When a no-wake restriction is enforced on the Chain O’ Lakes, as it has been with recent high water, power boaters complain bitterly. Canoeists, however, pray for more rain to prevent area rivers from running low or dry and to extend their season. This year the canoeists won.
And for dwellers of the Grand Canyons of the Chicago area, whose great outdoors are the city and suburban parks and forest preserves, there’s a lesser known wilderness experience waiting in Lake County.
The rivers-the Des Plaines and the Fox-often have been the subjects of news reports about pollution, drownings or flooding. But just minutes from the commuter trains, they also provide tranquility and solitude with traffic just out of earshot.
After a day at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, June Huffman, 49, of Zion, a safety technician at the base, heads for one of four canoe launches along the Des Plaines River in Lake County and paddles for a couple of hours.
Sarah Surroz, information manager for the Lake County Forest Preserve District, often does the same.
Instead of jogging at 6 a.m., Hugh Gollogoly, a direct-marketing professional, puts a canoe on the Des Plaines River in his eight-acre back yard in Lincolnshire and paddles a few quiet miles before breakfast.
“It gives me a chance to see some of the wildlife come down to the river’s edge and take a drink,” Gollogoly said.
Partly for the exercise and partly because they view the sport as a way of being at one with nature, millions of people are taking to the water in canoes.
Getting a precise number is difficult, but according to Neil Wiesner-Hanks, executive director of the North American Paddlesports Association, based in the Milwaukee area, a survey in 1991 showed that about 20 million Americans paddled a canoe or kayak somewhere in the country. Earlier surveys strictly for canoeing showed 9 million taking to the water in 1983 and 12 million in 1987, he said.
The surest figure, he explained, is canoe sales, which increase 5 percent yearly. “It’s clearly up,” Wiesner-Hanks said, “and it’s partly because of the green movement. It’s environmentally friendly.”
“There’s something about jumping into a canoe that gives a sense of freedom and adventure,” Surroz said.
“After you’ve been in the office all week, and you’ve been fighting traffic jams, it’s very quiet out there and peaceful. You have the camaraderie of your canoeing partner, so it’s usually a lot of fun,” Surroz said.
When on the river, Surroz, in the shiny red canoe her husband gave her for their recent anniversary, typically sings voyageur songs like an old French fur trapper.
To Gollogoly, Huffman and other members of the Prairie State Canoeists, a club of more than 1,500 Chicago area canoe enthusiasts, singing is the only way to bring music along in a canoe. Bringing along a radio defeats the purpose of communing with nature, they said.
A canoe imposes intimacy. When families are out there in the woods, you have to learn to work together or you won’t make it back to the parking lot.
“Canoeing’s not good for a marriage,” said Dale Lachman, whose stepson Chris Kayser, 5, regularly canoes with his 40ish grandmother, Joan Healy of Lincolnshire.
“(My wife and I) tried it once and it didn’t work. She’d say left, left, left and I would go left, left left, and then she would say no, I meant right, and we would go into a bush. It got to a point where I turned malicious and would purposely steer into a thicket,” said Lachman, a Libertyville-based chiropractor who gave up canoeing with his wife.
But Ann Burke, 40, of Lake Forest and her husband, Frank, 42, disagreed with that assessment. Recently they rented a canoe for the first time for a couple of hours, and they and their five children took turns trying it out. They had so much fun that a week later they launched their new canoe, Frank’s Father’s Day gift from his family.
“It’s kind of a new experience for me,” said 9-year-old Dan Burke. “I was afraid it was going to tip over, but it was fine. Now I like it a lot.”
His brother, Mike, 11, explained how to right a canoe when it tips.
“You push it back up on its side and lean it over. Then you just get in the canoe and keep paddling.”
If only it were that easy.
Jim Kazimour, part owner of the concession stand where visitors at the Chain O’ Lakes State Park rent canoes, said that when a canoe tips, it will float, “but you won’t be able to climb back in it. You need to get under the canoe, lift it straight out of the water upside down, and then get to a place where you can hold the canoe stable. It’s very hard to get in a canoe from the water. As soon as you start to climb over the side, it’s going to tip again. It’s not like a rowboat.”
High water on rivers in Lake County poses no threat to canoes, said Kazimour, an avid fisherman and canoeist. However, flooding rivers in other areas could be dangerous because of faster currents.
The Fox River, he said, is no more than 6 feet at the deepest point and has a little more current after heavy rains, “but it’s by no means whitewater,” he said. Unlike areas of the Fox near Carpentersville and Algonquin, the sites of recent drownings, there are no dams along the Fox River in Lake County. At the most, the current gets to 5 m.p.h., Kazimour said.
Paddling under an evening sky turning from gold to blue to lavender or red after a long day of stress becomes a way to restore pleasure to basic activities-eating, sleeping, swimming, moving parts of your body in new ways.
With songbirds soothingly warbling in the background, Huffman said after a recent jaunt down the Des Plaines, “When you’re sitting in the middle of the lake, or if you’re paddling down a slow-moving stream, it just makes you feel good.”
Taking the family along is important, she said.
“It’s good for a kid to be active like that rather than sitting around watching TV or going to the movies or the mall. It teaches them self-confidence, because when they’re put in a boat by themselves, they are in control of themselves, and it builds self-confidence,” she said.
Children learn other things too-things not directly related to canoeing.
After Healy took her grandson on an annual cleanup of the Des Plaines River sponsored by Prairie State Canoeists, Chris began picking up litter everywhere and depositing it in waste cans.
