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 What can we do to thank the generous people that we meet?
What can we do to thank the generous people that we meet?
Saturday, 10 September 2011 17:47
Thank you for all of your emails and comments with suggestions for how we should solve last week’s dilemmas. Based on your suggestions we have decided to start recording the number of miles that we travel each day and the animals that we encounter. We will share this data with you in each week’s Notes from the Trail. We also appreciate all of your suggestions for how we should get clean drinking water. So far we have done a combination of gathering water from clear streams that run into Lake Winnipeg and stocking up on water in the towns we visit. Edgar and Doreen Bruce have been living on Lake Winnipeg for over 50 years and always drank the lake water without treating it until a few years ago. Now they have a filter that they use to purify the water. Doreen remembers that when she was a kid they used to filter the water through a cloth to strain out the algae.
Throughout our journey we have met dozens of wonderful people who have invited us into their homes, fed us, and helped us in many ways. In fact, in the last week we met some amazing people. In Bloodvein two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers, Francis and Tyler, gave us a tour of town, took us to the store, let us shower and use the Internet, and helped us in a variety of other ways. The next day we paddled to Loon Straits, a town with only 4 full time residents. Edgar. Doreen, Linda, and Richard gave us a place to stay, fed us, and sent us away with a bunch of fresh vegetables from Doreen’s garden. Today, as we paddled we talked a lot about the people we have met and we are wondering what we can do for them in return. People are always so generous and we feel like we never have anything to give them in return. What should we do? How can we thank people?