I don’t know about you, but I love looking at Google maps in my area. It’s fun to see what lies beyond the view from the street, but I especially like looking for new places to hike and kayak. That’s why when I was looking up near Rhinelander I discovered there was what looked to be my favorite type of paddling – a very slow and meandering river. Why it took me 11 years to figure it out is just so dumb, but there it is. I know about it now and it’s just under an hour for me to get there with two boat landings to choose from.
Not only does it have a main channel that gets more defined as you head up from one landing, it has about a million backwaters like this one –
That bump on the log was this lovely turtle –
I did my best to get close, but not scare it back into the drink. It stayed sunning the whole time, luckily. Behind me is an eagle nest that didn’t have any birds in it, but is still used at least according to another kayaker I met later in the day. That will be a cool one to keep an eye on since it is relatively close to the launch site.
As I made my way up river I found lots of things to occupy my attention and my camera lens like this pristine Blue Iris –
And this crazy Painted turtle that climbed way up this fallen Basswood tree (or maybe it was a maple). It had to be 10 feet up and probably 8 feet along the trunk itself, happy as Larry as they say across the pond. I don’t think they are referring to my late kitty, but he was a happy boy and so it fits.
Just a few minutes later I found this guy pulling the same stunt –
It was a little windy, but I managed to get the boat lodged onto some sunken trees to give myself some steadiness which was really important as I needed to use a polarizer to get rid of the glare on their shells. I just love how far turtles will climb when they have a mind to.
So here is where the channel got to be more narrow and the current was noticeably stronger as well. Nothing I couldn’t paddle against, but I felt it. The changing cloud deck was really something and brought a different feeling to my landscapes which usually feature blue skies. For this first one I think I lightly crashed into some branches on the side while I was trying to frame and rotate the polarizer at the same time. Ha! It was funny.
I had already paddled up as far as I had time for and was drifting back down and so that’s why I kind of crashed. No harm done, but oh look at this light –
I thought it might rain, but it never did even with those clouds. Most of my landscape work is done when I’m going back with the current. It’s so relaxing and without having to do any real work, I can concentrate on what’s around me and compose at a leisurely pace. Just gotta get a look at where I’m going – doh!
There are many side channels to choose from as you go upstream, and I got hung up on a sand bank that I couldn’t find a way over in the boat. It was funny since if I’d gone back the way I came, it would be no trouble. But getting out and dragging the boat is absurd and all I can do is laugh at myself. There are also cool things to be found on those sandbanks. In the past I’ve photographed butterflies and tiger beetles with the occasional dragonfly, but on this day it was a snail –
Until I got the photo into Lightroom I didn’t notice the color of the sand just below it and thought something was wrong with my camera, but no – it’s a slime trail! Using a polarizer cut down on the glare both on the sand and on the shell so the color difference was really noticeable and I love how odd it looks.
Speaking of odd looks, check out this side-eye –
She and her babies were pretty chill for ducks and stayed mostly out in the open while I floated by them in the kayak. There was nowhere to park the boat, so this is the best I could do. Check out the babies in the grass behind mom. She had a whole flotilla of them out there!
Am planning to head back to this part of the river, picking up where I left off last time which is further up and where the river gets narrow and windy. I didn’t see any rapids or rock gardens on Google maps, just a few areas that look like the sand back where I had to get up and drag the boat across, so if I can’t get over those, I’ll just float back to the launch.
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