Wake of the Wind Dancer: From Sea to Shining Sea, by Paddle and Shoe

By Karl Adams

Wake of the Wind Dancer was written from a daily accounting of the journey that Karl Adams took across America in his kayak, the Wind Dancer, and on foot. He followed or closely paralleled the path of seven of Americas early explorers; Lewis and Clark among them. He is the only person known to have covered this entire route by boat and on foot, with no support team or power other than the energy supplied by his own body.

Each stroke of his paddles brought an ever changing, panoramic view and a different and challenging adventure; at times humorous and at other times perilous, sometimes even life threatening. When he ran out of waterways he walked, pulling the kayak behind him for three hundred and fifty miles. He took pictures of the interesting and beautiful sights along the way which he used to create a travelogue of his journey to show to his family and friends at the end of his year of travels. Wake of the Wind Dancer is a stimulating, photographic narrative that provides a valuable historical record of his exciting and sometimes harrowing year-long adventure from Oregon to Florida on foot and by kayak!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 21, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440160769

Karl Adams

Karl Adams was born in Idaho, but now lives in Oregon. He served five years in the U.S. Navy during WWII and eighteen years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. At eighty-three, his travels and this unique life-long adventure still continues, often with his wife of forty-seven years by his side.

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Copyright © 2003, 2009 by Karl Adams

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-6077-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-6076-9 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-6075-2 (hc)

iUniverse rev. date: 9/15/2009

Contents

Chapter 1

Planning

Chapter 2

The Columbia River 1987

Chapter 3

The Snake River

Chapter 4

The Long March

Chapter 5

Missouri River - Montana

Chapter 6

Missouri River - North Dakota

Chapter 7

Missouri River - South Dakota

Chapter 8

Missouri River - Nebraska & Kansas

Chapter 9

Missouri River - Missouri

Chapter 10

Mississippi and Ohio rivers

Chapter 11

Tennessee River

Chapter 12

Florida Intracoastal Waterways North and West

Chapter 13

Florida Intracoastal Waterway - East

Chapter 14

The Ripples on the Pond

About the Author

Chapter 1

Planning

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When I was launched into this world I brought with me certain characteristics: a passion for adventure, a desire to see what was over the horizon, and a love of travel by water. A car or motorboat couldn’t take me where I wanted to go, but a paddle, a sail, and a strong pair of legs could take me anywhere in the world.

In my youth, whenever I was unable to participate in an adventure of my own, I would resort to reading books of the early explorers. I would have liked to have lived in that era. The migration of humans was the greatest adventure of all times. Early man drifted out of Africa and went north across Europe and Asia until they came to Northeast Siberia. Then, twenty to forty thousand years ago, they crossed over into what is now North America. After early man reached what is now Alaska, they started moving south and east. How long it took them to reach Florida, I have not been able to learn, but the Seminole Native Americans were there to greet the first Europeans.

In 1513, Ponce de Leon landed on the east coast of what is now Florida. Thinking he was exploring another island, he sailed around the tip of Florida to the west coast. His exploration of Florida was cut short by a Seminole arrow. Spain’s next two candidates for the conquest of North America were Narváez and Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. In 1528, they landed on the west coast of Florida and moved north. After eight years, only Vaca and three others still survived. That set the stage for Desoto. In 1539, Hernando de Soto landed on the north coast of Florida near what is now Tallahassee. Once on shore he moved inland and looped around west to the Mississippi River, fighting Native Americans all the way. Hernando de Soto was the first European to reach the river. Unfortunately, he contracted a fever and died. His body was deposited in the Mississippi…Europe’s first contribution to its pollution.

Things remained static for a few years while the whole eastern seaboard filled up with Europeans. Then the new Americans got into the act. Captain Robert Gray sailed around the horn of South America and up the west coast to where he found a mighty river. In May 1792, he sailed his vessel the Columbia Rediviva across the bar and named the river the Columbia after his ship. He anchored near Tongue Point, explored up river about thirty miles, and then left.

