Jeff City Results, Race to the Dome and More~!
Meanwhile, the Big Muddy Clean Sweep barge crew continued to make arrangements for the "River Clean-up" barge to move upriver. Finally, after a number of mishaps and missed opportunities, Hermann Sand & Gravel gave our barge a ride up to Hermann, and then to Jeff City with help from the guys at Capital Sand Co. & the Jeff City River Terminal. The barge had finally arrived~!
As things changed minute to minute, and day to day, we hastily made preparations to "move in" and ready the barge. Big Muddy thanks to the barge team Jeff Barrow, Steve Schnarr, Racin' Dave Stevens, Jodi Pfefferkorn, Daniel Belshe and Anthony Pettit for getting things in order so we could quickly transition into our big clean-up event, the Jefferson City Missouri River Clean-up!
On Friday we began to set-up camp for our crew, organize gear for the clean-up and began scouting the river for clean-up sites to ferry the volunteers to. Our good friend Soda Popp (yes that's his real name!) rolled into Noren Access as other River Relief crew arrived to fry us up some local caught fish, potatoes and bean stew while we attempted to recover and refuel from the massive effort it had taken to get to that point!
Thankfully the river had been kind to us all week, and blessed us with beautiful Fall weather in all its glory~! In addition, the Noren Access (aka Wilson's Serenity Point) was looking better than ever thanks to one big hearted river rat, Joe Wilson. Joe cares so much about providing a beautiful experience on the river, he even had a guy come out there to make the sandy beach smooth as silk.
Saturday morning over 140 volunteers gathered to clean-up the Missouri River in Jefferson City and christen our new trash barge with its first load on river trash on its 170 mile journey. We had an amazing turnout. An additional 25 volunteers worked a satellite site from the Mokane Access with Stream Team partner Mark Van Patten and Big Muddy Refuge partner Tim Haller. The volunteers trickled in slowly, but we filled all 13 boats and sent them all out on the river! Check out our website for the official results! You can also acces all of our cool photos from the clean-up on our Flickr page!
A Big Muddy Thanks to Eldon Highschool teacher Jen Wellman for bringing a bus load of courteous high school students in the middle of home-coming weekend. They were great kids and awesome workers! One of the girls ended up finding the "Best Darned Find of the Day" for the Trash Contest, a plastic toy "Swamp Thing"!
Trash Tally!
68 Blue Stream Team (ST) bags of Trash
25 Tires (one ginormous tractor tire on the rim)5 Chunks of Styrofoam
1 Refrigerator
2 Coolers
9 5-gallon Plastic Buckets
2 55-gallon Plastic Barrels
2 Propane Tanks
1 Boxspring
8 Chairs
1 Wicker Table
1 Bean Bag
1 BBQ Grill
30 ft of Metal Cable
Several pieces of Scrap Metal
1 boat-load of wet, nasty carpet (30 pieces)
1 big plastic Culvert (8ft long)
4 Tarps
1 Pet Carrier
1 Large Buoy
2 Toys
Trash Contest Finds!
1 Plastic Swamp Thing toy
1 Mylar Balloon
1 Hockey Puck
1 Nerf Laser Tag Vest
1 Plastic Hose Guy Toy
1 Playdo Hair Thing
1 Metal Chair
1 Rusty Spray Can
2 Old Glass Jugs
1 Glass Bottle with Glass Stopper
1 Toilet Tank Bulb
1 Fuzzy Toilet Seat
1 Bottle of Personal Lubricant
1 Dog Skull w/ Collar
1 Plastic Dog
Handful of Turkey Feathers
A String of large Christmas Lights
A Flower growing out of a piece of Styrofoam
1 Naturally Feminine Powder Spray
1 plastic Hair Curler
1 Avon Crème Lotion
4 Light Bulbs
1 Eldon Mustangs Water Bottle
1 Machete Blade
1 Kids Chair
1 Milk Crate
1 Metal Grill
1 Hammer
1 Headlight
1 Seat Cushion
1 Can of Sudden Tan
1 full Can of Milwaukee’s Best
1 plastic Horse with the legs chewed off
1 plastic Horse with the legs chewed off
Many thanks to the Wears Creek Clean-up folks for providing a wonderful lunch for our simultaneous clean-up, and to Patchwork Family Farms, Clovers & Hyvee for providing inkind food donations for the barge team! And to our long time partners and sponsors, Missouri American Water for bringing us drinking water and water bottles, providing educational talks on how we get our drinking water from the river and filter it, and of course for supporting the clean-up! And to the entire list of Golden Mile Sponsors who stepped up to the plate to support the Big Muddy Clean Sweep. We couldn't have done this without you guys!We want to also give a shout out to our friends Dave Bandy, Mark Risch and Patty Farrar who showed up with instruments in hand to serenade the volunteers at lunch with some classic river tunes!
On Sunday, we had the pleasure of entertaining even more river enthusiasts! A record 71 boats and 112 paddlers enjoyed getting out on the water for the 2nd Annual Race to the Dome! Despite a foggy delay in the morning, participants in this charity canoe & kayak race helped support Missouri River Relief by enjoying a glorious Fall day on the Big Muddy, as the colors on the trees began to peak.
The love for this amazing river was definitely flowing~~~!
Thanks to organizer Patrick Lynn for making the race so smooth and for supporting Missouri River Relief's efforts out of the kindness of his heart. The official results for Race to the Dome can be found at www.racetothedome.org or check our gorgeous photos we have posted on River Relief's Flickr site of the event. Also, here's a great news article about the race that was published in the Jeff City Tribune from Saturday.
It was an amazing week, and we have many Big Muddy thanks & praises to everyone who pitched in to help make it happen. From the bottom of our Big Muddy hearts, thank you and we'll see you on the river as we continue to roll downstream on this awesome Clean Sweep adventure!
drawing by Alicia Pigg
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