It’s not hard to fall in love with Wisconsin’s most crooked river. The Kickapoo winds for 126 miles through a deep valley cut into our state’s majestic Driftless Area, eventually emptying into the Wisconsin River.
“One who goes here, then there,” the English translation of the river’s Algonquian name, is an accurate reflection, and that meandering quality is part of what attracts paddlers.
“It’s just fun,” says Amanda Rohde, an avid kayaker and canoeist. “You can have a section where it’s suddenly very shallow, [then] all of a sudden, it’ll get real deep, with very clean, sharp bluffs right next to you. Sometimes you can only see 50 feet around you in any direction, so you have this kind of cozy, winding little nook on the water.”
