The Topologist's Blog

The First Thanksgiving Part 3 (re-posted for 2010)

2010-11-25T18:04:00.002-05:00

(This post was originally sent as an email to family and friends in 2008.)

You all remember Squanto from grade school, don't you? He was the English-speaking Indian who helped the Pilgrims by teaching them to put a dead fish in every hill of corn they planted. He and Samoset, another English-speaking Indian, were both at the three-day harvest feast in the fall of 1621 and acted as interpreters so that all the communication between the Pilgrims and Massasoit's tribe didn't have to be confined to sign language.

Samoset was actually the first Indian to help the Pilgrims. In March of 1621 he walked into their compound and asked if they had any beer. He was an Abneki from Maine who had learned some pidgin English from some fishermen (and had learned to like beer). It was Samoset who talked Squanto into coming to Plymouth to help the Pilgrims. Squanto was fluent in English and had been Christianized.

Squanto, whose real name was Tisquantum, was a member of the Patuxet sub-group of the Wampanoag tribe who had been captured in 1605 and taken to England as sort of exotic curiosity to prove that his captors actually had been to the New World. He got back to his native land in 1612 only to be captured again in 1614 for the purpose of being sold into slavery in Spain. He was saved by some religious types who converted him to Christianity (I'm sure he preferred that to slavery in Spain). He was able to get back home again in 1619 only to find that his tribe had been decimated by a plague, probably smallpox. So it was that he was in the neighborhood and able to join up with the Pilgrims in 1621 at Samoset's behest.

I am now going to indulge in some more speculation about what went on during that three-day FirstThanksgiving fest. Winslow said "..whom for three dayes we entertained.." and "...amongst other recreations..." Thus it is plain that there was more going on than eating and sleeping.

How about the Indians playing a demonstration game of Lacrosse? The game was more than fun. It was also important to the Indians for conflict resolution, the training of young warriors and as a religious ritual. Certainly the Pilgrims would have been interested, probably fascinated.

And foot racing, I can imagine white girls vs Indian girls and white boys vs Indian boys. My Mother, who could outrun any of the three of us, said young girls loved to run and race despite long skirts. Maybe Joseph Rogers raced.

And how about the Wampanoag braves demonstrating their archery prowess with their bows and arrows? The Pilgims had probably already "...exercised their Armes..."

And Captain Miles Standish surely put his small troop through some close-order drill to demonstrate their marching and manual-of-arms proficiency.

I can also imagine a race between the Indians in their canoes and the Pilgrims in their long boat. Plymouth was located right on the water.

I can even imagine a wrestling match between two muscular Pilgrim youths. I think I read one time that wrestling was popular in those days. Improbably, one of the Pilgrim boys was named Wrestling Brewster.

Can you visualize ceremonial groups of Indians doing their shuffling tribal dances around campfires? And super-devout Pilgrims hym-singing? And a long-winded Pastor intoning seemingly endless invocations, benedictions and prayers of Thanksgiving? I can.

Well, there's my story of the First Thanksgiving. I hope it adds to yours.

Elaine and I wish you all a happy Pratt-Woodruff Thanksgiving.

The Patriarch

The First Thanksgiving Part 2 (reposted for 2010)

2010-11-24T08:55:00.002-05:00

(This post was originally sent as an email to family and friends in 2008.)

I am trying to visualize what that first Thanksgiving at Plymouth was really like. You all have seen illustrations of immaculately dressed Pilgrim families: men, women and children, sitting around neatly set tables outdoors. So where are the Indians? And it was the Pilgrim custom for men to eat first, served by the women (I don't know where the children and adolescents fit in). Indians normally ate sitting on the ground on skins and just used their hands to eat with, and Indian men and women ate together. Some accounts have the Indians joining the Pilgrims at the tables. Did the squaws sit with the braves and Pilgrim men while the Pilgrim women still stood behind? Another question, where did the 53 Pilgrims get enough tables to seat 90 Indians? Pilgrims ate three meals a day, their big meal being at mid-day and their breakfast being leftovers. Indians just ate when they were hungry from continually simmering kettles rather than having meals (that is when they had food). And we know the Pilgrims had beer. Did they share with the Indians?

The accounts by Winslow and Bradford that I sent you yesterday are the only primary sources of information on the First Thanksgiving so everything else that has ever been written about that three-day harvest celebration is second-hand speculation at best. Thus I feel free to make up my own account (with the help of a lot of Googling) and share it with you.

My guess is that it was more like a three-day tailgate party than a sit-down banquet. I would also like to think the Wampanoag women and children were included ( Winslow said "...some nintie men..."). Probably it was a sort of long-running buffet interspersed, as Winslow indicated, with "rejoycing'", " Recreations" and discharge of "Armes". Certainly some prayers of thanksgiving.

Massasoit's hunters went out with their bows and arrows and brought down five deer (probably fat does instead of bucks in rut). They had to have been butchered and roasted outdoors. Did that much venison all get devoured in three days? Probably, there were 143 mouths to feed plus the dogs (the Pigrims had a female Mastiff and a small Spriger Spaniel that survived the Mayflower trip. Did the Indians leave their dogs back at the wigwam with no food for three days?)

In addition to venison the Indians would have contributed corn (as meal and cornbread) and beans and turkeys. Lobster, eels, clams and mussels were plentiful as were fish. Winslow indicated that the four men sent "fowling" were very sucessful. The"fowl" would have been migrating waterfowl; ducks, geese, swans and maybe cranes. They were probably shot on the water. The Pilgrims' "fowling pieces" were muzzle loading, funnel shaped matchlock shotguns, not hardly suitable for shooting birds on the fly like in skeet-shooting. Wild turkeys were very plentiful.

Wild food collected by the Pilgims in the fall season would have included grapes, both red and white, plums and rose hips. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries would have been gone by then. I think that the huckleberries would have been gone too. Cranberries would have been avilable, but not for cranberry sauce (they had no sugar). Likewise they had pumpkins but no pumpkin pie (not only no sugar, but also no shortening or wheat flour or ovens). They collected walnuts, butternuts, hickory nuts, acorns and maybe chestnuts. Indians harvested wild onions, wild garlic and watercress to jazz up their diet.

What else did they not have that are part of traditional Thanksgiving menus today? No mashed potatoes. White potatoes were not yet in cultivation anywhere. No yams or sweet potatoes either. Sweet potatoes were rare, thought to be aphrodisiacs, affordable only by the wealthy. No apples or apple sauce. Apples were not native to North America. (Also no ham or bacon. The Pilgrims had no hogs).

So what did they have? They grew corn, onions, garlic, parsnips, collards, carrots, parsley, turnips, spinach, cabbage, pumpkins, squash, beans, sage, thyme and marjoram. Maybe radishes and lettuce. And they had salt and pepper but they didn't put a pepper shaker or mill on the table, using it only for cooking. In Pilgrim houses, all cooking was done in the fireplace.

As for table manners: As I said, the Indians used their fingers. The Pilgrims did not use forks. Their "silverware" consisted of a spoon and a knife. At that early stage they used wooden plates. It is said that they also handled food with a piece of cloth. I can't quite figure out how that went. Did they reach over and pull off a drumstick with the cloth? (I devour drumsticks with my bare hands and then use a piece of cloth to wipe my mouth and fingers).

NEXT: Communication and Recreation

The First Thanksgiving (reposted for 2010)

2010-11-23T10:46:00.001-05:00

(This post was originally sent as an email to family and friends in 2008.)

The traditional "First Thanksgiving" was a three day feast in the early fall of 1621 at Plymouth Plantation involving 53 surviving Pilgrims and about 90 Wampanoag Indians.

Three of our ancestors were there, but unfortunately two were in the graveyard. Pratt ancestor Degory Priest and Woodruff ancestor Thomas Rogers died that first winter. Thomas' son Joseph, then an adolescent teenager, survived and participated. Pratt ancestor Phineas did not arrive until 1622. His famous run through the snow took place in the late fall of 1622. Degory's daughter Mary, who would eventually marry Phineas, was still in Holland.

William Bradford tells of their situation (modern spelling):

"They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached of which this place abounds and when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was a great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports."

PERSONAL NOTE: As I type this I am looking out over my back yard towards the river. The yard is snow covered and there are 17 wild turkeys foraging. One tom is displaying. Two are pecking at an ear of corn hanging by a small brass chain from a maple tree. That ear replaces one that was stripped overnight, presumably by deer. I have seven that regularly visit my yard and meadow.

Edward Winslow describes the feast (17th century spelling):

"our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes. many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie."

NEXT: Menu and table manners

Best laid plans

2010-11-23T10:44:00.000-05:00

Karen posting here: Well, for your news of the Verlen Kruger Memorial you'd best rely on the Memorial website, as Pa did not complete commentaries for the construction (despite my nagging).

However, I ran across emails he sent in 2008 about Thanksgiving, and our family history therein, and thought you might enjoy seeing those.

The next three posts will tell that story.

Verlen Kruger Memorial - May 6, 2010

2010-07-12T21:39:00.001-04:00

Dan Smith sent photos of the work in progress as the memorial was constructed. I've selected a few that represent the steps toward completion of the memorial.

May 6: This photo shows the concrete being poured to make a base for the engraved bricks that surround the statue. A landscape architect designed the compass-in-brick that is a main feature of the plaza. Dan Smith is ramrodded the project. The location is in Portland's Thompson Field which is between Dan's house and the river.

Acknowledgements: Goose Creek Foundations; photos by Dan Smith and Steve Willard.

Verlen Kruger Memorial

2010-07-06T10:01:00.000-04:00

We are going to update the blog with a series of posts to tell the story of the final days of the Verlen Kruger Memorial project. The project climaxed with a dedication ceremony in Portland on Saturday, June 26, 2010, in the presence of Jenny Kruger, Verlen's widow, and her family, along with hundreds of Verlen's friends and admirers. At the ceremony the artist-sculpter unveiled a full-sized bronze statue of Verlen leaning on his paddle and gazing down the Grand.

The craftsmen sign their work

2010-04-23T16:32:00.000-04:00

Mike is looking quite pleased with himself, don't you think?

More on the Old #10 - it will be ready tomorrow

2010-04-23T14:07:00.002-04:00

New look for the bow. The wood burning looks great.

Old #10 in process

2010-04-19T10:58:00.000-04:00

Mike Smith has been documenting his restoration of Old #10. Here are a few to whet your appetite to see the finished product on Saturday. Notice the restoration is being supervised by Verlen himself.

Mike and Mark Racing Old #10!

2010-04-16T19:48:00.003-04:00

This is a post from the Verlen Kruger Memorial website about Old #10.

