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Show RIVER us to eat our last carefully hoarded joints. We dried some on Rick's sterno stove and drove on toward the river. The last 150 miles from Des Moines were very long. We stopped in the late afternoon, burgered out, and pushed on without stopping again. I was afraid that if the van stopped it would start no more, and so we forged on through the Iowa hills, nerves knotted, stomachs shrunk, eyes red and glazed. It was dark when we crossed Highway 61 and came to the last few miles between us and the river. We climbed one last hill and crossed a high, arching bridge. Below us we could see nothing but black formless water reflecting the lights of the Rock Island shore, but it didn't matter. In the darkness lay the river. Through great good luck, I'd found the name of a Mr. John Adams, owner of the Sunset Marina in Rock Island, the largest sheltered harbor on the upper Mississippi. It was a beautiful piece of water with room for five hundred boats. I'd written him asking if we could use some of his space to build a raft. He replied by mail, saying maybe. I was eager to find out where we stood, so in the morning, bone weary and road sore, Rosie and I drove down to the river. The Sunset Marina was most impressive, a box of sheltered water that opened onto the river through a small inlet. A hundred or more boats lay in the calm blue water and probably twice that many were mounted on chocks behind the marina office and workshops. We found Mr. Adams in the showroom of the marina. We must have looked a sight to Mr. Adams. I was growing my first beard and was dressed in levis and an army surplus shirt. Rosie had her hair swept back and wore a blue cotton smock that showed a lot of thigh. Still, despite our recent -56- |