Kruger to the Mississippi River:
The final leg of the mighty Zumbro, this trip will appeal only to purists and aspiring river-adopters. But truth be told it’s got plenty of grit and heart to it, redounding the paddler with a sense of true adventure. On the downside, you’re never far from roads or row-crops, the topography largely subsides midway, there’s a slow, wide, shallow section where the river has been artificially channelized, and then there’s the business (re: busyness) of being on and taking out from the Mississippi River.
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: August 18, 2024
Skill Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Class Difficulty: Riffles
Gradient:
≈ 2.5′ per mile
Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Zumbro Falls: ht/ft: 6.5 | cfs: n/a
Recommended Levels:
We recommend this level, although the river gets really shallow after the Highway 61 bridge, where it’s wide and straight. Using this map for reference, 7-9′ is ideal.
Put-In:
Kruger access, off Highway 81, Kruger, Minnesota
GPS: 44.3372, -92.07725
Take-Out:
West Newton Public Boat Launch, off 622nd Street, Mississippi River
GPS: 44.28408, -91.92677
Time: Put in at 9:00a. Out at 12:00p.
Total Time: 3h
Miles Paddled: 12
Wildlife:
Bald eagles, great blue herons, egrets, trumpeter swans, pelicans, songbirds, and soft shell turtles.
Shuttle Information:
10.6 miles by four wheels or two – and totally safe for the latter, because, well, it’s Minnesota!
Background:
As someone with more than a little skin in the guidebook game, I am as interested in what’s included as what’s left out. This final segment of the Zumbro is not even mentioned in the otherwise indispensable Paddling Southern Minnesota. Similarly, the word is none but mum on the final miles of either the Maquoketa or Turkey Rivers in Paddling Iowa. And before we get too smug here at home, let me be a Debbie Downer and disclaim that the final miles of the Black and Grant Rivers might as well not exist according to Paddling Southern Wisconsin.
It’s a revealing omission (so to speak) – the very beginning and end of rivers in guidebooks. To be sure, most rivers are not paddled near their headwaters on account of being too shallow or narrow to allow for feasible passage. In this sense, a popular river is not unlike a celebrity: no one really cares what they were like as a child or even a teenager; it’s when they make their mark (usually in their 20s or 30s) that make us fans and clamoring for more. To take the metaphor to its disconsolate conclusion, more often than not we forget to care about rivers or celebrities as they approach their end. It is presumed (and not necessarily wrongly) that their better moments are behind. And because we’re easily distracted by and attracted to the new and pretty, we usually move on and crush on someone/somewhere else.
Besides, some rivers’ origins are just too ambiguous to locate. Like an aspiring actor first cast as part of a crowd in the background of a scene or getting a couple commercial spots selling breath mints or umbrellas, they don’t typically get on anybody’s radar until a breakout role or some fluke of luck and timing. But that’s not their traceable beginning; it’s simply a point when and where they got noticed for the first time, and, eventually, something others returned to. You might call it a watershed moment…
Rivers are like this as well. It could be a matter of when two forks or branches come together. It could be on the downstream side of a dam, a lake, or a marsh. Either way, a river’s beginning is often imprecise – and that’s OK. After all, we’re not Henry Schoolcraft tracking down the origin of the Mississippi River (which, while yes, it’s Lake Itasca, of course; but what about the streams that feed Lake Itasca – are any of those the ur-Mississippi?).
Our beloved Zumbro is said to “begin” where the South Fork and North Fork merge, but that’s just the imprimatur of map makers; for all practical purposes, they’re two separate streams at this junction. Coming from Rochester and collecting the waters of not only the Middle Fork itself, but the North and South Branches of the Middle Fork, the South Fork is three times the size of the North Fork where the latter comes into the former. So where does the Zumbro begin? Beats me, but I can tell you where it ends, because that’s where I paddled on this trip.
But that still doesn’t address why the mouths of so many rivers are not mentioned in paddling guidebooks.
Take the Grant River in southwestern Wisconsin. The final leg is assuredly less dramatic than its two popular trips upstream, which are knockouts. But that last segment is still a hundred times prettier and more interesting than paddling the sluggish Crawfish River or boring Bark River in their final miles, both of which made the publisher’s cut. But life is divisive enough without rivers ebbing through the culture wars.
Honestly, I think the consensus is that a river must have “peaked” well before it reaches its languished mouth. And to be fair, that’s sometimes true. But what about that valedictory wave before leaving the stage? And what about channeling one’s inner Huck Finn?
Perhaps it has something to do with the Mississippi River itself. For all the romantic lore of barges and freight moving such fungible commodities the likes of grain, coal, and catch-all cargo up- and downstream from St. Paul to the City of Saints, what I encounter on the big river is little more than an enormous playground for motorboats and jet-skis. Granted, most of those combustion engines stay in their “lane” and don’t/can’t zip or putter up the emetic mouths of tributary streams, but still.