MIKE & MARK RACING OLD #10
IN THE 10th ANNUAL HUGH HEWARD CHALLENGE
APRIL 24!

As a good story goes, this one got even better by Mike suggesting he and Mark put Old #10 to the test, Mark agreed to team up and a new tradition is born. Although the Hugh is not a race, the plan is to race #10, then begin offering the boat up to other teams during future Hugh's, to challenge previous records set paddling in Old #10. Mike & Mark are both accomplished racers, though never before on the same team, resurrecting Old #10 becomes historical in its own right and an exciting day to be a fan of paddle sports and Verlen Kruger, who said it best, "All things are possible." Thank you Mike & Mark for a great new tradition. And of course, thanks to Jim Woodruff's never ending vision.

2010 Hugh Heward Challenge - not just for racers!

2010-04-16T19:32:00.000-04:00

The Hugh Heward Challenge is an annual paddling event commemorating British fur trader Hugh Heward and seven Frenchmen’s 50 mile sprint in two birch bark canoes down the Grand River on April 24, 1790.

One thing I want to make clear is the Hugh Heward 50 miler, though many racers participate, is a re-enactment of an historic journey, not a race. Anyone can participate, and there are shorter segments to paddle for those who don't want the full 50 miles - a Half-Hugh is about 25 miles, and a Quarter Hugh is about 13 miles.

For full details, visit the Verlen Kruger Memorial website: http://www.verlenkrugermemorial.org/id34.html

Old # 10

2010-04-02T19:32:00.003-04:00

I wrote this for the Verlen Kruger Memorial website. You can read it there, or below:

"Old #10"
by Jim Woodruff

Sherry Schmits has a one-chair barber shop in Delta Mills, located only a couple hundred yards from the Kruger Canoe Base on the Grand River. She says she cut Verlen's hair once in a while. One day she was cutting my hair (she spends more time hunting the hairs than cutting them) and I was talking about my "Following Verlen and Valerie" Email project. Then out-of-the-blue she announced that she owned Verlen's 10th canoe. Well, as you can imagine, that got my attention.

On investigation I learned that she had acquired the canoe from Leon Tillitson, Jenny's next door neighbor, and that there were pictures of it in Phil Peterson's book about Verlen's career, All Things Are Possible. Page 39 is a full page photo of Verlen and Clint Baird paddling a dark colored racing canoe with the number 10 on the bow. On page 285 is a photo of a stack of canoes in Verlen's yard including two #10 canoes, one green and one black. Phil's caption says "Derilect canoes, designed, built and raced by Verlen, still rest at Kruger Base". Sherry's canoe is the black one. I call it "Old #10" for the race number, not the tenth one built by Verlen.

I felt that she had an historic artifact and that it should float again on the Grand River. I volunteered to make it happen and she enthusiastically agreed. She Emailed me photos of the canoe which I showed at the Quiet Water Symposium. Then via Email I pushed the buttons of Dan Smith, Mike Smith, Charlie Parmelee, Mark P (still paddling in Florida) and Stacy Krause.

Shortly I got a response from Mike Smith saying that he had had some "seat time" in that canoe when he and Verlen used it to train on the Grand for the 1991 AuSable Marathon. In short order after a minimum of questions he volunteered to take on the restoration project. You can expect to see "Old #10" at Thompson Field during the Hugh Heward Challenge and the Statue Dedication Ceremony. When you see it on the river depends on Mike's progress (with Scott Smith's help).

According to Stacy Krause, Mike's daughter, Mike and Verlen paddled #10 while training for the AuSable Canoe Marathon. He was pretty animated describing it, "piece of junk training boat." He added, they were both pretty poor and it was all that was available for training at the time, not to mention they didn't even have a racing canoe yet. Training began with #10 in April 1991; not sure at the time whether they would even compete in the AuSable. They took #10 up and down the stretch in front Verlen's house during Mike's lunch breaks while he was employed at GM. They also paddled it in Portland near the Weber Dam practicing wider stretches of river. Mike remembers him and Verlen getting caught in a massive thunder and lightning storm there in May describing it as, "nasty, it was pouring so hard we couldn't see each other, it came up quick and it wasn't pretty." They paddled back to the car in near zero visibility. #10 was the only tandem they practiced in, he doesn't think there was anything printed on the canoe at the time besides Verlen's name and #10, "hard to recall," Mike said. He doesn't know where the #10 canoe came from, and until now had no clue it was still out there. Of course, there was no way to know at the time it would come back into his life, 19 years later and needing a little touch up. They eventually borrowed a racing canoe and competed in the 1991 AuSable Canoe Marathon, finishing in a respectable time thanks to hard work and old #10.

The Topologist in front of his display at the QWS

2010-03-08T19:34:00.002-05:00

This is daughter Karen posting. What a great picture of The Topologist, Jim Woodruff, standing in front of his display. It's like a traveling library of river and canoe lore - only he wrote half the books in it!

Thanks to Project Lakewell for the photo.

Charlie Parmalee is 2010 Verlen Kruger Award winner

2010-03-07T09:18:00.006-05:00

The Topologist with 2010 Verlen Kruger Award winner Charlie Parmalee

The Verlen Kruger Award is given annually to a person who has supported and promoted conservation and paddle sports in Michigan.

I'm proud of my "ulitimate son" Charlie. Prestigious award, well deserved.

Quiet Water Symposium Saturday March 6 at MSU Pavilion

2010-03-05T08:37:00.002-05:00

At last year's Quiet Water Symposium

The Quiet Water Symposium runs from 9 to 6 on Saturday at the MSU Pavilion off Mt Hope Road at the South end of the MSU campus (out in the farms). I will have an exhibit of my stuff. Son Jim will be displaying his new Bell Rob Roy 15 canoe with an exhibit on the history of the Rob Roy (circa 1865) which I have prepared. Erik Vosteen and Kevin Finney will be nearby with their elm bark and whitewood dugout canoes. Signed copies of Kit Lane's "Grand" are being given to thank financial backers of Grand River Expedition 2010. If they have any left they will be selling them at the QWS.

http://www.quietwatersymposium.org/

Following Verlen and Valerie-XIX-Lake Michigan and Lake Huron

2010-02-19T08:29:00.002-05:00

I have had difficulty trying to sort out the various Newsletter entries by Verlen, Valerie, Valerie's brother Jon who constituted the land team, and the Editor in order to follow their route after Marquette. Valerie's is the most helpful.

Valerie: "When we arrived in Au Train, to paddle south through the Upper peninsula, we found the river frozen. The basin was a sheet of ice and the Whitefish was frozen into Little Bay de Noc...With the assistance of Jack McHugh, we portaged the iced-in portion of our route and put our canoes into Little Bay de Noc". I take that to mean they put their canoes on McHugh's truck at the Lake Superior shore at Au Train and rode across the UP to somewhere above Gladstone where they found open water.

Valerie continues: "As we paddled into Lake Michigan on November 15 I wondered if we had made a mistake even considering to continue our expedition. Little Bay de Noc was frozen several hundred feet from shore, making landing impossible...One of the turning points of our journey came when we landed near Stonington. We were paddling into Big Bay de Noc, and, as we had hoped, there was no ice formed on th exposed shore." Next morning the snow stopped and they were able to paddle on to Manistique Harbor. The harbor froze over that night so they had to use Verlen's Sea Wind as an ice-breaker to get out to to Lake Michigan in the morning.

Valerie again: "We did continue - across the Straits of Mackinac, into Lake Huron, down the eastern shore of Lower Michigan, past Rogers City, Alpena, Harrisville and Oscoda before we were stopped again, waiting on weather to make the crossing of Saginaw Bay." Because they had schedule commitments they couldn't wait so they portaged around Saginaw Bay to Harbor Beach. She didn't say how. There they resumed paddling. "At Port Sanilac, we came ashore just at dark. We had paddled 30 miles since dawn and had to break ice from our spray covers to climb onto the public dock..."

They continued south, paddling each day and making presentations each night at towns along the shore including Port Huron and Detroit, where they stayed several days before continuing on to Lake Erie, the Maumee and the portage to the Wabash and points south that I have already covered.

I am now going to go back to Marquette and mount my virtual helicopter and follow their path to Detroit where I started out following them in the first message in this series. This will be the last as I don't intend to follow them to Florida, the Caribbean or South America. If someone else would take on that chore I would be most pleased.

This has been an effort in memory of Verlen and in support of Valerie in her fight for life.

Following Verlen and Valerie-XVIII-Paddling the Great Lakes in Winter

2010-02-16T08:23:00.001-05:00

In their Newsletters Verlen and Valerie skipped straight from Grand Portage, Minnesota, to their first Michigan landfall at Black River Harbor. I decided I shouldn't do that so I took to my virtual helicopter and followed their path along Lake Superior's Minnesota and Wisconsin shores until I caught up with them. Their strategy for paddling the Great Lakes as set out by Verlen was to average about 32 miles a day, sit out windy days, and paddle the miles very carefully "...with one foot on the shore..."

The Newsletter Editor, Dorothy Webster, filled in some detail: "...after two days spent refitting at Grand Marais, Minnesota, the big lake began acting like an ocean and tossed Verlen and Valerie around on giant waves. Val, who didn't take all her seasickness medicine, was more than queasy..."

I put Google Maps Satellite on the screen and carefully followed the Minnesota shore southwesterly to the twin cities of Duluth and Superior, then went easterly and northeasterly along the Wisconsin shore and through the Apostle Islands and arrived at Michigan just where the Montreal River enters the Big Lake. Then a few miles further is Black River Harbor.

Valerie: "Landfall in Michigan was something to celebrate. We arrived just before dark, paddling into the shelter of the slag breakwall...We were windbound three days at Black River Harbor. Little did we know that we had just began our struggle. Getting to Michigan turned out to be the easy part". She tells of stops in Ontanogan and Houghton-Hancock where they were windbound for several days.

She goes on: " When paddling was possible again, it was also unusually difficult. The cold temperatures of the early onset of winter caused each wave and splash to freeze on our canoes. Sitting on the waterline we became human ice chunks, and within a few hours of paddling each day, we were literally frozen into our canoes by the ice build-up on our spray covers...My paddle shaft was coated with ice. The bow line was glued to the gunwale...My gloves got so stiff from the ice they became immovable..."