When George Vancouver learned of Gray’s discovery, he dispatched his escort vessel the Catham with Lieutenant Broughton in command. He anchored near a sand island on the backside of what is now Cape Disappointment. He took a group of his men and two rowboats and rowed one hundred miles up the river. Then, from 1803 to 1805, Lewis and Clark made their epic journey: the Voyage of Discovery. This made the connection linking the Atlantic southeast with the Pacific Northwest. Thus, it took the Europeans 282 years to make the journey across the continent.

Reading about this history as a kid fired my imagination. I started daydreaming about a journey following those early explorers with a single trek from sea to shining sea. In the years which followed my youth, I spent twenty-three years in the military; I participated in three wars, visited three oceans and sixteen of earth’s major seas, and explored the byways and waterways of over thirty countries.

In 1985, I retired from my job at a water treatment plant. My wife, Ruth, and I readied our boat, the Sea Venture, a thirty-eight-foot cutter rigged sloop, for a trip north to Alaska from Portland, Oregon. When we reached a point a little north of Victoria, Canada, I discovered the engine wouldn’t start. I had to put about and sail back to Port Townsend, Washington, to make repairs. By the time I had the repairs completed, the summer was gone and so was my bank account. I was forced to sail back home and find part-time work to pump up my cruising fund.

I found a job in a yuppie parking lot guarding prestigious cars belonging to the members of the Willamette Athletic Club. The club lies a block from the Willamette River. So, while I was working, I would gaze at the river and dream of all the places it could take me. This experience awakened in me my old childhood fantasy of a journey across America by boat. Since Ruth was working full time, I was left with time on my hands.

On my off-duty time, I would go to the library and research the route from Oregon to Florida. I studied what would be of interest on a trip of that nature; geology, weather patterns, reptiles, and insects. Anything I could think of a person would encounter on this journey. Was I planning on doing this adventure myself? No, I had a family and thought it would be inconceivable that I would ever to able to do this trek. I was simply feeding my fantasy with facts. I had estimated the distance to be about 5,500 miles, plus or minus one hundred. How long it would take would depend on how fast a person could paddle.

At that time I was going back and forth to work using my old, two-man, folding kayak that I had carried all over the world. Ruth and I lived on board our sailboat. In the morning, I would step off the boat, get into the kayak, and paddle down river. When I would get within a half mile of the club, I would go ashore, put two wheels under the boat, pull it up to the club, and park it by the bike rack. I figured a person could use the same system on a trip across America.

What I wanted to know at this point was how long the trip would take. You would think a person who had paddled a boat for over thirty years would know how fast he could paddle, but I didn’t. I used my boat to explore. Speed was not a concern. My attitude was: if you enjoyed what you were doing, why hurry? This journey wouldn’t be a race, but for logistic purposes, a person would need to know how long it would take.

During my library research, I had consulted back issues of National Geographic and Outside magazine, looking for articles of similar journeys. In one article I read, a man stated that he averaged twenty miles a day on a trip he had taken from Alaska to Washington state using the inside passage. That was a nice round figure, but could it be done going against the current of the Columbia River? I decided to find out.

My boat, the Sea Venture, was moored at the Waverly Yacht Club about a quarter of a mile above the Sellwood Bridge on the Willamette River. From there down to the Columbia River was seventeen miles. Up the river another twenty-five miles was Roster Rock State Park. This made the total distance forty-three miles. That, I thought, would be a good test run. Early one Saturday morning, I loaded my camping gear in my old folding Klepper kayak and headed down river. By midday, I reached the lower end of Hayden Island. I stopped for lunch and then resumed my test. By late afternoon, I reached a group of islands known as the Sand, Lemon, and Government Islands located above Portland.

Between the Lemon and the Sand Islands there was a narrow channel used as a popular anchoring place for the yachting group affectionately called beer can alley.

As I paddled thru this channel, I came across a sailboat stranded on a sand bar. I paddled over to the boat and suggested to the skipper that he give me his anchor. I paddled up the river with his anchor to deeper water and dropped it there, which made it possible for him to kedge off. Once he was free I continued on and camped overnight on the lower end of Government Island. The next morning, I got an early start and paddled over to the town of Washougal, Washington. At the Parkers Landing Marina, I used their phone and called Ruth to come and pick me up at my final destination of Rooster Rock State Park.

