Six Midwesterners recently began a 5,200-mile canoe journey through 10 states with a little help from an old friend in Des Allemands.
The journey, dubbed “Rediscover North America,” will take Adam Trigg, Winchell Delano, Jarrad Moore, Daniel Flynn, John Keaveny and Luke Kimmes from southern Louisiana to the Bathurst Inlet in northern Canada.
Members of the crew have extensive backgrounds adventuring across vast hunting land and rivers of the north. Delano was a member of the Tran-Territorial Expedition, a half-year-long canoe trip that traversed Canada from the east to the west for more than 2,600 miles. The brainchild of the expedition, Trigg, is a mountain climber and led canoe expeditions throughout Canada from 2005 to 2009.
Most of the crew work for a wilderness therapy program called “Second Nature.”
Trigg said the idea was based on a friend’s trip from the northern border of Minnesota to the Arctic Ocean.
“We were on a flight home to go deer hunting and we just thought, ‘let’s go up the Mississippi River–that’ll make it different.’ That’ll make it a little different than most people have ever done,” Trigg said. “It was kind of a joke, but after looking into it we thought that it was possible.”
The crew arrived the Saturday after Christmas and stayed with local fisherman Tom “Tommy” Candies in Des Allemands.
Candies had led Delano’s parents on an alligator hunt roughly a decade ago, but the three had kept in contact throughout the years.
“When he found out what we were doing he wanted to help,” Delano said. “He’s done more than that…we just went to our first crawfish boil.”
Candies can only imagine how difficult a trip of this magnitude will be for the six outdoorsmen, especially since they will be traveling upriver.
“I have friends that told them, ‘Man, you should’ve started from the top and come down,’” laughed Candies.
The crew said it has found people throughout the area willing to help plan their trip. One of Candies’ friends owns a home on the shore of the Atchafalaya River and offered to put the crew up for the night. Other residents, they said, have passed along advice for travelling on the unique waterways of southern Louisiana.
“Coming into this we were a little worried about gators–being from Minnesota we don’t know much about that,” Trigg said. “Learning that they’re pretty docile this time of year has been great news for us.”
The journey will take the six friends up the Mississippi River until it reaches the confluence of the Minnesota River. The crew expects to reach New Ulm, Minn. in time for Keaveny to celebrate his 31st birthday.
“We all grew up right next to the Mississippi. We thought it would be cool to go right through our hometowns,” Trigg said.
From the Minnesota River, the crew will head west and slowly north until reaching the Red River, which will take them across the border to Canada. Once in Canada the crew will take a series of rivers, including the Saskatchewan, Churchill, Fon Du Lac and Yellowknife. The Hood River will shepherd them to the Bathurst Inlet, and the crew’s final destination in the Arctic Ocean, sometime in late July or early August.
But early changes have already been made to the route after getting input from locals. The crew originally planned to paddle up the Gulf of Mexico until they reached the Mississippi River. Now, they will traverse the Atchafalaya River until it reaches the Mississippi.
“We figured that out like two months ago,” Delano said. “A year ago we didn’t even put any thought into how to go around.”
In addition to the help they’ve received in Des Allemands, the team will rely on the charity of strangers along the route to resupply them and provide places for the group to camp along the shoreline. Resupply will happen on a bi-weekly basis, according to Delano.
“It’s crazy, man. They’re at the age right now where this will probably be their last chance,” Candies said. “They’ll see things that nobody else has seen.”
Candies encourages people to follow the crew’s progress by visiting the website www.rediscoverna.com.
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