Following the Krugers along the Lake Superior shore from Black River Harbor to the Portage Lake Ship Canal on the Keweenaw Peninsula brought on another nostalgia attack. As I flew over the mouth of the Presque Isle River and along the Porcupine Mountains I was reminded of backpacking trips in the "Porkies" with my late brother Dick and his daughters. Over Silver City I was reminded of another of life's great beers in the sole local tavern at the thirsty end of one of those trips. Sighting McLain State Park by the entrance to the canal I remembered camping in my Jayco pop-up trailer with Dick during a geological field trip, the last time he and I ever camped out together.

Jack McHugh of Escanaba paddled with the Krugers as they crossed Keweenaw Bay from Portage Entry: "Before we left the protection of the canal the Krugers linked their boats into a catamaran arrangement with two stout cross poles. Tremendous initial stability is thus attained...I did not have this advantage but felt confident as long as the seas did not become mountainous...We moved into the swell and chop of an icy Keweenaw Bay, being conservative and heading southeast so crossing the shortest distance..." He goes on for about six paragraphs on the awful wind, wave and ice conditions of that crossing. "Eventually a difficult landing was made on a steep, wave swept, rocky shore...the three of us resembled abominable snow men, with icicles hanging everywhere..." He allowed as how he was not anxious to make any similar crossings.

I find no words from either Kruger covering their adventures from that landing until they arrive at the Au Train River. Thus no description of their travels along the Huron Mountain shoreline which is absolute wilderness most of the way. They would certainly have stopped at Big Bay where "Anatomy of a Murder" was filmed. They would have rounded Presque Isle Park on their way into Marquette.

Editor Webster describes their arrival in Marquette: "The paddlers rounded the breakwall next to the Marquette Lighthouse and paddled the 600 to 700 yards to a sandy beach near the US Coast Guard boathouse. It seemed to take them forever. Small whitecaps broke the lake's surface and the spray formed a thin film of ice over the paddlers, their canoes and their clothing. Beaching the canoes was difficult - no one wanted to get wet feet in those conditions - so the paddlers backed off, gathered up steam and paddled those craft right onto the beach with a mighty effort. Everybody cheered!"

NEXT: Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Following Verlen and Valerie-XVII-Through the Boundary Waters to Lake Superior

2010-02-11T08:23:00.002-05:00

The Newsletters don't reveal much about Verlen and Valerie's trip through the Boundary Waters. Verlen had been in the Boundary Waters several times, canoe racing and on his 1971 trip and again in 1983 with Valerie.

In One Incredible Journey Verlen and author Clayton Klein devote an 18 page chapter to the 1971 tandem canoe trip up the Boundary Waters and Rainy Lake with Clint Waddell.

In 1983 on the Ultimate Canoe Challenge homeward bound part of the trip Valerie rejoined Verlen in North Dakota and stuck with him through the Boundary Waters and Grand Portage to Lake Superior. Then she returned to Seattle and Verlen went home to Jenny.

In The Ultimate Canoe Challenge Verlen describes their trip through the Boundary Waters in 1983. I assume the same description would fit their 1986 journey:

"The Border Route is historic canoe country. We were now paddling in the shadow of hundreds of years of French-Canadian voyageurs and thousands of years of Indian canoeists...We went up through the big border lakes - Rainy, Kabetogama, Namakan, Sand point, La la Croix, Crooked, Basswood, Knife, Sagana, Gunflint. This was the BWCA-Quetico country, familiar not only from history, but from the thousands of canoeists who travel these waters each summer. I had paddled there many times and knew it well...Most of the paddling was flat water with some short, challenging portages...wherever possible we paddled up rapids or lined the boats through, but some portages could not be avoided...by that evening we had covered 32 miles and had crossed 11 portages to a camp on Knife Lake.

In the next few days we passed the Height of Land between South and North Lakes, then paddled down the lakes and Pigeon River to the Grand Portage. Here the voyageurs cut cross-country to avoid the last miles of the Pigeon River, which are steep and violent and have several waterfalls, including 120-foot Pigeon Falls."

I imagine they used the Ralph Freese furnished canoe wheels on the Grand Portage. In One Incredible Journey Verlen describes the Grand Portage: "The Grand Portage Trail itself is a big, open and well maintained path that you could drive a Jeep down. It appeared to be used frequently by backpackers or hikers, but seldom does any one carry a canoe down it."

I took my time and used the seagull approach and thoroughly covered various routes between Rainy Lake and Lake Superior. I even went backwards up much of our 1948 Turtle River route and back down.

Next: Wintertime Paddling on the Big Lakes

Following Verlen and Valerie-XVI-Lake Winnipeg and Beyond

2010-02-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

Neither Verlen nor Valerie described their trip from the Churchill River through Frog Portage and the Sturgeon-Weir River and lake system to the town of The Pas. I looked at the chore of trying to describe it by working backwards through the descriptions in One Incredible Journey for the 1971 trip or The Ultimate Canoe Challenge for the 1981 trip but since I am only following them, not trying to tell their story, I decided just describe their route as shown on the 1971 trip map and take to my virtual helicopter.

The map shows in order from north to south Frog Portage (Verlen said it had a good trail), Lindstrom Lake (text) or Manawan Lake (map)?, Wood Lake, Pelican Narrows, Mirond Lake, the Sturgeon-Weir River, Amisk Lake, more river then Sturgeon Landing on Cumberland Lake, the lake and then the river to its confluence with the Saskatchewan River. Time out while I fly their route to The Pas...

Verlen in Newsletter Number 6 December 1986: "Early in the morning of September 9, we departed The Pas, Manitoba, paddling side by side in our solo Sea Wind canoes down the Saskatchewan River...We enjoyed the novelty of downstream paddling for the next one and one half days knowing that it would be the last until we reached the Wabash River at Fort Wayne, Indiana...(maybe wrong, as I will demonstrate later) It may sound strange but in the first six months and 5,000 miles, we have paddled less than 300 miles downstream.

The Saskatchewan River widens out into Cedar Lake and Cross Lake. It is about 100 miles across these lakes. They are the backwater of a huge dam at Grand Rapids, Manitoba. Here the water spills into Lake Winnipeg and flows out the north end to go down the Nelson River to Hudson Bay. But we went the other way. It took us 10 1/2 days to go nearly 300 miles across Lake Winnipeg to the Winnipeg River.

On September 24 we started up the Winnipeg River. There are eight dams in the 180 miles from Lake Winnipeg to Kewatin. It is beautiful canoe country. There is a government boat lift into Lake of the Woods at Kewatin but it was closed. Lake of the Woods, with its thousands of islands and 80 miles across would be an easy place to get lost. To complicate matters we had a heavy fog all one morning. We watched our compass very closely and had no problems......we started up the Rainy River...it was high this year. We had to line our canoes about 50-feet around he main drop on Lone Rapids and make a short portage on the right at Manitou Falls." They are now in Rainy Lake.

I am starting to get nostalgic as I tap out these words for the Krugers are about to paddle the exact same waters (if not the same water) that my brother John and two fraternity brothers from the Colorado School of Mines paddled in two 18' wood and canvas canoes 38 years earlier. It was 1948, 15 years before Verlen even paddled a canoe for the first time.

The Krugers are paddling down Rainy Lake to the twin cities of Fort Francis, Ontario, and International Falls, Minnesota. We paddled up Rainy Lake but instead of going into the Rainy River we headed north upstream through a series of lakes and straits and rapids for two weeks to a five mile portage over the Height of Land. Sounds just like what the Krugers had been doing. They lined up a rapids and portaged another to get into Rainy Lake and we waded our canoes up a rapids to get out of Rainy Lake.

I decided it was time to enlist my seagull system and follow our 1948 canoe trip in memory of brother John and Ken Matheson, who have been gone for many years, and in honor of Ned Wood who sends me political and patriotic Emails every so often and an annual Christmas letter about his 9 kids and their families.

I used Digital-Topo-Maps.Com and followed up Rainy Lake to the Manitou River system of rivers, lakes, straits, rapids and portages to the ghost town of Gold Rock at the head of a 5 mile portage across the Height-of-Land. Things have changed in 62 years but it is still almost all wilderness. There is a marina at the rapids where we first had to portage and roads cross our our route in a couple of places. Gold Rock still looks abandoned. Lake Wabigoon leading up to Highway 17, the Trans-Canada Highway, still looks wild.

I think I spotted what we named "Slimey Island", a wet, rocky, inferior campsite in Lake Wabigoon to which we returned all beered up after an afternoon at an Official Province of Ontario "Purveyor of Beer" by a Hudson's Bay Store in the hamlet of Dinorwic on Highway 17.

I then seagulled upstream over the Wabigoon River to the portages to Long Lake and the Turtle River, which in 1948 we followed all the way back to Rainy Lake, shooting rapids (no PFDs) and portaging around falls. In the process I crossed roads that weren't there in 1948.

Although I choked up a couple of times, I'm glad I did it.

Next: Through the Boundary Waters to Lake Superior.

Following Verlen and Valerie XV - The Churchill River

2010-01-29T08:40:00.009-05:00

Wikipedia: "The Churchill River is a major river in Saskattchewan and Manitoba...From the head in Churchill Lake it is 1,609 km long."

Before this mighty river reaches its natural outlet at Hudson Bay it suffers the indignity of being diverted into the Nelson River for hydroelectric projects.

Valerie in Newsletter Number 4: "The Churchill River was the biggest river I had ever been on with rapids. The Mackenzie River had plenty of fast water, but the Churchill Rapids are actual drops of many feet. The first Churchill rapid that we passed through was at Patuavak, flowing into Shagwenaw Lake. We heard the water rushing from about a half mile away."

"We slowly paddled towards the drop, watching the water carefully. It didn't look too alarming so we chose to paddle through. I went first and headed straight for the 'V' shape of water flowing down from the exposed rocks. I soon learned that in big water the 'V' is the place to stay away from, not to head for, as I was used to doing in shallow water. Luckily the rapid wasn't too bad and though I found myself with waves jumping onto the deck, it wasn't anything the stable Sea Wind couldn't handle. I learned right then and there to take more time scouting the river areas ahead and to watch Verlen more closely. He was navigating a cautious stretch of water closer to shore."

At Patuanak (the Newsletter spelled it Patuavak) Verlen held a discussion with a native riverman, whom he had met in 1981 on the Ultimate Canoe Challenge, about the rapids they would be facing downstream on the Churchill..."You must portage the Dipper Rapids, everyone portages the Dipper...We go down Crooked Rapids in our power boats but there is a portage on the right...Now Snake Rapids, that's one of the worst..."

Valerie's Newsletter reports contain some real worries she had about their facing Snake Rapids. At one point she was trying to figure how she could "... get Verlen's body back to civilization after a possible catastrophe."

