3MAY2012 @ Blair, NE - I shared breakfast with a crew of guys in the area to clean the winter accumulation from Missouri River bridges.  Yet one more job I never thought about, these guys deploy each spring to power wash bridges.  Salt being used so prominently in many states each winter, removing this salt is obviously something that prolongs the life of any bridge.  They were heading to Omaha for a prework meeting and carried me out to the Optimist Park, delivering me at about 0815.  There being very little to arrange I was on the water fairly quickly, paddling on in total calm - how nice is that!  Putting the flood wreckage out of my mind was a mink, walking around the rip rap and less than a mile later a raccoon.  The raccoon was 30 feet up in a cottonwood and was uninterested in me.  I yelled, I banged the side of the canoe and slapped the water several times and not once did it turn toward me.  What could it possibly find more interesting than me? 
At Fort Calhoun I was lurched back to the present flood wreckage reality with the worst yet.  That's right, worse than the Cottonwood Marina.  Rather than a ten acre hole, the Fort Calhoun wipeout was 30 acres, maybe 40.  On the upstream end a nice riverside house sits partly tilted into the hole.  From there downstream for several hundred yards the hole reaches 150 feet or more back from the rip rap that once marked the river's edge.  How many riverfront homes were washed away is a guess ... I will suggest 20.  Totally gone.  Now back on the new riverfront are several enormous piles of debris and trees.  Two of these piles are burning and are being fed by a track-excavator fitted with a clamshell bucket.  As I floated by it picked up a tree trunk and set it on on the fire.  Even as I was watching the Fort Calhoun destruction a tugboat pushing a barge upriver came into view.  The Brady Fitzhugh actually cut it's motor as it got close to me so as to reduce it's wake.  That was unexpected and I don't think needed.  Nevertheless I exchanged a salute wuith the skipper as we passed, he revved up and went on and I turned vertically into the waves.  Now my surprise began.  I went through the 6 or so waves quite smartly and turned downriver ... only to endure several hundred yards more of barge induced waves.  I do not understand it, but clearly I was separated from the barge by half a mile before the effects were over.  While none of these later waves were meaningful, they did not seem to dissipate.  If this is common I can anticipate rocking every which way for my entire Mississippi River part of this trip.    
The water is now brown.  I can see only an inch of my paddle before it is absorbed by the brown swirl.  Massive amounts of corn cobs, corn stalks and roots are floating along as well as bark.  One would expect spiders, midges and flies atop the excessive anmount of flotsam, but none are evident. 
Arriving at the Dodge Marina at 1330, I paddled in and found Mark Smith, and a finer man could not be found.  Mark lives by several mottos and one is H.O.P.E.  That is an acrunym for Help One Person Everyday and today that person was me.  From "Sure, you may sleep under the marina roof" to "Let me carry you to Jim's Rib Haven" to "Here's what to do if the rain gets too hard tonight", Mark was gem to bump into.  By 1830 I had made the rounds with Mark and was back at the marina putting down the world's best beef ribs, downing Coronas and thinking how it gets no better than this.  The goose gliding in disagrees; I'm probably where it wants to be.   
Today I travelled from river mile 648 to river mile 628, a distance of 20 miles.