I arrived at the park about two pm. A short time later, Ruth arrived. Before I packed the boat up, we made a tour of the local nude beach. My own attitude about nudity was quite liberal. If people wanted to go nude, it was fine with me. If a person doesn’t like to see nudes, don’t look. For me it’s a matter of comfort. If I’m warm, I take clothes off. If I’m cold, I put clothes on. I wear shoes on deck because kicking a chain plate can be painful. I also wear shorts because I don’t want anything to get hung up in the rigging.

After the tour, we packed up the kayak and returned to Portland. My test was complete. I had made the forty-three-mile trip in less than two days, proving a twenty-mile-a-day average was feasible. Dividing the 5,500 miles by twenty it would require 279 days to cross from Oregon to Florida. When planning a trip of this magnitude, it would be foolish to think a person could do it immediately. I estimated a person could carry fourteen days of food supplies; therefore, a person would have to stop every two weeks to replenish supplies. Also, there would be laying over for repairs, storms, and sightseeing. It seemed prudent to add another ninety days, which would make the journey one year long.

Having resolved that question, I moved on to the next. The most difficult part of the quest would be the trek over the mountains. That was the most difficult part for Lewis and Clark. I anticipated it would be the same for anyone else using only the power of their own body. The minimum weight of boat, food, water, and equipment would be about two hundred pounds. The elevation of Lewiston, Idaho, is 738 feet. At the top of the Lolo Pass in the Bitterroot Mountains, it is 5,233 feet. McDonald Pass in the Rocky Mountains is 6,330 feet. Could a man pull that weight up those steep slopes?

Before I continued this fantasy further, I needed to find out. There was no other way except to go look, so I rented a car and drove to Lewiston. I drove long the US Highway 12, if you could call it that. I pulled off the road and watched the traffic. I drove all the way to the Missouri River, twenty miles north of Helena, Montana, and picked a possible launch site from the Missouri River. I returned to Portland a depressed and disillusioned man. I could see no way a man could pull a seventeen-foot kayak over that route and survive.

It was not the steepness of the mountains which was the problem; it was the condition of the road and the traffic. US Highway 12 was a narrow, crooked, two-lane road, heavily trafficked with eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer rigs carrying logs, wheat, and petroleum products. I pulled off the road and watched their action. They zipped along the road at sixty miles an hour. On one side of the highway, a rock cliff came right down to the side of the road. On the other side of the highway, there was a guardrail, the Clear Water and Locksa rivers below. There was no shoulder much of the way. To try to pull a kayak over that route would be suicidal. I had been accused of living on the edge, but suicidal I was not.

It was my practice to arrive at work two hours early. This gave me enough time to do a workout, ten minutes in the hot tub, and a shower before going on duty. It happened that another gentleman would join me in the hot tub. Charles Hoar was the owner and CEO of an engineering firm. He was the kind of guy who loved to solve other people’s problems. In fact, he made you feel like you were doing him a favor by letting him help you. In our hot tub session after I returned from my mountain reconnaissance mission, I told him there was no way a person could walk pulling a kayak and survive. I explained the peril posed by those monstrous trucks hurtling down the road at sixty miles an hour. Over the year I worked at the club, we often talked about my project and he took an active interest in it. Karl, he said, I have friends in Lewiston. Let me consult with them and see if we can’t enhance your chances of survival. I was dubious, but willing to let him try.

Two weeks later Charley appeared at our conference room (the hot tub) with a smile on his face. Karl, he declared, I have the answer you’re looking for on how to make the mountain crossing.

How? I asked.

Simple, he replied, you talk to the drivers. Tell them where you are and ask them for mercy.

I looked at him as though he had gone daft. He explained that his friend Buzz in Lewiston had gone to a truck stop and talked to the drivers. He found out they all monitored channel nineteen on their CB radios. If a person had a CB radio with that particular crystal, they could talk to the drivers when they were far enough away and avoid an accident. While not completely eliminating the possibility, it did reduce it to an acceptable limit. I remembered a long held belief I had: If you don’t have the knowledge or the intelligence to handle something, it pays to have friends who do.