The book One Incredible Journey, the story of Verlen's and Clint Waddell's trip across Canada in one season in 1971, has a very good map of the route that the Krugers were traveling in reverse. It shows how the Churchill is really a series of lakes interconnected by straits or sections of river. In order going downstream they are Peter Pond Lake connected by the Buffalo Narrows to Churchill Lake, Lac-Ile-a-La Crosse where Putuanak is located, Shagwenaw Lake, Dipper Lake, Knee Lake, Sandy Lake, Pine House Lake, Sand Fly Lake, Black Bear Island Lake, Trout Lake, Lake of the Dead, Otter Lake, Red Lake, Trade Lake, Keg Lake and Iskwatam Lake.

Although their accounts contain practically no details of their trip down this chain of lakes and straits; their thanks in the Newsletter tell of hospitality and help they received from people in Buffalo Narrows, Patuavak, Primeau Lake, LaRonge, Stanley Mission, Mista-Nosayen, Amisk and Sturgeon Landing along the way to Lake Winnipeg.

At the end the Churchill turns to the east and continues towards Hudson Bay but the Voyageur Trail diverts south across the Frog Portage to the Sturgeon Weir River system, heading for Lake Winnipeg.

I have used my Google Maps virtual helicopter for hours trying to trace their route through this maze of lakes, straits and narrows that zig-zags across the Canadian Shield wilderness. This has proved to be quite difficult because the vast majority of the lakes and waterways are unnamed on the satellite coverage, and the map coverage is very sparse.

The purpose of the Krugers' entire trip through the chain of lakes from the Methye Portage to the Frog Portage is to take them across the Churchill River-to-Hudson Bay drainage basin and into the Lake Winnipeg-to-Nelson River-to-Hudson Bay drainage basin.

Next: Lake Winnipeg and beyond

Following Verlen and Valerie-XIV-The Methye Portage

2010-01-25T08:31:00.008-05:00

Here is something I pulled off the Internet which is very descriptive of what the Krugers would have seen when they got to their destination after struggling upstream on the Clearwater River (From "Great Canadian Rivers").

"At an overgrown landing in a small cove not far from the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, Clearwater River runners will encounter a path leading steeply up to a forested ridge. A short hike into the woodland above reveals an historic trail. Worn down by the feet of countless aboriginal hunters, voyageurs, pack horses and moose, and deeply rutted by the the wheels of fur-laden ox carts, the trail extends 20 kilometers over a pine and spruce-covered sandy ridge.

The legendary Methye Portage spans a plateau separating the Clearwater River from Lac la Loche and marks a continental divide between the Churchill and Athabaska-Mackenzie River systems. (the Churchill flows into Hudson Bay). In 1778 this short stretch of land became the one of the busiest hubs of the 19th Century fur trade, opening up the rich fur country of the North West to the merchants of Montreal."

Not the Kruger expedition, but a good reality check on what it takes to make a portage. (From the ottertooth.com Che Mun page.)

Valerie describes their crossing of the portage: "We arrived at the trail in the early afternoon and shouldered our packs to begin the long walk. We always take our packs first because when we carry the canoes on our heads and shoulders our visibility decreases. We take the first load to familiarze ourselves with the trail. The path gained 800 feet of elevation in the first four miles so there was plenty of huffing and puffing on our parts. But it was beautiful, walking through the woods on a trail that had so much colorful history. I tried tio imagine the voyageurs carrying their packs and stopping every 15 minutes for a "pose" which means rest period. They could set down their packs and smoke a pipe. To the voyageurs the portages weren't measured in miles but instead were described as being "three or four pipes".

Valerie goes on: "It was getting dark on August 10, 1986, as we arrived at Rendezvous Lake, a beautiful spot at the four-mile point of Methye Portage. There, with the sounds of loons and the magic spell of the Northern Lights, we made our camp." They had eight more miles to go.

Here is something I didn't know. They had been carrying a set of wheels. Valerie again:

"Ralph Freese at the Chicagoland Canoe Base had sent us a cart to use on those portages that were flat enough and wide enough to accomodate the wheels. For the first time, we tried them out, making a Sea Wind 'sandwich' of our canoes, stacked on top of each other, with me pulling and Verlen pushing and steering from the stern. We made those eight miles in one trip! And averaging one mile per hour!"

Verlen and his partners had crossed this portage in the other direction in 1971 and 1981. I read his accounts of both crossings. He complained a lot about mosquitos.

After the portage Verlen and Valerie were heading downstream for the first time since they started the Two Continent Expedition. Lac la Loche connects the portage with the Methye River to the south. The community of La Loche on the eastshore was undoubtedly visited by the Krugers on the way.

Valerie: "The Methye River has a seies of fast waters and it was quite a switch, feeling the canoe pulled along and floating pell mell down a whitewater shoot! The rapids on the Methye were small compare to the Churchill River Rapids still ahead of us."

Next: The Churchill River.

Following Verlen and Valerie XIII - To Fort McMurray and the Clearwater River

2010-01-19T08:22:00.013-05:00

In the Newsletters neither Verlen nor Valerie describe their journey upstream of Fort Smith. In effect, they skip over the rivers, towns and lakes they traveled all the way to Fort McMurray, Alberta, where Verlen decided he could paddle again.

To fill in the gap I turned to the accounts in One Incredible Journey and The Ultimate Canoe Challenge and worked backwards on the descriptions of the trips FROM Fort McMurray TO Fort Smith. Then I invoked the Googled virtual helicopter and Wikipedia to follow the Krugers' undescribed route.

Verlen has characterized the upper Slave River as the most uninteresting river he has ever paddled; no scenery, mud banks all the way and no good campsites. The name is Indian, having nothing to do with human slavery.

The Slave originates in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, a highly unusual fresh-water delta at the forks of the Peace River and Riviere Des Roches, the drain of Lake Athabaska, which in turn is fed by the Athabaska River. The delta is in the very southwest end of Lake Athabaska where the Peace River comes in from the west, having originated in a Rocky Mountain Glacier.

The Krugers would have navigated their motorized tandem Sea Wind rig through the maze of streams in the Delta (probably marked by buoys) and turned east up the winding Riviere Des Roches into Lake Athabaska, 176 miles long and 31 miles at its widest.

Fort Chipewyan, located at the western tip of Lake Athabaska, is one of the oldest settlements in Alberta, having been set up as a trading post in 1788. I am sure the Krugers would have stopped there for mail and re-provisioning and gasoline for their outboard.

They would not have explored Lake Athabaska because the Athabaska River enters the lake at it extreme southwest end in the delta, having flowed in from the south. They motored on upstream to Fort McMurray. I mounted my virtual helicopter and followed along.

The trend of the Athabaska is almost straight south to north with many islands but little wandering.

Fort McMurray is a town at the confluence of the Athabaska and Clearwater Rivers. It is the center of activity for the development of the Athabaska Oil Sands, an enormous reserve of heavy oil-saturated sand that is mined and retorted to make transportable and refinable crude oil.

The Clearwater flows in from the east. At Fort McMurray it is affectionately known as The Chant. I don't know why. Going upstream on the Clearwater will lead to the Methye Portage at the divide between waters flowing to the Arctic and the waters flowing to Hudson Bay.

When they arrive at Fort McMurray Verlen decides that he has healed enough to paddle again so they happily dismantle the tandem rig, sell the outboard motor, and head up the Clearwater in their liberated Sea Winds solo.

The Clearwater was the first really wild river the Krugers encountered on the Two Continent Expedition. The Mackenzie, Slave and Athabaska all had occasional towns, were used for barging and usually had roads parallel or crossing. The landscape around Fort McMurray is scarred by oil sands mining. The very falls and rapids that forced them into portaging kept that river wild.

Valerie: "The Clearwater was the prettiest river we had seen so far and the rapids and waterfalls we encountered were easy to identify. We paddled tight to shore and we could see white foaming water far in advance as we searched for the portage trail.

For those readers who don't know what a portage is, I have a simple definition: A portage is a carrying place where the paddler must leave the water and transport canoe and gear overland to bypass a dangerous rapid or to reach an alternate waterway...No definition can ever adequately explain what portaging means. I never understood until I had carried my own canoe on my back and food bag, sleeping pad, tent, clothes...extra shoes, water jugs, rain gear, spare paddle...and other stuff miles through the woods.

On our first few portages we were very disorganized. By the time I packed all the gear from my canoe into manageable bundles it was clear each of us had three trip-loads of stuff to carry over the distances ahead ahead of us. Counting forward and back, a one mile portage turned into a 5-mile trip!"

As I think back, I believe these would have been her first actual experiences with

portaging. There were no portages on the Baja trip and probably none on the race down the Mississippi.

I reviewed the accounts of Verlen's two previous trips on the Clearwater, both downstream from the Methye Portage, one in 1971 and the other in 1981. He had no trouble with either, apparently running all the rapids. Going upstream was different since they had to paddle or pole or line up or portage every one, and there are many. Unfortunately Verlen doesn't describe any and everything Valerie has written is summarized above.

To try to get a feel for this river I used the Google virtual helicopter approach but was frustrated by very poor satellite imagery on the upper part. I had better luck with Digital-Topo-Maps.com. This web site gave me very detailed black and white topography with contour lines, a medium I'm somewhat of an expert on going back to the Colorado School of Mines in the 40's and the US Army Engineers during World War II. I enjoyed myself. A "topologist's" holiday, so to speak.

Every rapids, falls and portage is shown in detail, the contour lines give you a sense of 3D that is missing from satellite or aerial photo coverage and most lakes and streams are named.

Next: The Methye Portage and the Churchill River

I had a dream...

2010-01-17T17:03:00.000-05:00

I was doing a lot of thinking about Grand River Expedition 2010 last evening in response to a message from our esteemed leader, The Riverologist. That mental activity was apparently stimulating since after I went to bed and fell asleep I had this rather complicated dream which I feel compelled to share with you and the canoeists named in the "Cc" box.

My Dream: About 50 or 60 canoes and kayaks of GRE 2010 were in their 13th day on the Grand River coming into Grand Haven, most heading out for a quick turn into the Big Lake and back. Among them were a number of Kruger Sea Wind expedition canoes with very experienced paddlers. They tended to hang around out beyond the breakwater looking "cool".

While out there they noticed two ghostly birchbark canoes heading south. It was Hugh Heward and his crew on their 1790 journey from Detroit to the Chicago Portage!

Then they saw three or four ghostly Sea Winds following Hugh's trail. It was the intrepid Challengers from the 2009 Ulitimate Hugh Heward Challenge!

"Do you see what I see?" shouted one GRE paddler. "Don't let them out of sight!" shouted a second. "Let's catch up to them!" added a third and with that they dug in their paddles and raced after the apparitions.

