Canoeing the Namekagon river in NW Wisconsin- August 2011

I'm the guy in back of the canoe.  This summer, a trip was made to God's Country, AKA Minnesota, and while there we made a dash to northeast Wisconsin, and met up with a friend of mine, Jeff Z. (not sure if I should put his name in print without consulting him first, and at the time of this blog entry, he's probably gettin' some Z's)

All the pics and the editing of same was done by him.

The Wife and I canoed the Namekagon (pronounced locally "NAM-eh KA GONE") river, we started out at Log Cabin outfitters in Trego, WI, crossed what they in Wisconsin call "the flowage" AKA the lake above the dam, about 3 miles long and mirror smooth that August day.

We portaged around this dam in the second pic, a small hydro dam,  recent heavy rains in the area had the dam roaring. Some kamakazi ducks were diving in the waters at the base, presumably to gorge themselves on stunned or chummed up small fish that had gone through the turbines.

The current was swift in parts, lazy in others. The Namekagon is part of the St. Croix national waterway, and there are only a couple cabins along the banks that were grandfathered in when it became part of the national park system in the late 60's. Othewise it is serene, and we saw bald eagles, ducks, a hawk or two, a beaver and about four canoes all day. Very relaxing to say the least.

The Wife was a trooper, having never been in a canoe before in her life we did 26 miles that day! The current helped out tremendously. I was told by my friend/guide that normally the river is much lower and we would have scraped rocks in many     spots. But not the case on this day.  Would we go back? Oh yeah!