When I finished the hot tub session, showered, and prepared to take my position in the parking lot, Charley called me over to his locker. He pulled out two CB radios and presented them to me. He had gone to Radio Shack and had the needed crystals installed.

Charley, I exclaimed, I haven’t decided to do this trip yet.

Yes, you have. You’re just delaying the decision as long as you can to keep from making the commitment. I believe you would have tried it even without the radios.

I admitted I had tumbled the idea in my head. Now I had concluded it could be done, but I still had two problems to face and neither would be easy: telling Ruth about what I was going to do and buying another kayak.

All along when Ruth and I were discussing this project, I assured her I was just researching the possibility. She was skeptical and let me know in no uncertain terms that she was against it. There had been a couple of times in our marriage when the D word had been mentioned in connection with my boat purchases. On those occasions, Ruth told me we were married until death do us part. That gave me only two options: suicide or murder. Neither of those was acceptable. I could not imagine my life without Ruth. She had been my only friend and companion for over twenty-five years. On the other hand, I had lived with the dream of this trek across America for over fifty years. Now that I had convinced myself it could be done, could I just walk away from it? With me, dreams die hard. If I came to the end of my life without making the attempt, I would hate myself.

I decided to throw caution to the wind. I would make the trip and hope I could pick up the pieces and put our marriage back together when it was over. I told Ruth my decision and my stock immediately dropped to an all-time low. Ruth didn’t immediately issue an ultimatum, but I knew I was in deep trouble. I decided not to mention my need for a new kayak.

The old Klepper kayak I drug all over the world was in no condition to make the trip. Its oak frame was brittle and warped. The hull was tattered and torn. I needed a hard-shell, fiberglass ocean touring kayak.

I went to a canoe and kayak shop a few blocks from where I worked in Portland, named the Ebb and Flow. They had what I was looking for, the Wind Dancer. The cost was $1,200. Now that was a problem. How could I raise the money? In our negotiation on the family budget it was proclaimed I could not spend any more than $200 in any one month on my boats, equipment, and travel. To save enough money to pay for this craft would take me six months. It was now September and my target date for the journey was on or about the first of April. I wanted to get the boat as early as possible to get acquainted with it. Did I go to Ruth and ask for a variance? No way. I needed another strategy.

As far as I knew, Ruth only had two weaknesses: gambling and me. For years she had asked me to take her to Reno, Nevada, to gamble. My plan was to split my pocket money, giving half to Ruth, and throw my fate to the winds of chance with the other half. Did I know what I was doing? Yes. All my life I lived with the laws of probability. Whatever I wanted to do, I would study it and try to reduce the chance of failure to its lowest common denominator, and then leave it to my own wit and reflexes. Now I was relying on the whims of lady luck. It was something I didn’t like doing. The chances that I could win enough to buy the boat were virtually nil.

Ruth and I arranged with Reno Airlines for one of their weekend package deals, a red-eye special. On a late Friday evening we made our flight. When we arrived in Reno, we went directly to the casino. By ten o’clock, we began to play. All day long I moved from table to table playing black jack, craps, roulette, and even poker. As the day wore on, my fortune waxed and waned. At eleven o’clock, I was suffering from excessive liquid due to the free drinks supplied by the casino. Ruth was playing the slots. I found her and explained where I was going.

The rest room was located on the second floor mezzanine. When I walked out, I came face to face with three slot machines lined up along the railing overlooking the main floor below. The center one featured three clowns, various bars, and an assortment of fruit. If three one-dollar tokens were deposited, it had a grand jackpot of $1,200. Just what I needed!

I reached in my pocket and counted my tokens. I had six one-dollar tokens left. Two bad pulls on the handle and the Wind Dancer would hit a reef. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the old saying went. I dropped three tokens into the slot and pulled the handle. The wheels whirred—clang, clang, clang—and then they come to stop. Six tokens dropped into the tray. Two cherries had appeared in the window.

Now I had nine tokens representing three pulls. I dropped three more into the machine and pulled the handle. Again, the wheels spun, came to a stop, and six more tokens dropped into the tray. This machine played with me. It paid just enough to keep me playing without giving me enough to do anything with. But what the hell, I was still in the game.

