Sunday, July 24, 2011

Namekagon River: West River Landing to Springbrook Landing

This morning Noelle and I headed into Wisconsin to drive to the Hayward area and canoe a section of the beautiful Namekagon River. We arrived at Camp Namekagon by 9:30 and were on the river by about 10.
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The trip started out with a slow flowing section of river that was a nice warmup for the small Class I rapids that were still to come. In the calm sections we found some water lillies.
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Despite a forecast of clear skies, it turned out to be overcast for the entire trip. We saw plenty of birds though; lots of mergansers and cedar waxwings.

We passed under several bridges as we floated along including several railroad bridges.
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Unfortunately, other than the many birds we saw, we didn't see much wildlife. We arrived at Springbrook Landing by about 1 pm. There was some jewelweed growing along the river banks there and I enjoyed looking at it while we waited for a group to get off the landing and start their trip.
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After getting back to the car we drove into Hayward where we had planned on eating a late lunch and sampling some beers at the Angry Minnow. Unfortunately it is closed on Sundays. We walked around town a bit and ended up eating lunch at Norske Nook. The apple pie was delicious! We ended our day with a short hike along the Namekagon-Courte Orielles Portage. It was a short 0.8 mile loop trail. At the mid point is a nice view of the Namekagon River.
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On the return section of the loop were a few trees that had blown down in the recent storms.
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Noelle had a fun time crawling through one of the blowdowns.

While I had wanted to see and go inside the world's largest muskie, it is part of the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and costs $6.50 per person to enter. Noelle and I settled for this view from outside the gates.

2 comments:

luksky said...

I would have been tempted to pay the $6.50 to go inside the muskie!!

Unknown said...

Looks wonderful like something I would enjoy doing! :)