Meramec River Styles

Emma and Tyler and their dog Finn were new participants in our river floating. It was fun to have new people around to mix things up a bit. They were very intense about camp cooking. I wonder if they haven’t been camping a ton and so wanted to do “real” camping and the rest of us realize that float camping is more about sleeping off a hangover while inside a tent than any sort of communal experience with nature.

One unfortunate part about this trip is we didn’t go with the rafts like we usually do, we did kayaks. It's rumored that this fateful mistake was the brainchild of a certain Lydia Chlamydia. Well with a kayak you are forced to lay your legs out in the sun to be roasted like a delicious chickens. Well despite reapplying my sun goop more than once, I got the worst sunburn of my life. I never knew, or really needed to consider, that when you get sunburn your skin doesn’t turn red because it was burned so much as blood is moving to the area in order to repair the damage done to it by the menacing nuclear reactor in the sky. Well, if you get a really bad sunburn then a really too large amount of blood flows to the scene of the crime and… you get swelling. Over the next few days my legs and especially my ankles got so swollen that it was painful for me to walk.

The river is where cool kids wearing Walmart's hottest styles go to be seen.

Every year running somebody tries to mess with my freedoms so I have no choice but to wear this shirt.

Floatin' Down Ugly River

A big pack of us drove out to Garrisons River Resort near Steelville, Missouri to do a little campin' and a little floatin'. I'm not going to lie, things got pretty trashy out there.

The night of our arrival they had a little karaoke session under a pavillion in the dark.

Some of the yokels were really good at singing. Suspiciously good.

Something you'll learn about me out in real America is that I really like to burn things.

Playing bags by the campfire has a certain romance to it.

The harsh light of day reminded us that we were in real America. It was time to hit the river, pound some beers, and let our buttcracks hang out.

I was a bit confused because in years past the river was so full of rafts that it was hard to navigate. This year there were like 7 total rafts on the whole river. I guess we went kind of late in the season or something.

Stuart brought a box of aviators that completed my nautical camo/state fair lottery hat ensemble.

Everyone was in high spirits. Like the opening scene of a horror movie.

The free beer flowed like milk.

Half of the fun of float trips is arguing when to stop the raft, someone being left behind, them yelling/crying, and criticizing each-other's rowing techniques. You just can't have this brand of fun on land.

Things got sexier and sexier. People were jumping into the river not because of the sun but because their minds had gotten overheated.

There was a rope swing. There's always a rope swing.

I did not jump from a tree branch into whatever pokey dangers were lurking in the muddy water. I instead jumped on the opportunity to take more pictures of myself.

This seems like a picture of us leaving several people to die. Fun fact: Wikipedia says that the Meramec River's name likely means 'the river of ugly fishes' or 'ugly water' in Algonquian. That feels right.

I seem to have been legally deceased for an hour or two.

You never know when you might wake up from your nap real thirsty. Best to keep a beer handy.

I guess at some point there were more people dead than alive. We were essentially shipwreck victims waiting for rescue by the time we got to the end.

A highlight of going on float trips in rural Missouri is the opportunity to ride on a school bus that dates back to prohibition.