Put in at public boat launch at Hwy 12 in Sauk City, took out at public launch at Hwy 23 near Spring Green a total of 22 miles. Camped two nights on the sand bars. We took it pretty easy. Caught only one fish, i think its hard river to fish. This is a very popular stretch of river so there were lots of tubers, rafters, nuers, yakers, and drunkards but it is still a great way to spend the weeke nd and I highly recommend it.

The lower wisconsin river is shallow but the current is slow to moderate with many islands and large sand bars that are all public property and open camping. The DNR prohibits camping on a few islands and are posted with signage. I change my assessment of the current to this: i was unable to stand in one place in chest deep water....take that as you will. Notable features along this reach are a geologic feature called Ferry's Bluff, which can accessed and climbed from the water, and the only legal public nude beach in Wisconsin.

This reach of river is part of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway which extends from the Praire du Sac dam to the Mississippi. This basically means the state controls development along the river to keep it as scenic as possible and they also prohibit glass containers of any kind. We had a DNR warden stop and ask us if we had glass so they must be pretty serious about it. There are many access points in the LWSR so its super easy to plan the ideal distance for your trip. Check out the LWSR website below for photos, maps, access points, etc.

Info and Maps on the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway, USGS streamflow gauge and other info:
http://lwr.state.wi.us/index.asp
http://lwr.state.wi.us/section.asp?linkid=233&locid=50
http://www.huntfishcampwisconsin.com/Canoeing.html
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?05404000 at Wisconsin Dells, WI
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?05407000 at Muscoda, WI More

Hikiing trip to Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada.

Friend Phil Middleton and myself paddled 1,905 miles from the headwaters of the Nameakagen River in northern Wisconsin to "Moon Walk" landing in downtown New Orleans. The trip took a total of 66 days to complete.

Day climb of Mt. St. Helens from the winter trailhead. Due to an abnormally high snow season the snow level at the trailhead was still two feet.

Ice axe was necessary high on the mountain and came in handy for glissading back down. I brought crampons but didn't need them due to the softness of the snow.

Had the summit to myself for 30 minutes!

This was a fun trip. We had lots of options for our route and basically made it up as we went along.

We had the place to ourselves in the north end of the loop and saw lots of wildlife. We actually came up pretty unexpectedly on a moose in one of the streams connecting those narrow lakes.

We saw more traffic when we hit the southern part of the loop, but it still wa sn't bad. We found a nice cliff in Gillis Lake that we liked jumping off so much we came through Gillis again on a later trip. More