Fox River Heritage Paddle 2010

The complete journal of Fox River Heritage Paddle 2010 with text and historically annotated maps is available for $12 (plus postage) at the History Museum at the Castle in downtown Appleton or by emailing sandhill7@gmail.com. 

See photos from the journey
 

The Journey begins

I’ve been involved with a group that planned a series of paddle trips covering most of the Fox, collectively called Fox River Heritage Paddle 2010. After three of the 12 segments, I can tell you, it’s not the Fox River we’re used to up in the Fox Cities.

Segment 1: Portage to CTH O – April 24, 2010

For the first leg of our journey, we are to depart from Portage, the connecting point – almost – for the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. Forty-seven paddlers turn out to journey the 10.7 miles to the landing at Marquette County Highway O. 

Writer David Horst on the first segment
of Fox River Heritage Paddle 2011.
Photo by Mark Hoffman.

Traveling from Hortonville, rain pelts the windshield of my truck. I’m convinced the forecast for storms and lightening will prove correct and I’m driving an hour and a half for nothing.

But the rains stop in advance of the launch and we see no more than an intermittent drizzle.

The paddlers – couples and older guys and strapping youngsters – unload canoes of Fiberglas and aluminum, plastic kayaks, skin kayaks, wooden kayaks and a stand-up “Yak.” They fill the 16-seat voyageur canoe that leads us throughout these 120 miles of rediscovery.

Up here (up river, though geographically to the south) the Fox River is not all industry and houses that make the Fox Cities tax assessors so happy. In this section, the Fox is a country stream, lined with farm fields and fishing shacks and rarely running more than a couple of feet deep. Crane music accompanies us much of the way.

Some among us appoint themselves to trash detail, relieving the river of various bottles and buckets, a duck decoy and a television set, which a kayaker with a flair for the ridiculous bungies to the front of his boat.

At Governor’s Bend Park we face the entirety of the Fox River’s rapids – a little chute that wouldn’t warrant a rating but delivers a little rush of fun. While the lower Fox drops nearly the height of Niagara Falls from Lake Winnebago to Green Bay, its whitewater was harnessed by a system of locks and dams more than a century ago.

We pass under the County O bridge and beach on the muddy bank. From there we get our first presentation on the history that flows with the river – a reading of pioneering environmentalist John Muir’s boyhood remembrances at John Muir Park.

Cranes leave the nest but find new dad

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

FREMONT, Wis -- For a short time on a recent Sunday, I felt a little like Father Crane.

It was a natural reaction to the following situation.

Chuck leads crane #302

I am running through a cut hay field. My arms are … well … flapping.

Running behind me are four sandhill cranes. I begin to separate from them and one or two of the cranes open their 5-foot wingspan and float up and over my head, landing slightly in front and on either side of me.

It sounds like I’m describing some strange nature lover’s dream – and it would be a good one – but this was reality. As pleasant a reality as it might have been, it was not what we wanted to have happen.

We were on a dead-end farm road south of Fremont to release these young cranes back into the wild so they could link up with their peers before the migration south. They had been in the care of The Feather Rehabilitation Center near New London, which is to say they were in the care of Pat Fisher. She is a one-woman nonprofit operation.

The cranes had come to her from around the state, not injured but kicked out of their nests, probably by their siblings.

Female sandhill cranes typically lay two eggs, though normally only one of the young makes it to maturity. It may be predation of the egg or young bird by skunks, raccoons, foxes or coyotes. Or it may be the smaller of the two coming up short in survival of the fittest.

Nature may be beautiful, but she often is not kind.

Section 7B: Lutz Park to Sunset Point Park

Launch:  Lutz Park, Appleton

Takeout: Sunset Point Park

Distance: 6.4 miles

Google map

We had planned a dramatic finish to the cannon fire of the tall ships in Green Bay. Instead, the end of Fox River Heritage Paddle 2010 is greeted by the oompah of a polka band in Kimberly, but the final group paddle couldn’t have been better.

The first really good forecast of the series of 12 day trips on the Fox River helps to draw 116 participants last Sunday for the paddle from Lutz Park in Appleton to Kimberly’s Sunset Point Park, the site of the village’s centennial celebration.

Sun and upper 70s accompany the paddlers on the trip through the living history of the four hand-operated Appleton locks, now restored to their 19th century glory.

As a bonus, we get a demonstration of another historic bit of technology.

The residual of the high water levels that caused the delay of this and two other segments of the journey reduced the clearance under the railroad bridge downstream of Lawe Street enough to prevent the 28-foot voyageur canoe from passing under.

The center-pivot bridge is designed to swing out of the way of boat traffic, and would have, if not for the whistle of the approaching train. So we sit waiting, part of the group having already slipped under, heads pressed to decks, and others still waiting.

When the engineer passes the rare sight of a river full of boats, paddlers wave and he waves back. The bridge swings open and on we go.

There is some drama as we approach lock four. A kayaker drifts too close to the water inlet to the hydroelectric generator there. The current sweeps him in and knocks him from his boat. The grate over the inlet stops him from going any farther, but the force of the water pins him there.

The call of “man down” brings the Appleton Fire Department and Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department rescue boats and paddle organizers immediately. Three men pull him free. Uninjured and undeterred, he gets back into his kayak on the other side of the lock and finishes the trip.

Segment 7A: Park-to-Park Paddle

Launch: Shattuck Park,  Neenah

Takeout: Lutz Park, Appleton

Distance: 8.5 miles

There’s a t-shirt they sell to kayakers and sailors at the park headquarters for the Apostle Islands in Bayfield. It says: “The lake is in charge.
 

Mark Hoffman photo

That was the story on Little Lake Butte des Morts for the ninth annual Park-to-Park Paddle. The 30 mph wind gusts sweeping across the lake convince a lot of people that the 4-mile route from our launch at Shattuck Park in downtown Neenah to the early out at Fritse Park in the Town of Menasha is good enough.

Others, determined to complete the full 8.5 miles to Appleton’s Lutz Park, scatter based on their approach to navigation. Some B-line down river to take the shortest path between two windy points. Others head straight into the west wind to get to the lee shore, where land and buildings will block the gusts.

This less pleasant section of the Park-to-Park comes right after the fun part – stuffing more than 100 kayaks and canoes carrying 150-plus people into the Menasha Lock and smiling for photos.

Google map

Our route from Shattuck takes us out the Neenah channel, into Lake Winnebago and around the point of Doty Island and into the Fox – and into the teeth of the wind.

The trip through downtown Menasha collapses the eras. Paper mills, a smattering of surviving retail and riverside retirement condos stand side by side. Then it’s through the lock and out into Little Lake Butte des Morts. Don’t be deceived by the “little” in its name. It can harness the wind with the biggest of them.

Directing the arriving traffic that morning, I could see trouble coming. A lot of the vehicles were packing small river boats. They’re made for going with the current and bouncing off rocks, not for tracking through a crosswind. The result was a lot of tuckered paddlers.

A few of them get wet. I heard stories of at least five boats capsizing.

Thanks to the certified instructors from Northeast Wisconsin Paddlers and patrol boats from the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department and Appleton Fire Department, everyone gets help quickly and no one is injured.

Despite all of the misfortunes I describe here, this was a good time, certainly for me and I think for most.

You can find out why from another t-shirt: “A bad day on the water is better than a good day at work.”