Why? What else explains the exclusion?
I for one love a good confluence – and what’s better than joining teams with the most iconic river in all of North America? That’s what brought me here and why I wanted to do this trip. Also, I love dunes! And thanks to some wild times during the last Ice Age, enormous sand terraces would develop due to deposits from the Zumbro and nearby Chippewa Rivers that would accumulate at their deltas and then get redistributed by fierce glacial winds (called “katabatic” for those looking to score next Trivia Nite). Comprising 700 acres, the Kellogg-Weaver Dunes SNA is a unique and really cool area well worth poking around. Mostly located south of this trip’s take-out, there is a small but noteworthy relict right off the parking lot at the boat landing.
Overview:
The dedicated access at the Kruger landing is excellent: signage, plenty of parking, and easy treading to the water itself. This is where I took out last year, and it was a delight to return. But what a difference in…well, so many things! Now, it was sunny and hot in the mid-80s, when last year it was gloomy and overcast in the low 50s. For a landscape that is generally unfamiliar to me (being three hours away in another state and all), the overall feel in mid-August compared to early November was night and day: the trees that were either “stickly” thin or whose broad leaves looked like rusty farm antiques weathering the elements now were flush and lush with healthy green drapery; and the long pants, flannel shirt, knit cap, and rubber boots now saw to sandals, shorts, short sleeves, and a wide-brim sun hat. Since this stretch of the river has so much sand, a summertime sweaty vibe felt good on my skin.
Plus a cold can of Pina Colada tastes much better when it complements the scent of sun screen.
Another interesting distinction? Paddling east at 9 am. That’s gotta be a first. Living in Wisconsin and typically plying its waters in the afternoon, you get accustomed to paddling south or west and having the sun in your eyes at times. But in the Blufflands of Minnesota, nearly all the rivers flow north and east. Great to have the wind at your back, but a little blinding so early in the morning.
The river here is rather wide – 150′. That’s the main reason why it’s prone to being shallow, even though all that water from Zumbrota, Pine Island, Mantorville, and Rochester has come a long way to come here (not to mention the many smaller streams along the way). At a gauge reading of 6.5, the volume was plentiful and still had a peppy current. Last year, at 5.5, it looked touch and go (or touch and stop).
From Kruger to Highway 61 are seven wonderful miles of kinky meandering past a kingdom of sand with a wooly bluff on river-left. Even though there’s a prominent county road nearby, it never took away from the river reverie. While the road runs more or less parallel to the river, it’s at the base of that big bluff. In other words, there ain’t much development on the left for these seven miles. Similarly, to the right (south), there’s also hardly anything due to the flood-prone landscape and wetlands. In fact, all I saw on the right was one shack and one or two houses on the left – not bad for seven miles!
There are lots of deadfall clusters to steer clear of – after all, these are the calling cards of the Zumbro. But the river is so wide as to make navigating around and past these impediments pretty easy.
Saunter and soak up the experience here, as there is a relatively primitive feeling to these first seven miles (after which the paddling will be quite different). There are plenty of occasions when the river moseys well away from the road, leaving you nothing but sandbars, wildlife, and backdrop bluffs to dominate your world.
But all things must pass. Around the time you see the water tower for Kellogg, you’ll begin to hear the din of Highway 61. And then a wide swooping loop leads you to it. Prior to the bridge is a feeder stream and past it are some houses atop the steep banks. Actual wing dams have been constructed on river-right in between the highway bridge and the forthcoming railroad bridge. (To my delightful surprise, an Amtrak train passed me – actual passenger rail! Where I grew up in New Jersey we had two separate Amtrak stations in town, one of which was only a mile away. I’ll not mount the high horse of light rail and Scott Walker, but I do have an unbridled nostalgia for trains moving people, not just petroleum products.)
Past the railroad bridge, on the left, is a primitive but viable access; it’s the last place to get out until the Mississippi. And you might want to, unless, like me, you really wanted to paddle all of the Zumbro and get a taste of the Mississippi. Because the next three miles are painfully mundane.
For two miles the river is an engineer’s dream and poet’s demise – artificially channelized for agriculture, the Zumbro here feels like a caged animal in the lamest circus on earth. It’s well over 300’ wide (and consequently pretty darn shallow), arrow-straight, and surrounded by row crops and hay bales. The wildlife remains wonderful since this is a virtual no-man’s-land in between the highway and the Mississippi, but the paddling is poignantly dull.
