First Annual Meramec River Trip

We spent a beautiful day on the Meramec River with neighbors and friends. Here is the result.

(Hover over the pictures on this page to see the picture captions. Click on the pictures to see full sized images).

Up and at 'em early Saturday morning. We were on the road shortly after 7:00 a.m. and were scheduled to hit the river by 9:00 a.m. The plan was to spend the day on the river, then cook out and stay overnight (in a motel by the river). There were four families, so we had four six-man rafts and a canoe (for BoyHead and his friend). The weather was excellent (pure blue sky, not too hot nor humid), but the river was a little slow. Paddling was a necessity.

Halfway through, we stopped for lunch at a small cave (henceforth named "Coldwater Cave", because the water coming from the cave was, you guessed it...cold). We brought flashlights to explore the depths, but as it turns out, the cave was only like 30 feet deep. Nevertheless, it was a good resting spot--or as young Austin put it, "What a waste of time".

We finished up on the river around 5pm, then drove to the cookout site. We had enough food to feed an army. Hamburgers, Brats, Hot Dogs, Shishkabobs, Steaks, (notice how I put the meat first), baked beans, pasta salad, seven layer dip, homegrown tomatoes, potato salad, some kind of broccoli salad thing that I don't know the name of, but which was really good, marinated cucumbers, deviled eggs and probably a lot of other stuff that I didn't get a chance to taste. Yeah, there were deserts too, but I had to pass on that. After we aggressively chowed down, we sat around the fire. It was a beautiful end to a great day.

Sunday morning we all went our separate ways. While our gang slept in, Lovely Wife and I went to the restaurant to get some breakfast and a new shirt (I failed to actually pack any shirts and had to schlep to the restaurant in my "Jammie Shirt"). Even after the shopping and the breakfast, they were difficult to rouse