Segment 8: Wrightstown to De Pere

Launch: Wrightstown Boat Landing

Takeout: Bomier Boat Launch, De Pere

Distance: 11.4 miles

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This segment of the Fox River is much further away from the Upper Fox than even the nearly 200 miles that separate them.

The mansions on this stretch of river are a sight to behold. The boathouses would look highfalutin next to homes upriver in the likes of Endeavor or Montello. Sprawling, manicured, limestone-terraced landscaping here costs more than entire homes up there. Though you wonder whether their owners enjoy the river any more.

Our trip starts at the Wrightstown boat landing with a couple of guests. A steamer launch right off the screen from African Queen greets us at the landing, but its travel plan takes it upstream.

Our other guest is Jake Stachovak, the Wausau man whose “Portage to Portage” kayak journey around the eastern United States has made him a celebrity in the silent sport. He paddles along with us – unusual for him – with the current. He is enjoying the company before resuming his one-man, 5,000-plus-mile circular trip from Portage, down the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, into the Gulf, up the Atlantic seaboard, through the canals of New York State, through the Great Lakes and, finally, up the Fox River back toward Portage.

Jake tells of the incredible outpouring of support he’s received on his quest to show people that we’re all linked together and how paddle sports allow you to find adventure in your own town. He encounters kindness again during the Wrightstown-to-De Pere segment.

At our planned lunch stop at the Little Rapids Lock, the shore proved too rocky and steep, so we locked on through and headed for Lost Dauphin Park just downstream, only to find equally unwelcoming conditions. Down a few houses, a homeowner named Tom was weed-whacking his yard.

“How’d you like 37 guests for lunch?” I asked him. After hearing what we were up to, Tom invited us to lunch on his lawn. He and daughter Kate got a kick out of the voyageur and talking with Jake.

Well fed and rested, we climb back into our boats and paddle on to the upscale city of De Pere and the very accommodating Bomier Boat Launch, which is tucked into a neighborhood along the Fox River Trail just south of the downtown bridge.