Well, they never could catch up no matter how hard they tried until they got opposite St. Joe, and there beneath the bluff was a ghostly fleet of 8 or 10 birchbark canoes, with about 30 ghostly Frenchmen and one ghostly Indian from the doomed ship Griffon, busily preparing to go up the St. Joseph River. It was the great explorer LaSalle's 1679 expedition!

Our heroes decided to stick with LaSalle while the ghostly Heward and the ghostly Ulitimate Challengers continued on down the Big Lake on their way to the Chicago. Portage.

When the Frenchmen started up the St. Joseph (which they called The River of the Miamis) our heroes followed along a discreet distance behind until they got to the portage where someday there would be the City of South Bend and a college that used to have good football teams..

LaSalle sent the Indian across the portage to check it out and he returned saying that it ended in a big marsh but he could see moving water so the Frenchmen hoisted their canoes to their shoulders and grabbed their packs and set off at a trot across the portage.

Our heroes always carried wheels in their Sea Winds but there were no roads, nothing but a buffalo trail. Nevertheless, they did not want to get left behind so the mounted their canoes on their wheels and went bumping cross-country. One even used a bicycle, the first time ever where the State of Indiana would someday be (remember, it was a dream...all things are possible).

Launching their Sea Winds in the marsh they followed the disturbed reeds left by the Frenchmen and were soon on the free-flowing Kankakee River. In due time the Kankakee was joined by the river the French called DesPlaines (which flowed down from the other side of the Chicago Portage) to form the Illinois River, so named for the Illinois tribe of Indians who lived along it.

They followed the ghostly LaSalle down the river but he stopped about where Peoria is today and decided to build another fort like the one he had built at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Well our heroes were nonplussed since they didn't want to hang around Peoria (who would?).

But just about that time here comes another apparition. Coming upstream in a ghostly canoe was a ghostly Jesuit priest and a ghostly French explorer. It was Father Marquette and Louis Joliet on their way back from their 1673 "discovery" of the Mississippi River (the natives already knew where it was).

So now our heroes had a dilemma, should they go on down the Illinois and see the "Father of Waters" or should they follow Marquette and Joliet back up to Lake Michigan and home?

This is where I woke up. It had been a remarkable dream, despite being interrupted by an old man's nightly pee calls. Does it give anyone any ideas as to another historical canoeing adventure????

As Verlen said "Happy are those that dream dreams..."

Following Verlen and Valerie-XII-To Slave Lake and Slave River

2010-01-15T12:29:00.005-05:00

Continuing on the Mackenzie:

Wikipedia: Fort Simpson. is a village...located on an island at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard Rivers...(it) was first started as a trading site in 1803 then named Fort of the Forks post..."

Fortunately for the Krugers, it has a hospital.

Valerie: "When we arrived at Fort Simpson we caught a ride to the hospital where X-rays were taken of Verlen's back. The doctor said being on the river was a great risk, and that Verlen had suffered a 'massive muscle tear'. Verlen was still in great pain and had difficulty even walking. We knew he couldn't possibly paddle...

There were some difficult decisions to be made...we couldn't end the expedition...(after) much soul searching...we purchased a used six hp motor to assist us until Verlen could paddle again...Verlen supervised the building of a flat transom and platform that would fit between the canoes and hold the motor. We used that motor from Fort Simpson to Fort McMurray - approximately 1000 miles."

Then she describes the stresses and strains on the rig and their partnership as a result of having to travel with a noisy outboard motor. I have never seen a photograph of that rig.

Valerie continuing: "We traveled up the remainder of the Mackenzie to Great Slave Lake, crossed the south end of the lake and stopped at Hay River and Fort Resolution...it was a long 200 mile stretch up the Slave River to Fort Smith...Using the motor was a disappointment to us but it certainly didn't effect the warm, friendly greetings from people on shore...the Royal Canadian Mountie at Fort Providence even...drove us to the gas station to fill up our gas cans."

They traveled on to Fort Smith, just below the famous Slave River "Rapids of the Drowned", then Fort Chipewayan and the Athabasca River to Fort McMurray where Verlen pronounced himself ready to paddle.

I mounted my Google Earth virtual helicopter and followed along.

Great Slave Lake is the deepest lake in North America and 9th largest in the world.

Hay River is a town located on the south shore of Great Slave Lake at the mouth of the Hay River. The area has been used by Indians as far back as 7000 B.C.

Fort Resolution is located at the mouth of the Slave River on the south shore of Great Slave Lake. It is the oldest documented community in the Northwest Territories.

Fort Smith is a town on the Slave River adjacent to the Alberta/Northwest Territories border. The Indian name was Thebacha, "beside the rapids". It is at the end of an ancient portage around what were considered to be four impassible rapids.

Both Verlen and Valerie tell of arriving at Fort Smith just below the famous Slave River "Rapids of the Drowned" but neither tell how they got their cobbled together, hybrid catamaraned Sea Winds-with-outboard-motor above these rapids and the three big rapids above them.

This is an example of why it is so regrettable that neither Verlen nor Valerie nor anyone else did a book on the Two Continent Canoe Expedition.

In their 1987 book One Incredible Journey Verlen and Clayton Klein go into 17 pages of detail about Verlen's and Clint Wadell's 1971 adventures paddling in and portaging around these Slave River rapids.

Here are extracts about these rapids from Verlen and Brad Frentz's 2005 book The Ultimate Canoe Challenge when Verlen and Mark McCorckle went through in 1981 (partner and son-in-law Steve Landick had gone on ahead by himself): "There are four main rapids, Cassette, Pelican, Mountain and Rapids of the Drowned, each about a mile long. As the name of the last one suggests, these are dangerous waters and through the centuries many lives have been lost in them...I had a copy of Alexander Mackenzie's journal...It pleased me to follow his detailed descriptions; they were still accurate and useful. Mackenzie and his party went through this wild stretch of river in 1798 and needed nine portages. Mark and I used the same nine portages and they were still good."

Verlen and Mark also ran some of the rapids

"I had come through these rapids before, and we studied them carefully before the trip. So I knew what to expect. But we still landed above each rapids and looked things over".

We used the same procedure during my 1948 wilderness canoe trip in Western Ontario. The Canadian Government maps we navigated with always showed where the rapids were and you could always tell by the sound when you were approaching them. The four of us would get out of our canoes and walk the banks and plot out a route as best we could. Each canoe crew misjudged once. My brother and I wiped out when we didn't hit a big "V" dead center and had to ride the rest of the rapids "bareback" (you swim on your back with your feet downstream ahead of you...no PFDs in those days).

Verlen describes shooting the Cassette Rapids in detail. He goes on: "The remaining three rapids were runnable using Mackenzie's descriptions, and we came into Fort Smith in good shape".

Next: To Fort McMurray.

Following Verlen and Valerie-XI-More of the Mackenzie

2010-01-12T12:27:00.000-05:00

Newsletter Number 2 dated August 1986 has the Krugers over 600 miles upstream, a month after they started. They were downstream some place from Wrigley.

Verlen: "The river is at its seasonal high and there's an enormous amount of logs and debris rushing by. Some of the logs are huge, having come from hundreds of miles upstream, from above the permafrost. Some are freshly fallen trees, washed into the river by eroding banks. It will be years before some of them make it to the Arctic Ocean...We paddled hard this morning against a strong headwind and stiff current, but when the debris and logs became hazardous in the rising water, we decided this would be a good time to head for shore and write our Newsletter dispatches"

Valerie: "As far as we can tell, we are the only ones since Alexander Mackenzie in 1789 who have paddled upstream on this great river...Our progress does not come easily...The river is coursing by so fast that nothing stands in the way...If we stop paddling even for an instant, the river carries us backwards...We learned quickly that river is in charge - and we work with it as best we can."

That they were approaching Wrigley meant they had passed the communities of Norman Wells and Tulita. They undoubtedly stopped and visited or shopped.

Wikipedia: "Norman Wells (Slavey language: Taeghoti 'where there is oil') is the regional center for the Shatu region of the Northwest Territories...Oil was first seen by Alexander Mackenzie during his exploration of the river in 1789 but it was not until 1911 that an oil bearing formation was discovered. Imperial Oil was established in the area in 1937...During the Second World War, Norman Wells was deemed important as a source of oil for military operations in Alaska..."

Spectacular Northwest Territories.Com: "Tulita - "Where Two Rivers Meet" - is a small...community at the confluence of the Great Bear and Mackenzie Rivers. It began as a trading post in 1810. Old Hudson Bay Post buildings still overlook the river...." Tulita was originally known as Ft. Norman.

Wikipedia: "Wrigley...The community is located on the east bank of the Mackenzie River...below its confluence with the Wrigley River...Originally located at Fort Wrigley, the community relocated to its present location in 1965, because it was more easily accessible. The population continues to maintain a traditional lifestyle, trapping, hunting and fishing."

Valerie: "As we pushed off from Wrigley we faced 140 miles before reaching the next town of Fort Simpson...The increased current was causing us a lot of extra work and made paddling more difficult. It was during this stretch that Verlen suffered an injury. We were paddling over a gravel bar at the mouth of a river flowing into the Mackenzie, but because the current was so swift, we were having trouble with our paddles on the gravel as the bar made the water too shallow. So we used poles to propel ourselves forward, and as Verlen pushed off one time with a strong effort he slipped and fell heavily into the rigid canoe cockpit."

Verlen was obviously injured but appeared to ignore it and with him popping aspirin for the pain they kept going, paddling 13-15 hours a day. Then on July 14 they were pushing through a rapid when Verlen abruptly stopped paddling.

Valerie: "...his canoe began to slide backwards...his canoe came crashing into mine. I jumped ashore and grabbed his bow rope, pulling him to safety. From he pain on Verlen's face, I knew something was dangerously wrong!"

Velen had felt something snap in his back and couldn't move.

Valerie: "I began to cry. The enormity of the situation was overwhelming." Then she got her act together.

Her brother's account: " Struggling to shore, Valerie said they were in sight of a cabin on the opposite bank...they camped the night and the next day Valerie more or less single- handedly ferried the boats and Verlen cross the river. The cabin man 'Leo' then drove them 32 miles to Ft. Simpson".

Valerie's account in the Newsletter is much longer and is vivid. Leo actually took them to Fort Simpson in his fishing boat; the two Sea Winds and all their gear on board, with his wife, son, dog and a load of fish along.

Using Google Maps I believe I have zoomed in on the exact location where this all took place.

