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 The Food We Eat
The Food We Eat
Sunday, 14 October 2012 13:16
This week we are answering a question that came from students. The question is “what do we eat and how do we get our food?” People sometimes assume that we forage for our food. We have been able to gather and catch some of our food along our route, but not a lot. Dave has caught fish and when berries are in season, we gather blueberries, raspberries and cranberries. Really, we eat a lot of the same foods you would at home and we buy most of our food from grocery stores and farmer's markets. We have given ourselves an extra challenge while we travel: we are trying to eat as much locally grown food as possible.
Finding locally grown food in New York City may sound difficult. Even though there are so many buildings, food can be grown in unlikely places. We recently visited a rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn, where all sorts of delicious leafy greens are being grown organically and without soil. Viraj Puri, co-founder and CEO of Gotham Greens showed us how they grow a variety of lettuces and basil hydroponically right in the middle of the city.
Gotham Greens is one of many farms we have visited along our route. Before this stage of the North American Odyssey began, we visited Breslin Farms in Illinois, near the Wilderness Classroom headquarters. Molly Breslin provided us with organically grown beans, flour, garlic, basil and other herbs. When we visited Vermont, we participated in a farm tour with Vermont Farm Tours. Chris Howell took us to several farms. We sampled goat's milk, cow's milk and several different kinds of cheese. We picked our own blueberries. We even learned how to make mozzarella cheese at Bread and Butter Farm. Chris also did the grocery shopping for our resupply, making sure that most of our food for the next two weeks came from local sources.
By now, you are probably wondering what our meals are like. A typical breakfast is oatmeal or granola with powdered milk. If we are taking the day off from paddling, we break out the flour and make pancakes or bannock with real maple syrup (when it is available). While we are paddling we carry an energy bar or two in our pockets, to snack on when we get hungry. The bars we like best are MacroBars, Clif Bars and LaraBars. Lunch is usually peanut butter and jelly or cheese or sausage on tortillas. We usually eat trail mix. Since apples have been in season lately, we often will eat apples with lunch too. Dinner is usually spaghetti or rice and beans. We try to included some fresh vegetables when we can.
We cook on a small, portable stove. The fuel that we use is white gas. We just have one pot and a small frying pan with us, so our cooking is pretty basic. We eat out of bowls and just use spoons. We are traveling light and don't have the luxury of many cooking utensils or appliances. We carry about four days worth of food with us, because we pass by towns so frequently now. Earlier in the North American Odyssey, we had a few parts of the route where we had to carry a month's worth of food! Our food planning and packing is much easier now and we can splurge on fresh fruits and vegetables.
Further Exploration
http://breadandbutterfarm.org/
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