Kids were scattered around the park reading books and painting water colors, fulfilling their requirements to receive a Missouri River Explorer Badge. The cottonwood trees provided shade while volunteers ate their lunches and awaited the entertaining trash contest. Before we knew it, muddy, smiling faces started to arrive back at the boat ramp, trash treasures in hand.īy the time the volunteers started arriving back at LaBenite Park the sun was shining and it was an absolutely beautiful day. We had support from the Missouri Department of Conservation, Sugar Creek Fire Department and our friends at Healthy Rivers Partnership who helped us ferry volunteers to cleanup locations. Boatload after boatload of volunteers took off from LaBenite on a mission to clean up the Missouri River. The first volunteers arrived around 8:30AM and it was a steady stream of volunteers throughout the morning. After the mad rush to get everything set up for over 180 volunteers, all our hard work and planning started to pay off. After several hours, our cold crew made it back to camp and were greeted with some warm apple cider and a big fire. Our worries of not finding enough trash sites for our large number of volunteers quickly diminished. We knew that the area downstream of Kansas City (especially downstream of the Blue River) was bad, but we haven’t seen it this bad in a while. Mounds and mounds of Styrofoam cups and plastic bottles littered sandy beaches and bottomland forests along miles of river. Once our trash scout boats started to check out some areas, we quickly realized that we had our work cut out for us. This was one of the colder trash scouts we’ve done and we are so thankful for the MRR Crew for their hard work and dedication. As the boats pushed off shore, the sleet started. This essential trash scout allows us to put some boots on the ground and search for areas of high-density trash and site hazards for our volunteers the next day. Things were moving slow this morning but we knew that we had to gear up to conduct our trash scout of the river. On Friday we woke up to some frosty tents and misty conditions. Luckily the winds died down that evening and we were able to enjoy a delicious slow-boil prepared by our Food Angel, Gale Johnson, and a warm fire. Later that afternoon we took a trip to the firehouse where we made some great connections with the Fire Captain, Brandon Smith, and Fire Chief, Nathan Richardson, who let us fill up our water jugs and steal some ice from their ice machine. This effort took the entire group working together to make sure the tent was erected without injury or damage. On Thursday, we raised our camp kitchen we like to call the “flying nun” in some seriously gusty conditions.

As usual, a small group of staff and crew arrived a few days early to set up camp and prepare for the large event.

Rottenwood river clean up