Lower St. Louis on a Beautiful Fall Day

Happy Birthday to Dan! One of my three favorite open boaters. We celebrated in the best possible way...on the river! Aaron, Alan, Dan and I hooked up to catch a last run on the Lower St Louis before they cut off fish flow at the end of this month. The weather could not have been better...warm and sunny...the leaves just starting to turn colors. I haven't been on the Lower for quite a long time. I still hadn't ran Octopus and the Swinging Bridge yet. My first attempt at running Octopus was aborted due to a 20 foot log jackknifing out of the Beak in front of me blocking me from coming out of the Room. That was June 2007! Well today was the day...we had a small tight group and we were on the river to just enjoy. We leisurely meandered down the lower enjoying every possible bit we could and doing quite a bit of videoing. We set up at Octopus and scouted...everyone had a great run. The day was cruzing! Even the Boneyard was enjoyable for almost all of us. We pulled out and scouted Left Slot and the Hanging pool. With video set we all styled it. By then the Swinging Bridge was completely full of people watching us and more on the side of the river. Snakebite was just fine and we paddled towards the cheering crowd on the bridge. They were applauding us when Alan whipped off a roll...sheesh...the crowd went wild! Funny how we just ran all THAT and what tickled them the most is a roll. We pulled over and it was decision time. Dan has been wanting to run Fin Falls in an open canoe for awhile. We discussed it and the boys were all for it. I had a stellar day so I said I would run the video. At the top of Fin we scouted. I set up video and Aaron had the rope after deciding to not run it leaving Alan and Dan. Alan has speculated that he's never heard of anyone running Fin in an open canoe before so this was going to be something. Alan paddling a C1 led off and waited for Dan. Long story short Dan and Alan both styled it all the way down! What a great way to spend a birthday! Everyone has their top shelf of river memories where they store moments of very special runs. This run definitely went on the top shelf. I took a few photos along the way but here's Dan's video from the day.