“Throwing water balloons at Naples canoe race could result in charges.”

The headline piqued our curiosity. The three paragraph Naples Daily News story that followed, HERE, warned that if injuries occurred at this Saturday’s Great Dock Canoe Race as a result of a thrown water balloon, criminal charges could be filed.

The story left, for us anyway, more questions than answers.

Water balloons? Canoe racers? Concern enough for police vigilance? An item in the newspaper? Ciminal charges? Just what kind of aqueous mayhem is happening along Florida’s “Paradise Coast?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Listening Point, the lake-shore property near Ely, Minnesota owned by nature writer and paddler Sigurd Olson, has just been added to the National Register of Historic Places, according to THIS news story.

The rugged 30-acre property on Burntside Lake is currently owned by the Listening Point Foundation.

Olson, who is well-known to paddlers and nature lovers for his books The Singing Wilderness, Listening Point, and The Lonely Land worked as a canoe-guide in what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park. With a group that referred to itself as The Voyageurs, and which included renowned Canadian wilderness paddler Eric Morse, Olson traveled on the Churchill River in Saskatchewan, the Hayes River in Manitoba, and the Camsell and Great Bear Rivers in the Northwest Territories, among others.

A favorite Olson canoe-quote of ours is:

“The charm of a canoe trip is in the quiet as one drifts along the shores, being part of the rocks and trees and every living thing. At times on quiet waters one does not speak aloud but only in whispers, for then all noise is sacrilege.”

Olson died in 1982 at age 82.

The only prehistoric sea-going canoe ever found in Florida continues to rest in the muck of Weedon Island near St. Petersburg, as it has for a long, long time.

According to THIS Suncoast News story, the buried relic was once a 45-foot-long canoe that allowed the local Native American culture that carved the boat to ply the coastal waters of what is now Florida and trade with adjacent peoples.

The Lakeland Ledger also has THIS  story on the find.

The dugout canoe, which is missing its stern but still measures 39 feet, 11 inches, is the longest ever found in Florida.  It was carved from a single pine tree some 1,100 years ago.

Researchers, who had known about the canoe for seven years, only recently examined, measured, and took radio-carbon dating samples of the find.  They left the vessel buried in place due to the difficultly of preserving such a large relic.

You can find out more about the prehistoric cultures in the St. Petersburg area from the Weedon Island Preserve website, HERE.

It’s been 78 years since Eric Sevareid and Walter Port pushed their 18-foot cruiser canoe off the Mississippi River’s banks in Minneapolis and into the waters that would ultimately take them to Hudson’s Bay.

On the trip, famously recounted in Sevareid’s book Canoeing with the Cree, the newly-minted high school graduates paddled some 2,200 miles from their Minnesota hometown to York Factory.

Sevareid, who was recently honored for his subsequent career as a journalist with a U.S. postage stamp, and Port are still sending young men north.  This week, two recent high school graduates from the Twin Cities area again pointed a canoe for Hudson’s Bay.

Interestingly, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Nick Coleman wrote, HERE,  about Sevareid and his trip last week.  He came back to the subject this week, HERE, when he learned that Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte were pushing off on their Canoeing with the Cree-inspired trip last Monday.

KARE Channel 11 in Minneapolis also ran a segment on Bloomfield and Witte HERE.

Back in 2005, THESE Sevareid/Port acolytes re-traced the historic 1930 trip as well.

“Wanted: Footwear for canoe camping. Must be able to support their partner carrying a heavy pack over rough terrain, must be able to withstand insults from water, oozing mud and slime-covered rocks, must be flexible enough for kneeling canoeists to tuck you under the seat, must be friendly on frosty mornings and dog day afternoons - must be joyful companions during long walks on the beach.”

So begins Canoeing.com contributor Rob Kesselring, no stranger to the romance of the trail and the heartbreaks of sore feet, as he examines footwear options for paddlers in our brand new Gear Guide feature story — Finding Your Sole-Mate.

Kesselring, the author of River Stories and Daughter Father Canoe, surveys footwear option from the basic (moose-hide moccasins and old athletic shoes) to the highest tech (GORE-TEX® and neoprene.)

Perhaps with Kesselring’s help, you’ll find your soul-mate too.

You can read his article HERE.