Our annual winter camping trip. It was 9 degrees Fahrenheit that night. Needless to say, it was a pretty cool trip.

We slept in the Catfish Bay walk in campground. For some reason, we decided to walk across the lake in the middle of the night, but otherwise just sat by our fire.

The most exciting part was when a burning log fell on our case of Mountain Dew.

PARK: Round Lake
ENTRY: # 52 - Brant Lake

We put in at Round Lake with Brant Lake being our actual permitted entry point. We somehow went to the wrong portage despite the fact that we had already done the portage between Round and Brant twice on a previous trip, and ended up starting our loop backwards and maybe technically illegally. We made it all the way to Missing Link Lake before realizing the error, and decided to forge ahead since we already had a late start.

There was fairly heated debate about whether to leisurely fish our way through a fairly connected but roundabout path to Tuscarora Lake or to do the 400 something rod portage between Missing Link and Tuscarora. We did the portage and found a campsite right away.

We attempted to paddle our way through to Jerry Lake by way of a southern finger on Tuscarora, but the route was impassable. We ended up portaging to Crooked Lake through Owl Lake. Crooked lake was very congested and we ended up camping on Jerry Lake after wasting much time looking for routes and campsites.

We made our way to Gillis Lake where we relaxed, did some cliff diving, and some members did rock climbing. Gillis has an excellent island cliff for jumping.

We planned to stay another night, but other commitments combined with a nasty thunderstorm pushed us to paddle all the way out from Gillis. The best fishing of the trip was had in the first few minutes following the storm once we were already back to Round Lake. More

Pack your thermals!

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

Anyone planning a trip to the Porkies in the winter should know that the roads going into the park are closed to automobile traffic and are converted to snowmobile trails. We didn't know that before we went and it kind of messed up our plans.

Here are some websites we found useful for this trip(compiled 3/18/2008)

Porcupine Mountains State Park
http://www.expl oringthenorth.com/porkiesum/hike.html
http://www.exploringthenorth.com/porkiesum/intro.html
http://www.michigandnr.com/Publications/PDFS/RecreationCamping/PMWSPUnitmapforweb.pdf
http://www.coppercountry.com/article_39.php

Black River Gorge Scenic Area - Ottawa NF
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/ottawa/recreation/area/index.htm
http://www.byways.org/explore/byways/10780/travel.html
http://www.northcountrytrail.org/explore/guide/d1.htm
http://www.gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/blackriver.shtml
http://www.lakegogebic.com/waterfalls.htm
http://www.superiortrails.com/black-river-mi.html More