One cool thing I encourage is to take a look at this section of the river set to satellite map. If you zoom in some, you’ll actually see the wave pattern of the river’s original course as defined by sand and sediment deposits. So, while the river is straightjacketed through canal-like banks, below the surface it’s still wandering and meandering. In other words, authorities can impose a contrived behavior on something natural and wild, altering its comportment, but it can’t change its inner nature. Conservative policy makers and religious leaders might learn a thing or two from a channelized river… Just saying.
The Zumbro makes an abrupt bend to the right (southeast) where it will continue like a cog, straight and stripped of its charisma, for another mile. But after you pass a windbreak row of trees and a farm on the right, the channelization ends and the river reverts to its kinky self for its final mile-and-half. Here, you’ll see glimpses of Wisconsin in the backdrop, past a tall chimney stack. Wild woods and sandy beaches surround the river here in a beautiful setting. If you’re in any doubt of how to find the Mississippi, just follow the flow. The Zumbro will braid here and there, but it should be obvious where the main channel goes. Before the mouth at the Mississippi, you’ll pass three sets of tall power lines that are part of the ginormous Dairyland Power Cooperative on the Wisconsin side, in Alma (presaged earlier by the chimney stack). Mercifully, this will be upstream of the confluence and thus out of sight.
You’re on the Mississippi River for only half a mile. It’s best to cleave close to the right shore (a) to stay well away from anything motorized and (b) to locate the boat landing. You’re in the main channel of the Mississippi here, but just before the boat launch lies a rather large island with a beguiling side channel to its left. If you were to paddle down it you’d miss the boat landing, which in turn would require paddling upstream a full mile to get to the landing. Not fun. The landing itself has a dock and concrete ramp, a ton of parking, and even a port-a-potty. It’s free because it’s federal. Grover Norquist can go drown himself right here, as this is what our taxpayer dollars go towards.
What we liked:
Truth be told, the very first time I laid eyes on the Zumbro River was this segment while driving west on County Road 81, in October 2023. Then, it was impassably shallow, but wide and wonderfully clear, the luscious swaths of endless sand boldly visible even from the road. With wooded bluffs providing the backdrop, I felt a pitter-patter in my chest. So, actually coming here, again, and paddling this stretch felt like a consummation. And what’s not to like about that?
Paddling all the way down the Zumbro to the Mississippi itself was engaging and enjoyable. The big river is the backbone of the Upper Midwest after all, the natural boundary between Minnesota and Wisconsin. Let the naysayers scoff at the sentiment, but there’s a truly sacred sense being on and in an interstate/transition zone. Yes, there’s an eyesore of a power station nearby, and let’s not get into the lobotomized butchery of the lock and dam system. But it’s still the Mississippi River! The mighty Mississip! It is THE North American river, the stuff of folklore and nation building. It is as iconic as the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge, the ancient Appalachians and the incredible Rocky Mountains, the desert southwest and the Pacific Northwest, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes. And it’s in our backyard.
What we didn’t like:
There really isn’t anything I didn’t like per se, if only because I had a reasonable guess of what to expect. I knew that the bluffs would recede, that roads would be near, that the river would get wide and straight and slow and shallow. I didn’t like any of these, but they were known ahead of time.
If anything, all the traffic at the boat launch is my one legit complaint. Sure, it was a sunny Sunday afternoon in August, I get that. But finding this launch in the first place (while driving) was like finding the Bat Tunnel. Located off of a road that is off of a road that doglegs like a kennel and is three miles from the nearest highway, the closest town (Kellogg) boasting a population of 423 people, the parking lot was bonkers and chockablock with pickup trucks unloading or loading. Being the iconoclast in a canoe, I felt like I was “that guy” in everyone else’s way, despite having as much right to be there as anyone else.
Plus the 350′ walk up a steep hill to the parking area and only fence I could lock my gear to during the shuttle – yeah, didn’t really like that. But this was on account of solo paddling. If you’re paddling with another and have two vehicles, this won’t be an issue.
If we did this trip again:
I’m very glad I did this trip – it was a genuinely meaningful experience for me individually. I enjoyed every minute of it and wouldn’t do anything different. But it would be low on my list of Zumbro segments to re-do. Besides, you can’t repeat your first kiss.
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Related Information:
Zumbro River I: County Road 7 to Zumbro Falls
Zumbro River II: Zumbro Falls to Millville
Zumbro River III: Millville to Thielman
Zumbro River IV: Theilman to Kruger
Zumbro River: South Fork: 90th Street to Zumbro River County Park
Article: PostBulletin
Camp: Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood State Forest
Map: Zumbro Bottoms
Outfitter: Zumbro River Ratz
Outfitter: Zumbro Valley Canoe Rental
Overview: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Wikipedia: Zumbro River
Photo Gallery:
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