The word for today: CONVENTIONAL. Today felt like I thought many of these days would feel; the river mostly flowed, I walked into town, we did a little fishing, and we enjoyed camp and conversation. This is the way.

What I probably should have said in closing yesterday: we knew camping wouldn’t be strictly allowed at the dam portage, but we felt good about our stealth chances. We stashed our boats behind the two outdoor toilets at the portage, which provided good cover. And, we found a place near the dam behind some trees to pitch our tents, that may or may not have still been in view of the security cameras – camping behind the toilets seemed unnecessarily stealthy.

On the nighttime lake crossing to the dam portage, I saw a couple of loons; I thought maybe we were far enough south to be out of loon danger, but above the dam it’s about a ten mile lake and loons love lakes. Thankfully there were no loonatics downstream of the dam last night, so we slept peacefully to the white noise of the Mississippi being strangled by the dam, and the faint cries of distant loon.

This morning we awoke to no surprises. No Brainerd police, no river pirates, no dam workers. One lonely angler wandered by as we were breaking down camp, and he wished us well on our journey. We made coffee by pouring boiling water over coffee grounds in a filter, but it really wasn’t good. We then tried boiling the coffee in the new pot and pouring that through a filter. It was a little better, but made a mess. I miss my French precious! How did they not have a French press at Fleet Farm? They seemed to have everything else; the $400 receipt from everything I bought was as long as my arm (and nearly the apparent circumference, though not the actual circumference, of Chad’s head). Dick’s would’ve had a French precious!

We were both grateful that the good people at the Potlatch dam installed relatively nice toilets. They were spacious and had lots of screened ventilation. And, they had nice toilet paper! Not that thin parchment paper stuff you might find at your mother-in-law’s house, who was brought up after the last Great War and nice toilet paper was an unnecessary luxury. This was the real deal: Charmin, Northern stroft, I’m not sure, but it was a pleasure being a regular guy at the Potlatch dam. This is possibly the best thing that Brainerd has to offer. If you ever go to Brainerd, be sure to visit the Potlatch dam portage!

As we prepared to cast off, we recognized that we still needed a few provisions if we were going to have fish again for dinner: the 3 S’s – spatula, spices and Shore Lunch batter. Without these, fish would have to be Mississippi sushi style. So we put in our vessels, loaded up our gear, and headed for the Washington street bridge, where the Crow Wing Co-op was less than a 1/2 mile walk.

Upon arrival at the bridge, we decided Chad would stay with the boats while I made a run into town. Chad made some phone calls and got “caught up”, but the full Brainerd experience was all mine.

Unsurprisingly, I was greeted by a small encampment under the Washington bridge; this included a small tent, a camping chair, a small Weber grill – not much different from the conditions we’re living in on this journey. It seemed nobody was home, or I would’ve struck up a conversation about what was strictly necessary to survive.

When I got to street level, I was greeted by traffic, strip malls, advertising, noise… it was the antithesis of what I been living on the river. I know that in real life I live in this atmosphere every day, but now it was a stark contrast and I felt out of place walking up from my river home to “civilization”. And for the first time here, I smelt the fragrant offering of the devil’s lettuce. I think this has recently been legalized in Minnesota, but I hadn’t come across it yet; Brainerd seemed the right place for this introduction.

I saw lots of things; most of them were not noteworthy. But, I did see Paul Bunyan seemingly advertising a massage parlor. I wondered how a massage from Paul Bunyan would be. After nearly 2 weeks on the water hunched in a kayak, I was tantalized by the thought of Paul’s meaty paw’s putting pressure on my soft tissues, but I kept marching on toward the co-op.

