During stage 1 we will kayak 1,400 miles from Seattle, Washington to Skagway, Alaska. The Pacific Northwest is home to a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial animals. We will be studying whales and other marine mammals, kelp forests, salmon, and many other species.
The Pacific Northwest is home to a variety of large land mammals including Grizzly Bears, and Black Bears. Above and below the surface we are sure to find plenty of things to learn about. Many of these large mammals need large undeveloped spaces to thrive and the roadless sections of British Columbia and Alaska provide the perfect habitat.
From Skagway, Alaska we will hike over the Chilkoot Pass in the footsteps of thousands of gold seekers who struggled across the pass to reach the Klondike. Many of artifacts remain from those early days, and we will follow their path all the way to Dawson City along the mighty Yukon River.
From Bennet Lake on the eastern side of the Chilkoot Pass we will canoe through a chain of lakes that form the headwaters of the Yukon River past White Horse and down the swift flowing Yukon River to Dawson City. 
From Dawson we will hike 100 miles through the mountains to the headwaters of the Blackstone River. The Blackstone flows into the Peel River, which flows in the McKenzie River, which will lead us to the Arctic Ocean. The rivers flowing through these rugged mountains as some of the most pristine wild rivers in North America, with hundreds of miles of flowing waterways between towns or roads.
After over 2,600 miles of paddling and hiking we hope to reach the Arctic Ocean before freeze up. We will spend the month of October,2010 training our dogs, and learning about native life in the Arctic. In November we will head south along the McKenzie River by dog team, crossing 1,800 miles of frozen wilderness. There are many remote native communities along our way and we are sure to learn a lot from the people we encounter.
When the ice melts in the Spring of 2011 we will transition from dogsled to canoe and paddle 2,300 miles along the historic travel and trade route pioneered by Alexander McKenzie, Samuel Hearne, and other Canadian Explorers in the 1700's. We will finish this stage of our journey in the fall of 2011 by completing the 8 1/2 mile Grand Portage which will lead us to the rock shore of Lake Superior.
After spending the winter giving presentations and making final preparations we will begin 4,800 mile kayak journey from Grand Portage, Minnesota to Key West, Florida. The first 2,200 miles will take us through the Great Lakes and out the Saint Lawrence Seaway. 
During the final stage of our journey we will kayak the length of the Atlantic Coast from the Saint Lawrence Seaway to Key West, Florida. We will be following the seasonal whale migration from the Bay of Fundy in Maine to the warm clear waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way we will visit cities large and small, and study a variety of ecosystems and environmental topics. We also plan to take side trips into the cyprus swamps and Everglades National Park looking for Alligators, birds, and other critters.
Expedition Blog
Pacific Northwest
How can we manage our time better? We are tired of staying up all night to finish our update!
Sunday, 29 January 2012 17:07
Amy and I were excited to read your comments, suggestions, and emails about the types of videos you would like us to make. It is clear that students want more videos and information about the dogs. We will do our best to make some fun, and educational videos about the dogs over the next few weeks.
We have had a very busy week. Unfortunately, we have not been able to try all of your Fennel autograph ideas yet. We have tried about half and plan to test the rest of your ideas this week. We will let you know the results of our tests soon. Thanks for all of your great ideas.
Amy and I have a bit of a scheduling problem. During a typical week we are very busy guiding dogsledding trips from Wednesday morning until Sunday afternoon. During that time it is often hard for us to work on our videos and web updates. We usually start working at 7 AM and don’t finish until about 9 PM each day. We publish our weekly Notes from the Trail, Cast YOUR Vote, Dave’s Dilemma, Dog of the Week, and Animal of the Day on Monday. For the past few weeks we have been staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning to finish all of our work before you get to school on Monday.
We are worried that our updates are not as good as they could be because we end up working late into the night to finish them. Do you have any suggestions for ways we could change the updates or manage our time better? We are hoping to find a way to make our updates better and not have to stay up until all hours of the night!
Keep Exploring!
Dave
Student Response Worksheet (Upper)
This is a picture of a sulfide mine. Photo by NASA
Amy and I are worried that the mines could pollute the water near the mines for thousands of years. No one knows exactly how long the mines will operate, but the Polymet Mine would be open for about 20 years. However, when scientists studied the proposed mine they said that it could cause pollution for 2,000 years. Is it worth creating a bunch of jobs that last for 20 years if the mine causes pollution for 2,000 years after the mine closes?
Watershed map by USGS
We need your help figuring out what sort of videos to shoot while we are dogsledding in Minnesota! Please let us know what you would like to learn about – and what sort of videos you would like to see. In the cold our camera battery doesn’t last very long, so we need to plan our video shoots in advance.