Day 45: And the rains came…

On Monday morning, Richard woke up at 5:50 AM. The sun was up, but it was once again hiding behind the clouds. He fixed his usual cup of coffee and relaxed for a while.

He looked at his map, but could not find Fort Mims. He sat there for a while before packing up and met two men heading out on the river to fish for mussels. Their names were Tommy Crum and Don Shackleford. They had a contraption that they would drag behind their boat that would trap the mussels and then the mussels would become trapped and they would not be able to escape.

After Tommy and Don left in their boat, Richard was surprised to see Percy, the gentleman he’d met the night before, walking down to meet him. Percy invited Richard to go with himself and his wife up to the store. They were headed up there to get a copy of the local newspaper and figured that Richard might be able to pick up a few items that he may need. Richard decided to take Percy up on the offer to go up to the store and on their way back, Percy took Richard by “Red Eagle’s” grave again. While he was at the store, he met a man by the name of Jeff Weaver. Jeff had a map of the area and gave it to Richard – Jeff’s map was more detailed and it even indicated where Fort Mims was located in relation to the river. It turns out that the fort is not along the river and he thinks that’s he is just going to skip visiting the fort and keep on paddling into Mobile.

When he returned from the store, Richard packed up his equipment and cleaned up around his campsite. He went up to some pecan trees nearby and picked some pecans to take with him before he left. Little did he know that they were all dried up, none of them were worth a darn.

Richard finally left his campsite and started paddling around 11:00 AM. The sun was not out in the sky, but it was cloudy and warm out. It looked as though it was going to rain. Richard talked to his sister on the phone and she said it was going to rain, but not bad.

It rained all day until he got off of the river and by then he was soaking wet. The rain began around Noon and Richard was determined to keep on paddling. It continued to rain off and on all day and at 3:30 PM, he was soaking wet and decided that he’d paddled 11 miles, that was enough for the day. It was raining really hard and the sky was looking like things might get worse. He decided to get off of the river and set up camp. The rain continued and he commented, “It rained so damn hard, it was unreal.”

His campsite for the night was about 15 miles below Choctaw Bluff, where Red Eagle fell to his death in the river. His campsite was situated on a sandbar along the bank and when I asked him how far the river had come up because of the rain, he wouldn’t even get out of his tent to look. He’s about 5 feet above the river and hopes that he’s far enough inland to avoid having to move his camp due to rising water level.

For dinner, he had another MRE – this meal featured “pork ribs” (I wonder how pork ribs can be stuffed into an MRE, but I digress…) Richard ate the “pork ribs” with a bag of Sour Cream & Onion potato chips that he bought at the store that morning with Percy. He also bought a bag of popcorn, but it was sitting in his kayak, he was saving it for later.