Arriving in Browning, Pop. 130

DAY 216 of connecting Statue of Liberty and Gateway Arch by Runyaking

April 24, 2024

I woke up to start DAY 216 about 7:30 am. I made Starbucks VIA instant coffee to feed my caffeine habit. I’d rather have fresh coffee but we are far from a city that might have a decent coffee house. I could have driven back to Havana to Hardee’s or Mickey Dee’s but it would put our schedule 40 minutes off. I’m not a fan of their coffee anyway.

Knowing I’d be in a coffee desert, before leaving home I bought a heating element that plugs into the van’s 12-volt accessory outlet (you know that place where cigarette lighters use to go). With coffee in my mug I ate my standard runyak adventure breakfast, Oreos dipped in Jif. Now fed and caffeinated I was ready for some runyaking.

Kate, not needing coffee, got a extra half hour of sleep. After she woke we drove to our next boat landing to plant my van.

The landing was at the end of a road in the huge city of Browning, IL (pop. 130) where the roads splits and then ends. The boat ramp is to the left. To the right is a permanently closed restaurant on stilts. We are noticing that any houses near the river are now stilted. It was never the case forty miles back. I’m assuming the Illinois floods more frequently as it approaches the Mississippi? Another common feature now seen in the area that indicate flooding are levees.

With the van in place for the end of the paddle, Kate dropped me off where I’d begin my 7.5 mile run. My legs were definitely feeling the effects of 24.3 miles of the past two days. Making the fatigue worse, I’d ran a 5k race at top speed Sunday, the day before this runyak trip. How fast? I took first place of 55 runners in my age group!

I have been feeling tendonitis in two different areas, right achilles, and right groin Now I’m feeling a new one, behind the left knee. Today’s run, plus tomorrow’s will total 16.6 miles. I’m avoiding redlining by running at a 15 minute pace.

By the boat ramp, before running, I did notice that the river was calmer, and all wind movement was coming from the same direction as the river current. I was thinking, today my legs may be drained, but at least my arms should have a lighter load.

We launched from Anderson Lake at 11:30 a.m. and paddled over a half-mile toward the Illinois River. We did the same portage we did yesterday in reverse and relaunched into the Illinois.

The lake paddle and portage distance will not be counted for DAY 216’s distance for it it was counted on DAY 215. It is in the opposite direction, but I don’t count any repeats. It is the same as when I paddle into any marina, the distance into the marina is counted, but not when exiting. I feel as if I’m padding the mileage if I do. Conversely, when running, I only run the distance from highways to boat ramps once.

We launched into the Illinois river at noon. Today’s paddle was glorious when compared to the two previous days. The current was swift. The first mile took 12:23. I wondered, when was the last time we paddled that fast?. I’m thinking before Lake Michigan somewhere on the Manistee River.

A rare lackadaisical day

Averaging 15:23 minutes a mile we were done paddling the 12.2 miles slightly after 3:00 pm.

I finished runyak DAY 216 with a 3.6 mile run back to where the DAY began and was done by 4:30 p.m. Kate picked my up there and we drove back to Anderson Lake to fetch her Surburban.

From there we drove downriver to checkout tomorrow’s landing in Frederick, IL, population? A place is so small Wikipedia only has three sentence description:

Frederick is an unincorporated community in Schuyler County, Illinois, United States. Frederick is near the Illinois River, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Beardstown. Frederick has a post office with ZIP code 62639.

The landing there looked about as impressive on Google Street View as the Google Earth satellite image.

After the inundated causeway incident at Anderson Lake we are not going to be fussy. We thought about camping there for the night but opted to use the Walmart parking lot nine miles away outside the city of Beardstown. Only because we were heading to the city of 5,951 inhabitants to find supper anyway.

The like to compare Beardstown to Davison, MI (pop. 5173) for in my home county it has the closest to the population to that of Beardstown’s. Besides the usual fast food chains it did not have much to offer in bars and restaurants. We ate at a greasy spoon named Tyson’s Diner. Think I could have had tastier food had I gone to McDonald’s.

But it looks like we’ll being seeing a lot more of Beardstown on our next trip. I’ve researched downriver the next 125 miles… all the way to the Mississippi. We’ll be going through 8 more towns. The total population of all eight towns does not equal half the population of Beardstown!

We will be roughing it the next three trips. It’s bad enough we beer snob’s have to bring own beer, now we’re going to have bring food and cook it too?

I would have thought the closer we got to the Big River there would be more civilization. It seems quite the opposite. Nowhere in Michigan, not even in the UP, do I feel so far from sophisticated folks. I’m fear that soon on the river we might be hearing a banjo playing.