The Last River Trip

 If you've read several of these blogs, you know that I've made a few trips down  the Arkansas River to the Mississippi.  The last trip was in September, 2018 and you can read about it in an October, 2018 blog post.

At the time we made that trip, I wasn't sure I would ever do it again.  With each trip, the sleeping bag became increasingly hard and uncomfortable.  However, no one ever accused me of being intelligent so we planned another trip this year.

The group this year would consist of my brother, Milt, and his good friend, Bill, in Bill's boat and my son, Dan, my cousin's husband, Jim, and myself in my boat.  We were going to change things up a bit and leave from Muskogee this year.  We had always left from Tulsa but were going to make this an abbreviated trip.

The plan was to put in at Muskogee Three Forks Harbor, go downstream to Little Rock, then return to Muskogee.  We figured it would be about a four day trip.  We were to leave on Saturday, September 17.

The appointed day came and we met in Muskogee.  We had decided that we weren't going to be in such a hurry on this trip since we weren't going nearly so far as we had on previous trips.  The first day, we took our time and did some fishing.  In fact, Dan caught a couple of Sauger right where the Illinois River dumps into the Arkansas.

Our plan was to spend the first night at Applegate Cove Marina on Kerr Reservoir.  We had stayed there before and had an enjoyable time.  Our first big surprise came when we got to Applegate Cove and discovered that it was closed and out of business!

Finding fuel on the river is always a challenging problem and we had planned on fueling at Applegate.  Fortunately, there was a guy there who had a key to the pump and we were able to top off our tanks.  We got to talking with him and he offered to let us sleep on the dock at the marina.  I'm not sure whether he had the authority to allow this but we took advantage of it anyway.  Sleeping on the dock that night reinforced my desire to not make this trip any more.

The next morning we took off down river and found ourselves at the Corps of Engineers Park in Ozark, Arkansas in late afternoon.  We had stayed in this park on previous trips so it seemed like a good place to stay again.  I haven't mentioned it before the the temperature on this whole trip was just better than unbearable.

After another miserable night of sleeping (and sweating) on the ground, we woke up the next morning and had a meeting.  Everyone agreed that we had had enough so we decided to turn around and go back upstream.  This would cut off at least two days travel to get to Little Rock and back.

Of course, this meant that we would spend the third night out at Applegate and be sleeping on that hard, hard dock again.  The trip back upstream was uneventful and we arrived back at Muskogee on Wednesday, September 20.

You may have noticed the title of the blog, "The Last River Trip".  As far as I'm concerned, unless I acquire a houseboat with air conditioning and a bed, I think I'm done.  I'm aware of the old adage, "Never say never", but I'm pretty close to never.