Minneapolis/ St. Paul to LaCrosee, WI
136 Miles (660 Total)
Barges are slow and predictable giants. We see them far away, appearing static in the water, as if they are fixed structures anchored to the bottom of the river bed. The tugboats pushing them are white and obsidian workhorses. Sometimes they maneuver loads that are two wide and six deep. John Sullivan, a river angel in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, said they get even bigger down south.
“Some are pushing 30 to even 40 barges,” he said over dinner at his and his wife’s home in LaCrosse. John had picked us up at the public Marina earlier in the day and had given us rides around town. He invited us over for dinner to talk about paddling and our trip.
John is a legend in the paddling world. He’s canoed the Mississippi as well as the Ohio, Missouri, and Minnesota rivers (as well as some others, I’m missing some). His goal is to canoe all the major rivers that flow into the Mississippi River. He’s done all but the Arkansas, which he plans to do in the next year or two.
“What’s been the most aggravating thing so far?” He asked us.
“The wind, the heat…. and boredom,” Qball said. We all laughed.
“The wind can get real bad sometimes,” John said. “You particularly need to be careful around the mouth of the locks when the wind gets bad. The waves bounce off the walls and they’ll tip you over if you’re not careful.”
John is a fountain of knowledge and experience about the Mississippi River. He’s a retired water quality specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural resources, and has spent much of his career protecting the river.
“The other thing you need to watch out for down south are the wing dams,” he continued. “You’ll see them sticking out of the water. They have them in the upper river too, but they’re below the water level. They create whirlpools on the down river side of them. Could tip you over if you get caught in them.”
The river, it seems, has many perils.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll hear them. They just sound like big waves. They’re easy to avoid.”
John talked all through dinner about the river. He was articulate and passionate. He loved the river just as much as he liked sharing his knowledge about it.
“Where’d you camp last night?” He asked.
“Luckily we found an RV park that let us camp there,” said Beardoh. “We had been trying to find a place to camp but all the islands were covered in poison ivy.”
“Yeah…you’ll get a lot of that,” replied John. “It will get a little easier to camp down in the Lower River. The sandbars get really big. Sometimes they can stretch a half mile wide and four miles long.”
We had been seeing a few sandbars lately. There was a large one that stuck out into the river near the middle of Lake Pepin, and we took a nice break on it. There was a large group of pelicans on it too, nearly 30 of them. They took off in flight and circled around, sunlight glittering on their white bodies. John said we’ll see a lot of them. They are migrating south as they get pushed out by the colder weather that comes with autumn.
But we’re starting to think fall will never come. It’s been in the mid 80s lately, and sticky and muggy too. It’s the kind of weather that makes it hard to breathe, where your clothes cling to your salty body like a kindergarten kid glued to the ankles of his mom or dad while he gets dropped off at his first day of school.
There’s no break in sight either. The next few days are forecast in the 90s. On Thursday it will be 95. It’s supposed to be in the mid 70s this time of year. This is one of the reasons we started at the end of August, to avoid weather like this. It’s almost better to get rained on instead. At least we have ponchos for that. With intense heat, there’s nothing much you can do about it. You just sit in the canoe and fry.
We’re abut 20 miles from Iowa. It seems like we’ve been in Minnesota for a long time now. It’s like the California section of the PCT. It just goes on and on and on. It will be a good mental landmark to breach the border.
The river now is a much different river compared to the Mississippi in northern Minnesota. The biggest difference is the amount of recreational and commercial boat traffic. John said that we are in the highest amount of recreational traffic anywhere on the Mississippi River.
“It will lessen up down south,” he said. “It will be just you and the barges then.”
That’s not so bad, I thought. The recreational boats are the most dangerous. They throw up the biggest wake and generally don’t give two shits about you in your tiny canoe. They wave to you as they speed by, which is extra infuriating.
The river has its moments, though. It’s beautiful here. Recently there have been bluffs on both sides of the river, big hills with rocky outcroppings. I wasn’t expecting this change in topography. Some of the bluffs extend 500 feet above the river. Some look like small mountains. I never knew this existed in the Midwest.
The best part of the river is at sunrise and sunset. You get to see good colors then. Pinks and oranges and purples reflect off the water and create new colors. Deep indigos. Violet sorbets. Sea greens. Powder blues. Turquoise. Musty blacks.
The river is quiet then too. The wind is calmer and the water is like glass. The paddles make less sound as they dip into the water and pull the canoe along. It’s a rhythm that we strive for. When the waves are choppy, it’s hard to stay in sync. There’s more movement; more noise.
When it’s calm, everything is good.
