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.
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Expedition Blog Brown's Bay
Expedition Blog Brown's Bay
Brown's Bay
Monday, 09 July 2012 16:27
We woke up to a gorgeous morning, and reluctantly left our wonderful hosts Andy and Stephanie and the glampground behind us. We paddled to Campbell's Bay for a delicious lunch of Poutine at The Junction which came highly recommended by Andy and Stephanie. We agree with them, the combination of fries, cheese curds, and gravy is delicious! After lunch, we paddled a few more miles to the next dam in our path. There is no posted portage route around the dam, and we asked everyone we met how we should portage aground it. Unfortunately, no one knew the answer. Eventually we found out that the only feasible way to portage around was by car. We paddled to the Horizon X Rafting Company just above the dam. Martin Bertrand, the owner, very graciously put our kayaks on his trailer and drove us around the dam. Horizon X is a really cool company with awesome facilities that does rafting and kayaking. If you are ever looking to have some fun on the Ottawa River, definitely check out www.horizonx.ca. We had another dam to portage around, and then we set up camp just a couple miles below it after another great day of paddling. We saw about a dozen cows today, and also a deer, a blue heron, a small mouth bass that we caught, a kingfisher, two Ospreys, a Turkey Vulture, and quite a few dragonflies. We paddled about 22 miles in 10 hours.
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