I picked up three tokens, dropped them into the slot, and pulled the handle. This time all hell broke loose. Bells rang, lights flashed, sirens sounded, and the machine started kicking out tokens like an avalanche. I grabbed an empty plastic bucket someone had abandoned and scooped them up as fast as I could before they fell to the floor.

The impossible had happened: I had hit the three clowns. Half the jackpot was paid out by the machine the other half would be paid by the cashier. By the time I had the tokens collected, the floor manager had arrived. He verified the jackpot, took a token, and pulled the three clowns off the machine then led me to the cashier. They counted the take and gave me twelve one hundred dollar bills. They asked me if I wanted to play more. I explained to them I was quitting gambling forever. I was not cut out to be a gambler.

I found Ruth in a state of panic. I had been gone for over an hour and she was about to call the casino security when I showed up and explained what had happened. My gambling was over. I wanted her to win, too, so I staked her with a hundred dollars from my winnings. That lasted about a half hour before it was gone. I added another hundred. I still had enough to purchase the Wind Dancer.

Lady luck smiled on her. Ruth started winning big time. She played a bank of six one-dollar slots, moving from machine to machine as fast as she could pull the handles. Every time she hit a jackpot, the floor manager would give her a bottle of champagne. Soon, she had champagne sitting all around. She gave spectators a few of the bottles. I followed her around with a bucket and gathered her winnings. At one point she had over a thousand dollars. Her winning streak didn’t last long. Her fortune shrunk to six hundred and she decided to quit while she was still ahead. I was happy. We were both physically and emotionally exhausted. It was two am on Sunday morning and our plane was scheduled to leave eight hours later.

When we flew back to Portland, Ruth had her six hundred dollars and a case of champagne. I had the wherewithal to buy my kayak. With the euphoria of winning, my stock rose slightly with Ruth, but it quickly dropped back down when I came home two days later with the Wind Dancer. The atmosphere aboard the Sea Venture stabilized with icy acceptance. Ruth realized nothing was going to stop me from making the journey.

It was now October 1986. I had gone to work for the club in October 1985. All the elements were in place for the trip, but there was a lot of fine-tuning to be done. My target date for launch was March 28, 1987, just six months away. The ideal time for me to reach buoy #7, the point where I intended to begin my trek, was at seven am, the low slack tide that day. Each item I carried with me needed to be checked for practicality, size, and weight because the storage area in the Wind Dancer was limited. I didn’t want anything left out where it would likely come loose and go adrift.

I started out with the equipment I already had. The set of wheels I used to pull the old kayak would fit in the back compartment in front of the rudder. The two-man tent shoved up into the forepeak. In the forward compartment there was enough space to fit fourteen half-gallon-sized Ziploc bags, each filled with one day’s ration of food. Next task was the cockpit. Between my legs I placed a sixteen-inch square dishpan, six inches deep, which carried my camp stove, a quart size bottle of propane, a loaf of bread, a squeeze bottle of jam and another of margarine, a jar of peanut butter, and various hardware. I would need to fix my snacks while paddling. Behind my seat I could fit four half-gallon plastic bottles of water and a water purification device I picked up at a Norm Thompson store. That was a precaution in case I ran out of potable water. A woman doctor, who was a member of the club, put together a medical kit for me. Since I would be my own support team, I would have to be my own physician. At the age of sixty, I didn’t have any aches, pains, or afflictions, but I wanted to be prepared just in case. The medical kit was placed behind the seat. A machete fit under the seat. I intended to use this if I needed to chop myself loose from an entanglement. It could also be used if a wild animal attacked me. I wouldn’t take a firearm.

After checking the loading of the cockpit, I moved to the aft compartment where I carried my extra clothing, sleeping bag, air mattress, and a spare propane bottle. One of the items of clothing I had was a one-eighth-inch neoprene shortie wet suit. The wet suit would enhance my chances of survival in icy water by about ten minutes. I would carry two sets of clothing. Each item was folded, placed in a plastic Ziploc bag, and further packed in a waterproof stuff sack. This made a roll about