“We clean up the river and on the shore, and we get bags and bags and bags of McDonald’s wrappers, beer cans and all sorts of trash,” Healy said.
“After (Chris) has been on that, when we’re going through parking lots or anywhere there’s trash on the ground, he picks it up and says, `We need to pick this up,’ ” she said.
Though Chris loves to drag his hands in the cool water of the Des Plaines, he is taught not to put them in his mouth afterward.
“All the waterways around here are polluted to one degree or another, but the degree of pollution doesn’t necessarily impact the enjoyment you get out of canoeing,” said Ralph Freese, owner of Chicagoland Canoe Base.
Freese is a complete outfitter and has more than 750 books on canoeing as well as a library full of instructional videotapes for sale. A member of the Cook County Clean Streams Committee, a watchdog group sponsored by the Cook County Forest Preserve District, he said the rivers are less polluted now than in the 1930s and ’40s.
(For details on pollutants in the rivers in Lake County, call the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s water pollution department at 708-531-5900.)
If you’re wondering what kind of people canoe, mostly they are young couples with small children or couples whose children are grown, canoeing proponents say. But the most impressive thing about canoeists is they seem happy. Not smile-button happy but relaxed and good-humored. Robust, like the pioneers who carried 180-pound loads across portage trails, slept in wet clothes, under soggy blankets, and shivered to keep warm.
Offshore, a canoe outfitter at the River Tree Court shopping center at Milwaukee Avenue and Illinois Highway 60, is the only place in Lake County to carry a full line of canoeing equipment.
Canoe basics include paddles, life jackets, nylon rope for mooring to a tree, a yoke for portaging the canoe and duct tape to fix everything from damaged canoes to tents when camping. Duct tape is known as the canoeist’s gray badge of courage.
Located 100 yards from the Des Plaines River canoe launch, Offshore charges $35 per day for each canoe rental, complete with paddles and life preservers. A “day” in Offshore’s book is 36 hours, allowing renters to pick up a canoe at noon Friday and enjoy it until 5 p.m. Saturday. Owner Fritz Hanselman will also provide rigging for carrying the canoe on a car roof but will not pick up renters downstream.
Weekend rates are $60 if the canoe is picked up Friday afternoon and returned by noon Monday. For a three-day holiday weekend, the charge is $75. To rent a canoe for a 10-day extended trip is $95.
Buying a used canoe can be cheaper if you patiently watch the classified ads. Offshore’s prices range from $400 to $4,000 for new canoes, and paddles range from $10 to $150. The difference is whether the items are for recreational use or racing.
Interest in canoeing is growing in Lake County, Hanselman said, but he added that the rentals are not a big part of his business. Usually novices rent, he said. Consequently, he offers classes and seminars in canoeing for no charge to help people understand the skills they need and the safety requirements.
Kazimour, a sergeant with the Illinois State Police, and his partner in the Chain O’ Lakes concession, Linda Weiler, a self-employed flooring contractor, began renting canoes to patrons at the state park three years ago because no one else offered them for rent on the Fox River, said Kazimour’s wife, Liz.
For the same reason, they offer float trips along the Fox from one end of the state park to the other, she said. A float trip means canoeists put in upstream and take out downstream with shuttle service provided.
At the state park, everything necessary for a well-rounded urban wilderness experience is available for rent, including a tent and camping gear. Canoes and rowboats rent for $5 for two hours or less; $8 for four hours or less; and $12 for more than four hours. Life preservers rent for $1 extra and are mandatory, along with a $10 deposit.
When there is a no-wake rule in effect on the Fox because of high water, the float trip is an ideal way for couples or groups to enjoy three or four hours winding down the river’s scenic path, stopping, perhaps, to picnic, fish or just relax snuggled in one of the river’s many coves. There, undisturbed by the chug or constant hum of a motor, the only sounds are of sandpiper and kingfishers, herons, bass jumping and the cadence of a paddle dipped in and out of the water.
Down Illinois Highway 173 from the state park is Van Patton Woods, just east of U.S. Highway 41, north of Wadsworth. There a canoeist may rent equipment to try his skills on Sterling Lake.
New this season, canoe rentals were added to the lake by Chandler’s Boat and Bait Inc. Phillip Calandra, owner of Chandler’s, keeps rates competitive at $6 per canoe or rowboat for two hours, $10 for four hours and $14 for the whole day. Life preservers are mandatory and rent for $1 each.
It takes about an hour and a half to cross Sterling Lake’s 80 acres and come back, he said. Like at the Chain O’ Lakes State Park, canoes and other items are rented only for use in the park.
The Des Plaines River is the preferred choice among canoeists seeking solitude, because it is sparsely traveled, and 85 percent of the river in Lake County is surrounded by forest preserve. After a long day at work, hard-core canoeists consider the river crowded when one other person is spotted paddling along.
“I try to meet very few people on the river,” Surroz said. “It’s a time for me to get out and away from people.”
But if your ideal outdoor adventure entails a few hours at a sidewalk cafe, a compromise awaits at the intersection of the Fox River and Grass Lake in the Chain O’ Lakes. Blarney’s Island, a restaurant/bar on an oversized raft, intrudes upon the wilderness experience by blaring John Cougar Mellencamp songs and such over loudspeakers.
“It’s terrible,” said Ursula Kaminski of Highland Park.
“You come here to be away from all that. It spoils the experience,” she said.
To learn the water level of Lake County rivers before planning a day canoeing the Des Plaines or the Fox, call the forest preserve district Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 708-367-6640. Despite the popularity of canoeing, reservations to rent the boats are rarely necessary in Lake County.
