We got on the water Sunday at about 10:00. One of the problems of Wisconsin River paddling is that "downriver" usually means "into the wind". But for the first day of paddling, the wind was actually behind us! We made great progress, though we weren't hurrying to "progress" anywhere. The water is very low, and we were gawking to much to try to read the river well, so we got hung up many times on future sand bar. But on a 90 degree day, getting out of a canoe is NOT a problem.
There weren't many people on the river-but it was an interesting mix. A few small fishing outboards (how DO they navigate? They must carry a bushel of shear pins). three or four families with young children playing on bars. Three people sitting in lawn chairs fishing, nearly as deep in the water as their prey. The only surprise was an airboat, called "air ranger", something so unbelievably loud that I couldn't decide which was stranger: that it was allowed, or that people were ignorant enough to use it.
Most of the banks along this stretch of the river is undeveloped, thick with trees and undergrowth. Bird sounds are fantastic, I heard many birds sounds I had never heard before. But of course the most interesting sounds came from the Blue Heron and the Sand Hill cranes, which were thick all along the river, but especially where we camped, just below Muscoda. That first night, it sounded like a great turf battle was taking place among the birds, every time a pair would fly, another pair would yell at them. Here are some reproductions of the sounds. At one point, just when it got too dark to see, there was a great screaming coming from the woods, a sound I couldn't identify, then more croaking, then what sounded like keening at a wake. Here are some links to sound files of these birds. Plug them into your speakers, and turn it up to get a sense of what its like.
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