An evening on the Mississippi.

We launched my Old Town Discovery after supper on a recent monday evening. We estimated that there was 2 hours of light left. Muscle memory soon had the canoe gliding forward at a smooth efficient pace. It was cool, comfortable and overcast as we headed upstream. After a 1/2 mile we headed in to a lake off the channel. This bottom land lake was full of ducks and coots. As we paddled near some flew and others just swam out of the way. The river was flooding but it wasn't high enough to paddle through the trees to other parts of the bottoms. We circumnavigated the lake looking for possible openings into other areas of the bottoms but the water and leads were too low to facilitate any such thing. Except for the beating of the coots wings we paddled through the lake in total silence. We made our way back to the channel with time to spare. So we decided to go to the harbor and tour around. With about 100 yards to go before the harbor the clouds parted and began to rain. We drifted down stream while we pulled on our rain jackets. It was a refreshing experience paddling in the rain. We decided not to tour the harbor and headed right for the boat landing. As we got out the rain stopped and we loaded the truck. We were on the water for about an 1 1/2 hours. It felt like a mini vacation to a beautiful, peacefull wilderness area.