I've worked for more than a decade in Baraboo, WI and cross the Baraboo River eights times a day. I have always wanted to
canoe the Baraboo, but I never hear of, or see anyone do it. I was hard pressed to find anyone who had canoed any part
of it at all. So finally in August of 2010, Zoe and I picked a beautiful Saturday and dropped my powered canoe in at the
Circus World Museum in an attempt to canoe the 50 or so miles down to our house on Lake Wisconsin. The Baraboo River
flows into the Wisconsin River just south of Portage. From there it is about 10 miles or so down to our house.
In town was a mix of gravel and rocks on the river bottom and very shallow. We had to be careful as there were some good
sized rocks just below the surface. Once we got out of town it was much deeper but with frequent underwater branches boiling
the surface. The first five miles or so was beautiful and alternated between open farmlands and tunnels of green.
Then we hit our first deadfall.
It was a monster. Way too high and gnarly to lift and drag the canoe over the top. We had to portage around it.
(Going to be a long day if we have many more of these.)
Lifting a 17' canoe over deadfall on muddy, slippery river banks made the portage tough.
This is more like what we encountered on a regular basis. We could pull up to the fall. Get out and pull the canoe up and over.
Get back in on the other side and keep going. Took a bit of effort but was much easier and quicker than portaging.
But, after 8-9 of these lift and carry manuevers it got to be a long day.
We saw a few abandoned structures along the way. Seems like there was a bridge here at one time.
I have no idea where this is on the map. I've tried to locate from land with no luck.
A picture while underway. We never went very fast as we didn't want a wake to disturb things.
But we did try to keep moving right along as we never knew how many more deadfalls to cross and it was a 50+ mile trip.
It ended up taking about 10 hours.
It was a beautiful trip (except for the deadfalls). We saw all kinds of wildlife including herons, eagles and a pair of white pellicans.
Here is a map of the trip.
Hope to do it again before too long.
Here is a quick video bite of us underway.
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