Next: Verlen in the hospital

Following Verlen and Valerie-X-The Mackenzie River

2010-01-07T09:22:00.020-05:00

OK. I'm going to take a crack at following Verlen and Valerie across Canada on their Two Continent Canoe Expedition. My main source will be the Newsletter collection loaned to me by Jon Young.

The newly married Krugers started paddling their Verlen-built Sea Wind canoes up the Mackenzie River in June of 1986 at Inuvik, a modern Canadian government-built town located close that river's East Channel. They were about 60 km upstream from the Arctic Ocean.

I could see right away when I started this project that the distances involved were far too great for my leisurely Google Maps "seagull" approach that I used in followng the Krugers from Michigan to the Gulf. So I shifted to the "virtual helicopter" approach that I used for following Charlie Parmelee's 2008 Odyssey and the Ultimate Hugh Heward challengers last spring.. This involves going to Google Earth, finding the waterway, tilting the perspective and rotating the image so as to follow the paddlers' path upstream, downstream or cross country as appropriate.

As was the case with my last project, I am not attempting to tell the untold story of the Krugers' Two Continent Expedition. Rather I am trying to share with you my effort to follow their path. As usual, if you want to opt out, just say so.

Valerie: "On June 6th at 4:17 AM the ice went out of the East Branch of the Mackenzie River, jamming, jostling and grinding past the arctic town of Inuvik. Verlen and I couldn't sleep. We sat on a knoll above the river, watching excitedly as the ice scraped against the shore, splitting and sliding on top of itsself...Verlen and I were mesmerized...The 24 hour arctic sun moved along the horizon and lit the scene bright as day...For all the scraping and whining, the ice glided by beautifully, in a slow motion dance of spring..."

Valerie again: "Verlen and I are setting out to explore the Western hemisphere by solo canoes and we feel as if we are two of the luckiest people alive...I continue to have the most wonderful feelings that I am exactly where I am supposed to be...on the Mackenzie riverbank in time to watch the ice break and move, clearing a channel for us to Cape Horn."

Wikipedia: "The Mackenzie River originates in Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, and flows north to the Arctic Ocean. It is the longest river in Canada (1,080 miles) ..."

Newsletter Editor Dorothy Webster: "The latest news from Valerie and Verlen found them at Fort Good Hope 214 miles from Inuvik, their starting point. 'It was our longest stretch of wilderness paddling', said Val. They were averaging 22 miles per day...they're often paddling until midnight or later."

I have put my Google Earth virtual helicopter in motion and have followed them up the Mackenzie to Fort Good Hope. Though not mentioned in the Newsletter about half way between Inuvik and Good Hope they would have arrived at Tsiigehtchic, a community at the confluence of the Arctic Red River and the Mackenzie. Here the Dempster Highway crosses the Mackenzie (ferry in summer, ice road in winter). The Dempster interconnects the Klondike River with the Arctic Ocean shore at Tukteyaktuk. You might want to look it up.

Photo credit: http://www.kent.techsoul.ca/index.htm

I am surprised that neither Velen nor Valerie commented on the rapids and Ramparts near Good Hope. The Ramparts are a spectacular-looking limestone gorge maybe 10 miles long upstream from Good Hope. The rapids may have been drowned by the high water they were struggling with. Good Hope was the oldest trading post in the lower Mackenzie valley.

Next: To Norman Wells and beyond.

Following Verlen and Valerie-IX-Down the Tombigbee to Mobile

2010-01-04T22:08:00.002-05:00

After the Holidays I have resumed following Verlen and Valerie on their Two Continent Canoe Expedition.

Coming down the Divide Cut the Krugers would have first encountered the backwater of the Bay Springs Dam. After locking through they shortly would have passed under a bridge carrying the Natchez Trace Parkway across the Waterway.

Wikipedia: "The Natchez Trace, a 440 mile long path extending from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee, linked the Mississippi, Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. It was a traditional Native American trail and was later used by European explorers as both a trade and transit route in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Today the trail has been commemorated by the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway, which follows the approximate path of the trace. The trace itself has a long and rich history, filled with brave explorers, dastardly outlaws and daring settlers. Parts of the original trail are still accessible."

Thirty years ago Elaine and I drove the length of the Parkway in our 1978 Chrysler LeBaron, 8-track playing.

I still have an 8-track setup here at the River House. In memory of Elaine I have been playing some of those tapes including "The Theme from Rocky", some Bert Bacharach and even some Glen Miller pieces from our youth. I also played the banjo music from that 1976 canoeing classic "Deliverance". If any of you youngsters haven't seen "Deliverance"' you should definitely rent it.

Next downstream for the Krugers was Montgomery Lock, John Rankin (D) Lock, Fulton (C) Lock and Grover Wilkens (B) Lock, each with a lake behind. The latter is near Smithville, Mississippi. Then the lock for Pool A near Amory, Mississippi; Aberdeen Lock and Dam, and John C. Stennis (Columbus) Lock and Dam backing up Columbus Lake. (There is a also a US Navy Aircraft Carrier named for Senator John C. Stennis).

Then into Alabama on the channelized Tombigbee to the Tom Bevill (Aliceville) Lock and Dam and the Howell Heflin (Gainsville) Lock and Dam then to Demopolis and the confluence with the Black Warrior River. The Demopolis Lock and Dam is located a short ways downstream of the town. (The lock names in parenthesis are how they were designated when Verlen and Valerie went through).

Dermopolis is the end of the Tennessee-Tombigbee. From there on it is the Black Warrior-Tombigbee Waterway.

A little more than half way between Demopolis and Mobile is the Coffeeville Lock and Dam.

Farther down the Tombigbee joins the Alabama River and when the river-brown water changes to salt-water green in Mobile Bay I am done following Verlen and Valerie. I am a fresh water-cool weather canoeist.

Maybe you Florida types might want to take them from here on. If I get ambitious I might head north and enlist a seagull over the mighty Mackenzie and follow Verlen and Valerie upstream and across Canada.

From Phil Peterson's All Things Are Possible: "Verlen and Valerie continued south throughout the winter. By March13, 1987, they were in Mobile, Alabama, 7,000 miles south of their starting point at the mouth of the Mackenzie River...Their spirits remained high...They had come through the seven locks of the Tombigbee Waterway, and had been introduced to parts of the country and its people that neither had seen or met before."

Same for me and my virtual seagull.

Bill Davis on the Grand River

2010-01-01T19:59:00.003-05:00

Bill Davis is a lawyer with an office in Grand Ledge and a home in the "Little Egypt" area among the bends of the Grand River upstream of Portland. In preparation for Grand River Expedition '90 Verlen Kruger and I met him at his home to discuss our travel through "his" portion of the river. I say "his" because I think of Bill as the Grand Poo-Bah of what I consider to be the best stretch of the Grand, that from Charlotte Road Bridge to the mouth of the Looking Glass River.

He is one of the ramrods of the Middle Grand River Water Trail Association. Visit their booth at the Quiet Water Symposium March 6.

Bill is a self-professed "slow paddler" who likes to drift down his section of the river, sometimes even backwards, to soak in all the beauty and sneak up on the wildlife. In fact; at the Hugh Heward Challenge hoopla a couple of years ago, as spokesman for the Verlen Kruger Memorial Association when they presented me with that bronze statuette of Verlen, he was carrying like a scepter a paddle with large holes drilled in the blade which he calls his "Slow Paddle". He is at the absolute opposite end of the paddlers' spectrum from the racing Bradfords who look neither right nor left as they are breaking speed records down the river.

In 2005 Bill wrote a paeon to his river entitled "The Awesome Grand River". It is such a beautiful piece that I feel I have to share it with you as sort of a New Years gift.

Happy New Year........http://www.portlandmichigan.com/GrandRiver/

(message from Jim, posted by Karen)

How Project Lakewell Changed My Life

2009-12-29T13:50:00.002-05:00

Back in 1986 when I retired from the State of Michigan my fellow workers gave me an electronic fish finder as my retirement gift, believing that bass fishing was going to be my retirement hobby. My wife gave me a look which said: "You don't really believe you are going to spend a lot of your retirement time away bass fishing, do you?"

No, come to think about it, I guess I really didn't. But I did start to convert my Jon Boat into a poor-man's bass boat and spent a lot of time looking the Bass Pro Shops catalog.

I had fended off the oil and gas companies, utilities and law firms who wanted to hire me full or part time or use me as a consultant or lobbyist. I was determined to really retire, period.

As I mentally inventoried my interests I came up with canoes (I am a long time member of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association); history, particularly Michigan history; genealogy and maps. I have a large collection of Michigan topographic maps as a result of being on the State Mapping Advisory Board and I was a topographic engineer in the Army during World War II.

Enough background and bio: A while after retiring, I'm not sure what year, Elaine and I were down at the riverfront in Lansing during "Riverfest" and there was this campsite set up with a group of people in voyageur costumes. In addition, in the river was this 26 foot fake birchbark Montreal Canoe made of fiberglass but looking quite authentic. It turns out that this was some organization called Project Lakewell (I'm still not sure why it is called that) that was a fur-trading days reenactment group.

I was immediately fascinated and since their dues were cheap ($15) I signed up to become a member of Project Lakewell on the spot.

The guy who signed me up was this skinny-legged guy in a skimpy voyageur outfit called "Pierre" who apparently steered the canoe. I later learned he was Jim Meyerle. There was another guy, middle aged I would guess, with a big, gray handlebar mustache, dressed in black. He was supposed to be Father Marquette. It was Ken Kuester who promptly gave me a "Bless you my son" greeting. There were some female role-players, also in costume, one of whom I believe was that well-known author of children's books, Janie Lynn Panagopoulis. Enough name dropping.....I could add many more Lakewell people whom I got to know and respect like Dave and Jack and Frenchie.

That winter I got an invitation to come to a meeting of Project Lakewell at Ken's house, the subject participation in something to be called Grand River Expedition '90. There I learned the group intended to paddle their big canoe the length of the Grand River under the leadership of the world-famous long-distance canoeist Verlen Kruger and his then-wife, Valerie Fons Kruger.

If it hadn't been for that meeting I would probably only have watched Grand River Expedition '90 from the river bank as the canoes floated down and would never have become involved with the Krugers, who ended up as dear friends and neighbors.

At that meeting it became clear to me that because of my work with Michigan maps that I might knew more about the Grand River than anyone present. It later became obvious (to me at least) that I was better informed about the Grand than probably anyone else involved with the expedition, particularly with respect to the headwaters.

When the regular monthly planning meetings for GRE '90 got started I met Verlen and Valerie and shortly started accumulating assignments. Verlen was the designated Rivermaster and Valerie became the expedition's chairperson and ramrod.

