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.

Segment 9 map

Segment 8 map

Segment 6: Omro to Terrell Island

Launch: Miller Park, Omro

Far point: Enter Terrell Island area via fish barrier
Takeout: Return to Yost Road landing

Distance: 6.5 miles

Raindrops beat fiercely on the truck windshield and bright bolts of lightning split the sky as we shuttled our vehicles for the Fox River Heritage Paddle 2010 segment from Omro to Terrell Island in Lake Butte des Morts.

Despite the prediction of all-day scattered thunderstorms, 45 kayak and canoe paddlers turn out at Fred C. Miller Park in Omro for a day of fun on the water. But it looks like one of the persistently bad forecasts that have dogged our weekend paddles all summer is actually going to prove to be correct. We delay the launch for about 45 minutes, but sunburn replaces lightning as the trip hazard. There are happy faces behind the paddles when we take off from Omro, led as always by the 28-foot voyageur canoe.

We definitely have entered the recreational section of the Fox River. We have to make way for a pontoon boat or bass slayer more frequently. Still, herons, egrets, an eagle and osprey are our companions.

Downstream of Omro, the Fox gradually opens up a marshy mouth into Lake Butte des Morts. This is the convergence of the Fox and the Wolf rivers. Once a barely passable bog of reeds and wild rice, artificially high water levels and boat traffic have opened up the shallow lake.

Terrell Island is an experiment by the Department of Natural Resources in turning back the clock for a corner of the lake by enclosing the area with a two-mile-long rock breakwater. It is intended to block out the boat wakes and turbid water of the lake to allow native vegetation to return, followed by native fish and mammals. We circle around its full length and land at the Butte des Morts Conservation Club headquarters.

The Terrell’s Island experiment has worked – too well in the case of one species, according to DNR biologist Art Techlow III, who gives the paddlers a natural history lesson. American white pelicans have returned in force. The experiment has also brought in common terns, egrets and various waterfowl. The DNR counted 13 nesting pelican pairs within the impoundment in 2005. By 2006, the number rose to 44, then 420 in 2007, 695 in 2008, 1,101 in 2009 and 1,068 overwhelming the little islands this spring.

Pelican guano has denuded the islands. That’s one of the unexpected consequences of experiments with nature on this scale, Techlow says. The DNR plans to shave down the islands to promote semi-aquatic vegetation and discourage pelicans.

After Techlow’s presentation, 10 paddlers pile into the voyageur and start paddling east. Not far out, they raise the big boat’s sail and let the wind push them all the way across Lake Butte des Morts. What a sight as this historic replica of Marquette and Joliet’s time sails under U.S. 41, painting a contrast between the journey and just getting there.