Day 1 & 2 – Bayport, Beer Can Island, and Afton

The barrels are submerged, the fishing pole has hit the water and raft is afloat. After hunkering down on Beer Can Island last night, we’ve pushed forward through the St. Croix Lake and are now making our way to Kinnickinnic State Park covering 15 miles total from our launch site in Bayport, MN. Halfway through today we stopped our first marina in Afton, MN to fill our water and some further barrel raft adjustments.

 The water has been very calm and traffic even lighter. Our raft has been catching the northern winds all day helping push us down the river quicker because the current in the St. Croix isn’t very noticeable. We’ve been using our 9.9 HP outboard to keep our direction and steer us.

We’ve had a some curious boaters stop by and see what our set-up looks like. Mostly families out on their boats and one guy, Turk from Croixssippi Guide Services stopped by…our first celebrity on the river! They have all been very friendly; offering to run get us supplies if we needed and giving us encouragement for the journey ahead! Our first boat encounter was the Washington County Sheriff. We could see him waiting for us down river, just wondering what the heck was floating towards him. I thought for sure he had heard about our trip, and was waiting there to tell us we couldn’t go any further. So we dumped the drugs and hid the stow-a-ways and got ready to meet the iron fist of the law. To our surprise, the Sheriff was happy to see us! He had read about us from the article in the Pioneer Press; he took some pictures while he checked out our raft. Everything looked ok to him and he saidthere would be no reason we’d run into any trouble (legality-wise). He wished us good luck and we drifted on.

Our first night was windy, so we anchored in the lee of Beer Can Island and fell asleep shortly after sunset. Although it was easy for us to fall asleep, I woke up a couple times to see Skully on full alert. Poor guy 🙁 This morning he had more bags than usual under his eyes and today he has been catching naps in the sun when we hit  nice water. Dreaming of dry land and dogs butts no doubt.

Sorry for the delayed first post! It has been a whirlwind the past few days and we are just finally putting everything in its spot on the raft. The solar is working like a charm! We have Brian Quinn to thank for our awesome set-up. He rushed to get everything hooked up properly and we couldn’t be happier. Thanks again! Now that everything is working properly and our raft is somewhat more organized, we’ll be trying to establish a routine schedule for posts and possibly an easier format to make it easier for you to keep track of us. Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who came down to see us off 🙂 we love you guys and will miss you all.

Miles: 15

Bridges: 2

Moral: 150%

Word of the Day:  Dainty (delicate, fine, neat, elegant, exquisite, tasty, delicious, choice, palatable, luscious, mouthwatering, delectable)