I first volunteered to take the lead on headwaters activities. I drove Jim , Ken and I forget who else to Jackson and Hillsdale Counties and showed them the streams and dams and ponds from which the Grand flowed.

On that trip I met Art Hunter (?) and his wife, proprietors of the Liberty Mills General Store, who became interested and involved with GRE '90 and led the charge and greased the skids for all that was done at or about the headwaters. They owned the dam (the first on the river) which became to focus of headwaters activities both for GRE '90 and GRE 2000 ten years later. I was the MC for the opening day ceremony in July of 1990 (a whole other story) and in 2000.

I also became responsible for the two historical markers sponsored by GRE '90, one an official State of Michigan Historical Marker on the Riverwalk in Lansing, and the other an engraved glacial boulder at the Liberty Mills dam. That boulder came from Bunday Hill, the highest elevation in the Grand River watershed. The words on both markers are mine.

I also helped the Krugers by scouting out campsites for the 13 days the expedition would take going down the river. My late canoeing buddy George Voorhis paddled with me for three days on GRE '90.

Another life changer resulting from my Project Lakewell membership is the annual Hugh Heward Challenge and the 2009 Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge. More on that later.

In 1990 I read an article in the Lansing State Journal by history writer Birt Darling about a 1790 trip in two birchbark canoes by the British trader Hugh Heward and seven French-Canadian paddlers from Detroit to the Chicago River. They crossed the Lower Peninsula by going up the Huron River and, after portaging across the Lake Erie-Lake Michigan divide, paddled all the way down the Grand River to Lake Michigan. Thus they went down the Grand exactly 200 years before GRE '90 was to go down the same river. I was thereby inspired to determine exactly how the Heward party got from the Huron to the Grand.

"Topology" is defied as the topographic study of a place in relation to its history. I consider myself to be a topologist and that topology is my retirement hobby. In the winter and spring of 1990 I studied my topographic maps and made many trips by car reconnoitering Heward's possible routes until I became convinced I knew exactly how and where the Heward party paddled and portaged between the Huron and the Grand.

I shared this information with Verlen and he decided to prove me right or wrong his way, by launching his canoe in the Huron and paddling and bushwhacking to see if he could get to the Grand the way I believed Heward did. It took him two days, but he did it and it was my way. Since, many adventurous paddlers have followed Verlen's path, usually stopping in Hell for beer and pizza.

According to his journal, on April 28,1790 Heward's party, having encountered "an ill looking band" of renegade Indians the day before, paddled nearly 50 miles down the Grand River in one day before they felt safe to camp. In the aftermath of GRE '90 I issued a challenge by letter to a number of mid-Michigan canoeists, including Verlen, to try to try to match the Heward expedition's sprint by birchbark canoe with their sleek, modern canoes.

To make a long story short, my smart-alec challenge has become the Annual Hugh Heward Challenge, a 55 miler from Dimondale to Portland, a money raising function of the Verlen Kruger Memorial Association complete with T-shirts and feeding and speechifying at Thompson Field at Portland where Verlen's life-size bronze statue is to be erected. The first year 5 canoeists completed the challenge. Last year, the 10th I believe, 110 canoeists participated.

I have become sort of famous among a select group of canoeists for this affair and the related Charlie Parmelee 2008 Odyssey and the 2009 Ultimate Hugh Heward Detroit-to-Chicago Challenge and it all started with laying $15 on the table to join Project Lakewell that day at Lansing's Riverfest.

I have been honored by being presented with the Eaton County Heritage Award for 2001, the Verlen Kruger Award at the Quiet Water Symposium in 2004, and a bronze statuette of Verlen in 2007 for my initiation of the Hugh Heward Challenge.

Further, there is a series of self-published narrative/monographs that I have authored whereby I used the topology techniques I perfected in working out Hugh's route. I have done "The Search for the Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan", "Locating Michigan's Old Canoe Portages" (2 volumes) and "Across Lower Michigan by Canoe-1790". Other monographs that deserve Project Lakewell inspiration credit are "LaSalle's Elmbark Canoe", "Michigan's Whitewood Dugout Canoes" and "Hiawatha's Canoe". All are in significant Michigan historical libraries and museums.

One last thing that I can trace back to that day at Riverfest, my home "The Riverhouse" on the Grand River in Delta Township of Eaton County west of Lansing. I think it's the best place on the river. An acre of woods and meadow about 400 yards upstream of the Kruger Canoe Base with all of the land across the river an Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary. My wife found it while I was giving her a tour of places I visited during GRE '90. When the leaves are off I can see across the river the top of a big cedar tree in Hillside Cemetery, next to which Verlen is buried.

Season's Greetings

2009-12-26T22:35:00.006-05:00

Season's Greetings. In this video I was endorsing Karen's white-lights-only Christmas tree decorations by reciting a poem from my second grade Christmas program. Notice I had to call on the Savior to restore my memory. (By the way - it was the "Plymouth" Congregational Church in Watervliet.) The hat is from the Dirty Duck, a country bar hang-out near Karen and Ken's cottage at Black Lake.

There shall be no glittering ware upon my Christmas tree
But only candles bright and fair
Each for a friendship rich and rare
That lights my life for me
And at the top
The very top
And closest to the star
Is the one I love the best
And dearest, there you are.

Dirty Duck Hat

2009-12-25T22:09:00.013-05:00

Christmas gift from my son-in-law - a hand crocheted cap emblazoned with "Dirty Duck," the name of a local watering hole near my daughter and son-in-law's cottage on Black Lake.

Following Verlen and Valerie-VIII-The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway

2009-12-21T09:24:00.002-05:00

My seagull is going to fly up the Tennessee River from its mouth at Paducah to see what this new Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway is all about. But first there is Kentucky Dam which backs up Kentucky Lake....Kentucky Dam and Lake on the Tennessee River???? Go figure.....the lock is along the right bank.

Kentucky Lake.com: "Kentucky Dam creates the largest manmade lake in the eastern United States. It backs up the Tennessee River for 184 miles and creates a lake that stretches south across the western tip of Kentucky and nearly the entire width of Tennessee...it covers 160,300 acres." ....It nearly wore my poor seagull out flying a lake that long.

The lake eventually narrows to river size and going up the river the Krugers would have encountered the Pickwick Dam. Just before that on the left bank is the site of the Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. I have been there and it is very sobering to contemplate what went on there. I don't know what the Krugers thought as they passed by or did they visit it? You might want to look it up.

The Pickwick Dam or Pickwick Landing Dam has a lock along the left bank and backs up the Tennessee into a reservoir called Pickwick Lake.

The Divide Cut is a 29 mile artificial canal between Pickwick Lake and Bay Springs Lake which, as the name would indicate, crosses the divide between the Mississippi River drainage basin and drainage to the Gulf of Mexico through Mobile Bay. This is the beginning of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.

Valerie's words from the Newsletter of March 1987: "We have just completed paddling on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a man-made 234 mile long, 9-foot-deep, 300-foot-wide transportation artery through west-central Alabama and northeastern Mississippi, connecting the Tennessee River with the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River Waterway.

On the Tenn-Tom...instead of portaging rapids and falls, we paddled our canoes into 11 locks that allowed us to be safely 'dropped' a total of 341 feet. Each lock is110 feet wide and 600 feet long, capable of accommodating a towboat and eight standard barges. When our 17-foot canoes entered the lock chamber we were treated with as much respect as 'the big guys' and certainly with much more interest...We first heard about the Tennessee-Tombigbee and the route it provides to the Gulf through a National Geographic article in 1986...The waterway is divided into three sections, the divide section, the canal section and the river, which provides a variety of scenery and a unique highway into the South.

We paddled past cotton fields and cypress groves, and areas where fishermen were dangling their lines and setting their nets for catfish. We also enjoyed the Tenn-Tom because it offered us a good downstream current..."

Verlen in the same newsletter: "...the Tenn-Tom (is) shorter and a better way South. It is more scenic and the water is cleaner than most other waterways. The people running the Tenn-Tom seem proud of it and intent on making it the showplace of barge canal systems. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next ten years".

Wikipedia: "During and after its construction, the $2 billion waterway was widely criticized as an example of excessive pork barrel spending."

I am flying down the waterway 22 1/2 years after the Krugers paddled down and it looks pretty neat yet. I would probably have to agree that it was a big pork barrel project. But not all pork is bad.

Next: Down the Tombigbee to Mobile and the Gulf

Following Verlen and Valerie-VII-The Ohio

2009-12-18T14:41:00.007-05:00

The Ohio River follows the southern limit of the last of the continental glaciers.

Where the Wabash flows into the Ohio River water color contrast on the satellite photos shows the Wabash almost green and the Ohio definitely brown.

The Krugers would have gone downstream on the Ohio, probably close to the right bank, first past historic Old Shawneetown, then Cave-in-Rock.

Wikipedia: "After the Revolution, Old Shawneetown served as an important United States government administrative center for the Northwest Territory. Shawneetown and Washington, D.C share the distinction of being the only towns chartered by the United States government. In early November 1803 Lewis and Clark stopped at Old Shawneetown...." I'm taking the position that the Krugers were the next important explorers to stop there.

Cave-in-rock as a striking 55-foot riverside cave in a cliff by the Ohio which was a stronghold for outlaws.. Although they didn't mention it, I am sure the Krugers would have observed it and knew the story of the "Ancient Colony of Horse-Thieves, Counterfitters and Robbers". You might enjoy reading about it.

Other Illinois towns passed would have been Elizabethtown and the old town of Golconda.

Just upstream of Smithland, Kentucky, where the Cumberland River enters the mighty Ohio from the south, they would have gone through the lock at the Smithland Dam which spans the Ohio. The lock is is adjacent to the Ohio's right bank. This is the first of many large and impressive dams that they would encounter on their way to the Gulf.

The Krugers have faced only two portages since they left Grand Portage on Lake Superior, the carries between the Au Train and Whitefish Rivers to cross the Upper Peninsula, and the Maumee-Wabash portage. Contrast that with Coach Larry Hoff going down the Wisconsin River earlier this year, he had to carry or use his wheels 26 times.

Verlen: "For this time of year, there was a lot of barge traffic on the Ohio River. At Paducah, Kentucky, we had to decide whether to go up the Cumberland or the Tennessee, the backwaters of both are joined together above their dam, about 30 miles upstream, forming two very large lakes. After much questioning we took the Tennessee - which was a good decision. There was very little current along the way."

The confluence of the Ohio and the Tennessee is close to downtown Paducah.

Next: The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway

Following Verlen and Valerie-VI-The Wabash continued

2009-12-17T06:08:00.004-05:00

I have received an Email from Valerie. She is reading these in her hospital room. I am so pleased and moved..

