On completion you'll want to send a postcard or letter to all the people who helped you along the way. A simple postcard is enough, ideally mailed at St. Louis (or whatever town you end at), or if you mail from home do so in the next week. Be careful of thinking you'll write later -- most trekkers who delay this duty never accomplish it. Those who helped you, and any other trekkers you met, will be interested in how you made out. The "helpers" along the way often identify with your trek, letting you take the journey vicariously for them. It is important that they know how you fared. (And it is important to their helping other trekkers they might meet in the future.)

You will want to collect and mark your photographs. Many trekkers now use disposable cameras and get them developed in a 1-hour shop along the way, so as to quickly mark where the photo originated. If you delay this task until the end of the trek you may not be able to tell one lake from another. Besides, most all your pictures will look alike anyway -- water everywhere framed by more-distant-than-it-seemed shoreline (unless you hiked to the top of bluffs and took pictures down on the river -- the best shots).

Presentations.

If you intend to give talks on your adventure, and you took slides or can digitize your photos fine; it is another way of sharing your adventure. Posting your journal on the Internet can also help other future trekkers.

Be prepared to go through a bit (sometimes a lot) of trauma when you return to "ordinary life" following a major trek. You may feel "cooped up" inside a house, and you’ll keep opening up all the drapes and raising the blinds. Your thoughts will drift dreamily to that campsite down in the Gates of the Mountains in Montana... or that sunset on Lake Sharp in South Dakota. You'll think often of the people you met -- even if only for a few moments when they helped you -- and you'll wonder how they are, as if they were best friends of sorts, or war buddies, now returned from the front.

And, be prepared for a few weeks of outright laziness. It is not uncommon for trekkers to go home and sit in front of a TV for an entire week -- incredible as that seems. It is as if all their "time off" was saved up for the end. You might consider this when planning the schedule for a long trek.

But, most of all, be prepared for people to not understand at all what you did. They will ask inane questions or make dismissive remarks. Be ready for "regular people" to be more interested in how you went to the toilet, than in the incredible journey you took. Forgive them,;they know not what they ask.

Which will bring you to a likely continued contact with any other trekkers you met. They will understand. Trekkers on the Appalachian Trail often maintain contact with others for years, even decades, sharing their common experience by mail. The same is true for cross-country bicyclists. However, river trekking is still a young sport, so you may have a short list.

Which brings you to getting in touch with trekkers from other years. Use e-mail and contact with the author of this guide to connect with other Missouri River Trekkers While you may have never met personally, you will have many common friends: Toston Dam, Great Falls portage Hole-in-the-wall, Ft. Peck Lake, Sakakawea, where you were wind bound, the wildlife you saw and where, and more. Your common experiences, though of different years, will be a long term bond.