Canoe Camping on the Kickapoo River-Day One

The canoe was loaded and we were launching from Viola. We were ready for what the Kickapoo River had waiting for us. Taking our friend, Todd, we were spending the next 3 nights camping along one of the windiest rivers.

The river is set deep in a valley that runs southwest from north of Wilton to where it meets the Wisconsin near Wauzeka. Not far before the Wisconsin River meets the Mississippi.

It’s a peaceful and scenic canoe ride full of log jams, down trees, and a couple of small rapids. We knew from our experience on the Kickapoo last year, that we would need a chainsaw. Last year we met an impassable log jam just past Viola and were forced to set up camp where we were instead of continuing down river.

The first day we had to use the chainsaw to cut through three different log damns. We weaved our way through several other log jams and downed trees and hit a snag where we got a little bit of water in the canoe. About 5pm we found a spot on a corner of the river to set up camp. It’s the end of September/beginning of October and we didn’t have as much daylight.