Spoon River Canoe Trek

This year I was able to go on a Canoe Trek with some of the ONW Company guys. It's been years since I've done a canoe trip so I was really excited, especially since this was going to be my first historical canoe trek. IE keep it as primitive as possible. (we had to have water, floatation devices, other necessities, some canoes and of course we could bring a camera to document)

Ignore the red dots, this was the best map that I could find. The dark blue numbers indicate important spots along the trip. 1) London Mills, IL. This is where we put into the river. 2)Ellisville, IL. We spent the first night there. 3) Just above route 9 we picked up more water. 4) Were the Baughman Branch Creek empties into the Spoon River. (Yea, I found the name of it guys. GPS 40.475382, -90.343657) We spent the second night there. 5) Bernadotte. Where we pulled out of the river on Sunday. Overall the trip was approximately 42 miles by river.

This was a relaxing trip. The river was up due to all the rain they have had down there, but it wasn't up enough that we couldn't canoe down the river. The high water did make for a strong current and some interesting debris... like whole trees. Plus the water was muddy as all get out. You could see the mud swirl around in the water, and your paddle disappear after an inch in the water.

This was a relaxed trip. There wasn't much to be expected in the paddling. In fact a lot of people just floated in their canoes and only paddled when they needed to steer. Although there were some of us that did want to paddle and we did. There were some really nice canoes in our group.

Chuck, Flinn (Chuck's boy) and Davey O were in Chuck's replica canoe. It was a sight to see these going down the river.

Camp wasn't much different. Friday night my partner, and the owner of the canoe I rode in, Randy slept under his canoe shelter.

You can see my wet leggings hanging from the pole on the left. Hey, sometimes you just get wet when you go canoeing! I'll admit the ground was a little hard, but other than that, it was a nice night's sleep. The following night was even more primitive. They weren't calling for any bad weather and we were a little restricted on space so a lot of people just slept in the open.

We even had three women along on the trip. It was nice to have them along. They did help to put a different perspective on the whole trip. Above you can see Kendra enjoying the atmosphere.

Randy is the Frenchman steering the canoe and Jim is wondering why I'm not paddling. It was great canoeing with the both of them. Randy had a lot of experience. This was Jim's first time and I hadn't been canoeing in years. I thought we all worked pretty well together. We only had one hitch at the end of the trip due to a communication breakdown, but the only damage was almost dumping Wil and Heikes in the river. Since it they didn't get wet, no harm no foul. Right guys?

Here we are in Randy's canoe together. That's me in the front. You can tell by the proper Jacobite Blue bonnet that I'm wearing. Randy's canoe was amazing, it was one of, if not the best canoe's I've ever ridden in. It handled well, skimmed the water beautifully and had a good draw. It makes me want to go out and buy one... if I could find it.

I want to thank Wil for putting this together, it was fun and I think he did a good job. The portion of the river we did was beautiful, we rarely saw any modern structures and the banks were high enough to keep the fields blocked from view. Now of course those same high banks made landing at night difficult, but it wasn't too bad. We found a really nice spot on Saturday night. There were a lot of great guys and gals on this trip and I think we all got along really well. I don't recall any conflicts or harsh words, but I do remember a lot of laughing and smiles.

I'm glad I went on this trip. It was one hell of an experience and I'd recommend doing something like this to anyone. It's something, historical or modern, that I think everyone should experience at least once.