Trick or Treat !?!

Endlich da, ein Haufen fiebernd erwarterter Leckereien aus der Heimat. — Und da geteilte Freude ja bekanntlich die schönste Freude ist, bin ich schon jetzt auf die Reaktionen neugieriger Mitmenschen gespannt.

A (typical) dialog in class:

student: “I was sure I understood it before. But now that you explained it, I am totally confused, I do not know what to say.”

instructor: “Good! That means we are finally making progress!”

Part II of the river experience was much more hands-on: last Sunday, we made a Canoe Trip on Meramec (about 30 miles out of St. Louis).

We got up pretty early, prepared coolers and lunch, loaded the car and left the house at 8.20 am. At 10.00 am we reached Meramec State Park. The cars stayed in the parking lot downstream and a small bus brought us upstream. The driver helped us getting the Canoes down to the riverbank before Craig kindly gave as a “Canoe 101″. We were ready to start at about 10.45 am.

Meramec River is a wonderfully quiet, untouched, peaceful area. Clear water floats downhill hidden between woods and rocks. And warm sunshine made it a really perfect day for a Canoe trip!

After half a mile and some more or less risky maneuvers and a collision with a huge trunk (thanks to “Canoe 101″, nobody flipped over), we had a first break on a shore. We climbed up the bank and walked into the wood. Some lianas were hanging down the trees — which turned out to be a fascinating opportunity to revive forgotten climbing abilities (at least for people more talented than me).

We canoed further down the stream until we reached the entrance to cavern. At this spot, a tiny cool river running out of the cavern meets Meramec. We left the canoes on the shore, climbed up on the rocks flooded by the cool water and entered into the Cavern.
Inside, in the absolute dark — only disturbed by our flashlights — we had amazing experiences of cavern frogs, bats, huge stalactites and stalacmites. As we had walked about one mile into the rock, the ‘ceiling’ above the riverbed became too low to walk on. We turned around and made our way back to the canoes. After one hour in the dark, tears came to my eyes as I entered into the bright daylight. Once back in the sunshine, our frozen feet returned to life. Suddenly, the Meramec water appeared to be a warm tavern.

After such an expedition, one may get hungry; and we did. We kicked off our canoes and went a little more downstream. A strong current close to the beach where we wanted to stop off for lunch caused our most experienced floater to collide with a tree (it presumably stood on the shore before the last storm bent it down). The canoe did (technically) not capsize but it swung heavily to either side and ran full of water. Two cell phones and a digital camera were the victims of this event (and the fact that the waterproof bucket opened for an unknown reason).

Anyway, we enjoyed our time on that beach. Watermelon, sandwiches, cake, and cool drinks made a perfect lunch.

The refreshing water enticed some of us to swim. It was just great. Especially going downstream was fun — I guess I never swam that fast The only disadvantage was that we had to walk back, since we couldn’t move against the current.

It must have been around 4.30 pm when we arrived our destination. We pulled the canoes out of the water and went uphill to get to the cars.

The trip ended, traditionally as I was told, with enjoying ice cream at Dairy Queen’s.

Many thanks to Craig for organizing the trip and guiding us! — It was really great fun!