22APRIL2011 near Charlson, ND - Concluding that the weather would not allow any canoeing today, and acknowledging that my cabin is a fine place to remain, I set the canoe off and drove out to scout the ice. At New Town plenty of ice was bank to bank - well, almost anyway. Actually both banks were free of ice out 30 feet - sometimes much more - from the shore. From where the ice starts to the opposite shore's 30-foot-out point approximately 90 % of the lake is ice covered. Clearly a person could paddle along one shore for a considerable distance. Following a sumptious lunch at the 4 Bears Casino buffet I drove to McKenzie Bay. There the ice condition was markedly different from at New Town; one would barely be able to launch a canoe before being fenced in by ice. What happened today was a strong NE wind had pushed ice into McKenzie Bay, jamming it shore to shore. About 1/4 mile east from the dock was what appeared to be ice free water, also shore to shore. I say appeared because it was raining hard when I was there and seeing clearly was not possible. Even so, it was promising enough that I will go there with the canoe and all my gear tomorrow. Should I not be able to launch I will wait another day or so until the launch is done. The weather is to be sunny and warmer with a west wind tomorrow and also Sunday. I am halfway expecting the west wind to push the ice out of the bay and allow a launch. If launched under those conditions I should be able to paddle east with the floating ice. Hopefully I will launch tomorrow, get a few miles done and then do a lot of miles Easter Sunday. That would put me fairly close to the dam Sunday night, possibly within one good paddling day.
Today I saw no sun and drove through rain from 1000 until 1700. At times the rain was quite hard and tested the windshield severely. It was not fun. I drove 40 to 50 mph and on occasion pulled off to let big oil-field trucks pass. A lot of oil field activity is seen everywhere around here. Monster trucks and pickup trucks outnumber cars and SUVs by about 9 to 1. Paved roads are covered with mud, so windshields are covered with mud. Many places the traffic slows to 2 mph as we make our way through muddy sections of roadway where the pavement has been worked into small broken pieces. Getting gasoline is an exercise in negotiating one's way across more mud between the vehicle and pump. Paddling, even around ice, will seem easy compared with driving North Dakota's roads today.