirling snowflakes and freezing temperatures. At least we’re actually heading south now, gathering momentum. We can only hope that the current we had today (that carried our frozen souls downriver in record time) continues as we head south. We’ve portaged three dams in the past two days, and it seems the last one actually let some water through.

I knew this already, I suppose. I probably learned it for the first time while biking. My dad had told me tales of his own cycling adventures: people offering him dinner and a place to stay in their warm and cozy homes.

But that was the ’60s. I didn’t think they did that anymore. We have an ever increasing fear of each other, us humans. We are worried about purse theft, vehicle theft, identity theft. Strangers are scary, don’t talk to them. And so it goes.

It becomes increasingly obvious that we’re scared of what we don’t understand. When Kevin and I tell people we are paddling to the Gulf of Mexico, we’ve had more than one person exclaim “oh! no! be careful down there!” One person told us to watch out for Mexican pirates. It seems “Mexican” to many has come to be synonymous with “bandito.”

“What level did it say meant the water was low again?” I call to the back of the canoe.
“4.2 feet.”

Hmm. The water level guage, mounted next to a bridge along the Mississippi River, is conspicuously not even in the water. It stands up on a dried bank, surrounded by crisp, browned cattails, the 1 foot mark at the bottom of the scale clearly visible, and the metal post it’s mounted on visible below that. The water level is maybe another foot below the base of the guage. The water level is most definitely low.