At the co-op, I was surprised by the simplicity of the store; it was refreshingly not Cub Foods, or Mariano’s, or even my local Berkeley’s store in Batavia. They had few products, and really only 1 of our three S’s: spices, in bulk format. I gathered some bulk flour, bulk cornmeal, garlic salt, and cayenne pepper figuring we’ll make our own Shore Lunch batter. The only real commercial “spice” they had was Jane’s Crazy Mixed Up Salt, which I bought mostly as homage to my old friends Monte and Big Schaefer. I left the co-op feeling happy to know this place exists in Brainerd, and I headed back towards the bridge.

However, I took a slightly different route on the 12 block walk back, which had me across the street from a consignment shop… spatula? I went in and went towards the back right corner where I found a selection of spatulas, and…. a French press! I wanted to stay and shop; it looked like I could’ve found a nice pair of skinny jeans to exhibit my buns of steel, or maybe the makings of a Leechman costume, but the river was beckoning me to leave Brainerd. I smiled on nearly the entire walk back towards the bridge.

Another odd thing about Brainerd: there were a lot of females in Jeeps with speciality phrases on the side. I saw Jeeps that said: Badass with Mascara, Wicked Witch of the North, 4 Wheeling Bitch, and Babe with Mudflaps (I trust she’s not familiar with the Spinal Tap soundtrack). I stopped one friendly lady who was about to pull out of her parking spot to get a photo of her “Sassy” Jeep, and she said to make sure I get the skull in the photo, that’s her favorite part (Christin will love that).

Then two blocks before I was to make my descent from the civilized surface to the waterway below, I was stopped in my tracks by the Risky Business establishment. I was gobsmacked to see now the source of the loonatic problem, these guys were selling “juice” targeted at loons! Not only that, the display in the front window had human replicas to show the loons the soft spots to address humans with their pointy beaks. They had a fully naked manikin which I imagine is the one that is most popular with the proprietor and his clientele. It seemed the store was not yet open, so I high-tailed back to the boats so Chad and I could escape before things got loony ugly.

After descent to the river, we needed to get out of Brainerd. A number of people we’ve met said things like “Brainerd is nice”; I would have to say that the people in Brainerd are nice, but the town had few redeeming qualities. When we were back on the water we noticed two things: the river was flowing and the water was clear. Every drop escaping Brainerd was lively and pristine, which mirrored our spirits; and all the crap that’s been in the brown water for days has been deposited in Brainerd, which seemed appropriate.

We planned today to be a short one on the water with all the errand running, and we wanted to get some fishing in. Knowing Chad and I won’t make it to the twin cities, and Christin will pick us up further north and skip over some miles has allowed us to expect more enjoyment. We traveled 12 miles to Crow Wing state park, where they had showers. I showered first in my clothes to act as a pseudo washing machine, which seemed functional enough to get a few more days out of some shirts. (You may have notice my limited wardrobe in the photos so far.) Chad tried some fishing with no luck (though he said he had his lures on frontways); I tried to catch up on this blog (I’m now 3 days in arrears).

The campsite was unremarkable. And being a Friday there were a few party campers on either side of us starting to unwind. To our left 4 twenty somethings got louder the more they drank, and they seemed to take turns yelling at the dog that would bark seemingly at random. To our right was a large family that I’ll call the Cussers; it seemed the F-bomb was expected to facilitate conversation once you reached swearing age, which seemed to be 8 or 9 years old for the Cussers. The patriarch even seemed to snore profanely. But it was a cool night and things quieted down after 11pm; we slept thinking: today was a really good day.

For today’s music selection: Lots of people have asked me what my wife Christin thinks about this whole journey. I was asked by one couple on the river what I had to do to get a personal 65 day “vacation”. Others have joked whether my wife would still be there for me when I finish, or would she have moved on to a saner choice. For many relationships, I suspect this strain on the relationship would be intolerable (Christin is very supportive and knows this is something I need, in some odd way). Also, I saw a sign today in Brainerd that was appropriate for this music selection. I’m not sure what happens at an Elbow Convention, but I wasn’t going to pop in to see. Give a listen to Elbow singing Grounds for Divorce (thanks Simon Wood, a great fit for today).