Onion River Exploration Project: Hidey Hole at Mauthe

A very weedy Milwaukee River

Day 1 (7/25/19)

We finally had a chance to get out kayaking today. It has been a busy summer but that is no excuse. The weather was perfect. When we first got to Mauthe Lake were greeted by a pair of cranes. We stop and photographed them for awhile before heading on in to the park. As we suspected the water was still high and we had to drive through water to get to the boat launch. This was what we hoped for because our main goal was to go to our little hidey hole which is only accessible with high water. In spite of the high water the river was very weedy. In the ten years that we have been going there I have never seen it this bad. I have some real concerns about the fertilizer washing into the river. It seemed to keep others out of the river however so we had it all to ourselves. We did manage to get to our hidey hole although it was quite different from the last time we were there two years ago. It also had much more growth and wasn’t as clear. You could still see the boiling springs on the bottom nevertheless which have always enthralled us. After coming back out into the river we headed upstream a bit farther but soon found it to weedy to continue. It is kind of sad because we used to be able to get quite a bit further up stream. Perhaps later this fall we may be able to check it out. It was probably far enough for our first trip anyway so we headed back down the river. When we got back to the lake we weren’t surprised to find that the wind had changed and that it was once again in our face just as it had been on the way out.