Dwight Peck's personal website

Summer 2025

A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us



You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

A study tour of Kakagon/Bad River Sloughs & the Penokee Hills

with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, 24-25 July 2025

Choupette and the Better Part of Valor

Casual Melvin

Cats and boredom

24 July 2025: We're on our way north to meet up with the Wisconsin Wetlands team and other (like us) participants.

Hurley, a town of ca. 1,600 at the top of US 51, came of age in the lumber and iron mining booms of the 1880s, and during the Prohibition era it was known as 'the most infamous town in Wisconsin' (Wikipedia). In 1931, 42 saloons were padlocked, with 60 arrests.'Gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, and dope [were] about the chief occupations of the place'.

But we had very good sandwiches in Sharon's Coffee Company.

At Hurley we turn west along US 2 towards Ashland on Lake Superior, passing the Bad River Lodge & Casino in New Odanah, and arrive at . . .

. . . the Hotel Chequamegon in Ashland to join our party. (Though that's a photo from an earlier visit here, on a similar event with the Wetlands Association in 2014.)

Looking from our upstairs room, that's the Chequamegon Bay leading out to Lake Superior and the Apostle Islands.

We're meeting the gang downstairs for a short trip back along US Rte 2 to . . .

. . . the Mashkiiziibii (Bad River) Natural Resources Department's fish hatchery.

Something like 15 of us, apparently, including three staff members from the Wetlands Association. We've been on four or five similar Association study tours in past years, all involving Ramsar Sites in Wisconsin that the Association had succeeded in getting designated by the United States.

It's time for introductions.

The smiling lady making the welcoming remarks is Naomi Tillison, Director of the Bad River Band's DNR. Tracy Hames, speaking, is Executive Director of the Association, and in the foreground is Katie Beilfuss, the Association's Outreach Programs Director.

(We first met Katie in 2012 when she came to Bucharest to receive the Wisconsin Wetlands Association's award from the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance in the Education category.)

Off we go, in three boats driven by members of the DNR.

-- Mind your head.

We're on the Kakagon River coming down from the Penokee Hills watershed and emptying into the Kakagon Sloughs (pron. in USA 'slews', a swamp or marsh), all part of the reservation of the Bad River Band of the Chippewa or Ojibwe nation.

Our guide in our boat is Larry Plucinski, a long-time member of the heritage department of the Bad River Band's administration.

The main theme of the tour is the harvesting of wild rice, for which this site has the largest expanse in the Great Lakes region.

Much of the techniques of wild ricing and the seasonal rhythms of its harvesting, etc., are being explained to us here, and we summarized a lot of that, with further background on the tribe and this wetland site, at the time of our first venture here in 2014 and needn't repeat it.

Tracy Hames' boat in the lead

A three-boat rendezvous mid-river for . . .

. . . some of the harvesting and conservation basics, and then . . .

. . . continuing out into the sloughs.

There's a good deal of sad discussion of the Canadian wildfire smoke that is concealing the Penokee Hills up at the head of this watershed.

When we were here last, a predatory mining company was trying to get licenses for deep open pit mines for low-grade taconite iron with vast quantities of slag waste that would almost certainly have destroyed all of these downstream water resources within the reservation.

Despite the mining company's use of unlicensed armed SWAT teams stationed in the mountains to keep out both protestors and the scientists tasked with assessing the potential damages, and a good deal of covert cooperation from many of the government and legislative authorities*, eventually the company just gave up the whole idea as never worth the trouble in the first place.

(* This was the grim era of Scott Walker and his friends.)

Turning back to base now

A debriefing back at the hatchery, with . . .

. . . the whole gang (photo by Erin O'Brien of the Association).

We're off back to the hotel in Ashland now, and meeting for a group dinner in the hotel's restaurant.

And the next morning, we're en route south some 25 miles (40 kms) to . . .

. . . the small town of Mellen (pop. ca.700), near the Penokee Hills and the headwaters of the Bad River.

Some 20 or 30 minutes up dirt lumber roads, working back and forth via less and less viable tracks (and potholes) to somewhere near the top of the Penokee ridge. No signs anywhere, but Tracy and especially Bill Heart (whom we met on our first visit in 2024, and who drove up with us today to help find our best starting place) have been roaming about here for years.

Tracy is briefing the group on the world of beaver dams here -- how and why they make their dams, how they build their lodges, how they create new dams in a downhill chain when required.

(Tracy's got hipboots on; I've got old sneakers; Kristin's wearing her Teva sandals.)

Our colleagues are carrying a few impressive professional-level cameras and a great lot of iPhones (or maybe a few Androids, too).

The first of our huge beaver lakes -- we're standing just below the dam. This looks rather like the main one we saw in our first visit.

Bushwhacking onward . . . through a trackless wilderness.

It's an enormous beaver pond, and old enough . . .

. . . to have pretty well denuded a good piece of the forest. The beavers' lodge can be seen directly behind the grassy bit just right of centre.

Moving along towards the next dam to be scrutinized, and . . .

. . . we're now below that pond; in fact, that's the dam.

Amateur and professional botanists identifying their favorites

Very briefly, we've encountered the vestiges of a trail, which leads us . . .

. . . below another dam, up to the right.

There it is.

We let Tracy resume the lead -- it's assumed that he's the only one who can get us out of here.

Katie is taking up the rear of our single file march through the pathless vegetation.

It's time to wobble down the slope to below the dam.

The construction of the dam is at least partially visible here, boughs of wood stacked up together, probably scutched up with mud.

Down we go

It's swampish and very muddy in places just below and, in fact, our leader plooped significantly in. Happily, he's the one with the hipboots on, and we all get to sneak round the worst of it.

Somewhat easier walking along here, and . . .

. . . what was probably once a path along this way.

Leading to still another beaver pond, with . . .

. . . Kristin and Tracy already checking it out.

Onward past the dam

We're sending the hipboots on ahead.

That looks like the lodge out in the middle, apparently overgrown.

Tracy's dream was to get a group picture of all of us strung out along the narrow top of the dam, but . . .

. . . that's going to take some work. (Photo by staff)

But he got half his wish. (Photo by staff)

A long line of perhaps tiring hikers, working its way past the muddy swampy place.

And confident that Tracy can lead us back to the cars again, so that . . .

. . . after bouncing our way back down through the Penokees, we can rejoin our cars in Mellen, some of us can head back to Ashland, and others of us, from downstate, can drive south past Park Falls and over to Woodruff in an hour and a half.

Coming soon: Lake-oriented odds and ends in late July


Feedback and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, . All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 18 August 2025.


The USA

Wisconsin Northwoods,
June-Sep 2024


Wisconsin Northwoods,
June-Sep 2023


Wisconsin Northwoods,
June-Oct 2022


Wisconsin Northwoods,
June-Oct 2021


Wisconsin Northwoods,
June-Oct 2020


Wisconsin Northwoods,
June-Sept 2019


Virginia and Wisconsin, July-Sept 2018


Wisconsin on the lake, July-Sept 2017


Wisconsin on the lake, July-Sept 2016


Wisconsin on the lake, July-Sept 2015


Wisconsin & road trip, July-Sept 2014


Wisconsin & Virginia, July-Sept 2013


Wisconsin on the lake, July-Sept 2012


Wisconsin 'Northwoods', June-Aug. 2011


Wisconsin on the lake, July-August 2010


Wisconsin,
August 2009


Boston and Maine, 2007


Marlowe's wedding, 2006


Olympic National Park, 2004