Further down the Wabash after Lafayette/West Lafayette you pass the towns of Independence, Attica, Covington, Perryville, Montezuma and Clinton. The terrain to the west gets hilly but the Krugers wouldn't notice much down at river level. Neither would they see much of the occasional big gravel operations.

Between Perryville and Montezuma the Vermilion and Little Vermilion Rivers come in from the west and Sugar and Big Raccoon Creeks come in from the east. Confluences of tributaries are always obvious at river level.

A bigger and more historic town is Terre Haute, French for High Land for the prominent plateau the city sits on. Terre Haute is the home of Indiana State University where Larry Bird played basketball, and a Federal Prison that sometimes does executions. In the steamboating days Terre Haute was nicknamed "Sin City", famous for its Redlight District along the riverfront. For a less smartass description, see Wikipedia.

About 20 or so miles below Terre Haute the Wabash becomes the state line between Indiana and Illinois. I don't see any "Welcome" signs that one usually sees at state lines. In places where an oxbow has been cut off by man or nature the state line invariably follows the old oxbow.

Next is the little town of Darwin on the Illinois side. Here is the last ferry operating on the Wabash River. It is mostly used by Illinois farmers to get the their Indiana fields.

Just above Vincennes the riverside property lines change from the American survey quadrangular system to the old French ribbon farm system whereby the farms are laid out perpendicular to the river.

Vincennes....you wouldn't believe how much history this old town has, ancient Indian, Indian, French, British, American....you should look it up.

My late wife Elaine and I visited here in 1979 (how do I know the year? We were driving our 1978 Chrysler LeBaron, the fanciest car we ever owned, all leather seats with an 8-track sound system playing the "Theme from Rocky"). We were impressed by the George Rogers Clark Memorial which looks like something from the Mall in Washington, D.C. parked on the banks of the Wabash.

George Rogers Clark. Now there is a real American hero, who among many other valiant and incredible things, led American troops on a winter-time expedition by canoe and wading in swamps in a surprise attack on the British at Vincennes during the Revolutionary War. You really should look him up.

On another punitive expedition, Major Jean Francois Hamtramack (yeah, the guy for which the Detroit enclave is named) led his American troops and some local French militia up the Wabash against a Kickapoo Indian force supposedly camped at the Vermilion and Eel Rivers. They couldn't find any so they returned. "Hamtramack against the Kickapoo", I couldn't resist. I'm sure they didn't think it was so funny. You don't have to look that one up......

The Embarras River flows in from Illinois between Vincennes and St. Francisville. The name comes from French explorers who used the term for river obstacles like logjams.

Continuing downriver past St. Francisville the Krugers would have arrived at Mt.Carmel where the White and Patoka Rivers come in from the east. In the spring of 2008 Mt. Carmel was at the epicenter of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake that was felt all the way to St. Louis.

Next downriver is New Harmony, the site of two historic utopian communities. You might want to look them up.

The Little Wabash from Illinois joins the Big Wabash just a few miles above its confluence with the Ohio River.

Verlen: "Winter seemed to make one more effort to delay us the last few days of January on the lower Wabash River. The temperature dropped to near zero, the river became 90 per cent covered with broken ice, making travel impossible for a day, and rather difficult for several more days.

On our last night on the Wabash, we camped among trees on a muddy lowland bank. It was a cold, still night and all night long we could faintly hear the low throb of diesel engines - the sounds of barges pushing up and down the Ohio River, about 15 miles away."

Next: The Ohio.

Following Verlen and Valerie-V-The Wabash

2009-12-15T06:49:00.000-05:00

My "Seagull" flew down the length of Little River. The upper part doesn't look like it would float a canoe but lower down there appears to be plenty of water. When it reaches Huntington there are two small dams. A couple miles west of town the Little, which appears relatively clear, flows into the colored Wabash. This confluence is a few miles downstream of a dam that holds back Huntington Lake.

.Wikipedia: "The Wabash River is a 475-mile long river...that flows southwest from northwest Ohio...across northern Indiana to Illinois where it forms the southern Illinois-Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary. From the dam near Huntington to its southern terminus at the Ohio River, the Wabash flows freely for 411 miles which makes it the longest stretch of free-flowing river east of the Mississippi...

When the Wisconsin Glacier melted 14,000 years ago, part of the meltwaters formed the pro-glacial Lake Maumee, the ancestor to Lake Erie. Eventually the meltwater overtopped a glacial moraine located near Fort Wayne, Indiana, and catastrophically drained southwestward in the Maumee Torrent. The torrent carved the wide alluvial valley that the Wabash flows through today."

Verlen's words: "The morning after Christmas (1986) we put our canoes into the Wabash River near Huntington...sixteen other canoes joined us for a few hours...The canoeists were not the usual fair weather paddlers...On the upper Wabash, there are a number of small rapids and fast water spots that pushed into "sweepers" (fallen trees). We hadn't gone a mile before an aluminum canoe misjudged and got swept into a sweeper, flipped and got trapped in partially submerged branches. It took us nearly a half hour with ropes and many helping hands to get the canoe free. The paddlers only got wet. Sweepers in fast water, especially on bends of the river are probably the worst and trickiest hazards on a small river. It is easy to misjudge the force of the water pushing your canoe where you don't want it to go. I have learned the hard way to treat sweepers with respect - to give them a wide berth and to keep my seat low."

"Seagulling" down the river near Largo, about the second town after Huntington, you find a most unusual geological phenomenon, "Hanging Rock" National Monument, a huge limestone cliff towering about 90' above the river's left bank and leaning over the river. Nothing around it but flat Indiana farm land. I can't imagine how or why the glacier didn't grind it down.

Continuing down the river you reach Wabash, Peru and then Logansport with the Eel River coming in from the right. All along roads, usually US 24, follow along the right bank where the Wabash and Erie Canal used to be.

A few miles upstream of Lafayette and West Lafayette the Tippecanoe River comes in from the north. This was the site of the Battle of Tippecanoe

Wikipedia: "The battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, between United States forces led by Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and the forces of Tecumseh's growing American Indian confederation led by his brother, Tenskwatawa...The battle took place outside Prophetstown, at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers...Although the Americans were victorious...the win was costly as the tribes attacked with fewer men and sustained fewer casualties...Tippecanoe dealt a devastating blow to Tecumseh's confederacy, which never regained its former strength." You should read the rest of the Wikipedia article.

Neither Verlen nor Valerie mentioned the place or the battle, but I can't imagine that they didn't look over the battlefield which is located right by the river.

Next downstream is Lafayette and west Lafayette, the home of Purdue University.

I took a circle over Purdue's football field, Ross-Aide Stadium, I felt like I was in the Goodyear blimp on a fall big-game saturday afternoon.

Valerie: "I am discovering that miracles do happen. When we left Lafayette, traveleing downstream on the Wabash, I saw a movement on shore...and saw a bird thrashing in the mud. Verlen and I both paddled over - it was a hawk caught in a muskrat trap! Verlen carefully got out of his boat and poked the terrified bird with his paddle. The bird didn't peck or bite at the blade so Verlen felt safe enough to kneel down and work the trap until the bird was free. With no hesitation the bird flew into the air. I thought a long time about the fate of that bird..."

Next: More on the Wabash

Following Verlen and Valerie-IV-The Wabash-Maumee Portage

2009-12-12T06:53:00.001-05:00

I'm trying to put myself into Verlen's head when he was planning the Two Continent Expedition maybe 23 or 24 years ago. He would have known from his readings of the history of the French explorers that it was possible to travel by water from Montreal on the St. Lawrence to New Orleans on the Mississippi with but one eight mile long overland portage in what is now northeastern Indiana. That portage was across the low Continental Divide between the Atlantic drainage and the Gulf of Mexico drainage.

Maybe he had learned the details of how to cross that portage from other canoeists but I'd like to think he worked it out on his own as I am trying to do. The key to this puzzle is how to get from a bend of the St. Mary's River in Fort Wayne to Little River, a headwaters tributary to the Wabash. There is no clue in the Newsletters as to how they did it.

I never asked Verlen or Valerie how they handled portages on the the Two Continent trip. The Sea Winds were equipped with widely-admired portage yokes built into the seats but they weighed over 60# and I question whether Valerie had the heft to shoulder one. Maybe Verlen shuttled them. Perhaps I will learn more as I read more of the Newsletters.

I know canoe wheels were available then because I used my Swedish-built rig with bicycle wheels to portage my 17' aluminum Grumman Eagle on Grand River Expedition '90. I haven't seen any photos of the Krugers' canoes showing wheels like there were photos of the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challengers from last spring. Coach Huff's folding bicycle rig (which I call "The Traveling Junk Yard") is obvious. Jon Holmes had a folding set of wheels lashed to the back of his sea kayak and Charlie's and Mark P's wheels are legendary by now.

If any of you know how they did the portages perhaps you can share the information with us. Maybe for this one they just pulled out of the Maumee at Fort Wayne when they went home for Christmas and put into the Wabash at Huntington when they resumed the trip.

From Wikipedia: "The Little River is a small stream in Allen and Huntington Counties in northeastern Indiana. A tributary of the Wabash River, it is sometimes called the 'Little Wabash', which may cause it to be confused with the Little Wabash of Illinois (I ran into that problem).

The Little River follows the Wabash-Erie Channel or 'sluiceway', a remnant of the Maumee Torrent that drained ancient Glacial Lake Maumee at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, and joins the Wabash just west of Huntington."

Geographically that is similar to the lower Maple River and the Grand River beyond Muir. Those rivers occupy a wide channel cut by the Glacial Grand when it was a torrent draining meltwater from Lake Saginaw in front of the glacial lobe that was blocking the Lake Huron basin some 10,000 years ago.

Verlen would have been working mostly from books, topographic maps and atlases. I am using mostly Google Maps and TerraServe on my computer, a great convenience and visually much more satisfying.

The "sluiceway" is very obvious on topographic maps. Playing with the topo on TerraServe and the satellite imagery and "Terrain" on Google Maps one can imagine the path of the ancient portage beginning at the western bend of the St. Mary's River by Sweeney Park in Fort Wayne and following West Jefferson Avenue to Portage Boulevard which follows a northeast/southwest trending linear high ground along the west side of the sluiceway valley. This high ground or low ridge, which I think is on the continental divide, passes through the Fort Wayne Country Club.

Going in the same direction along or parallel to a railroad you would come to a whistle stop called Aboite at the natural end of Little River. Little River is channelized and connects to drainage ditches today. The carry would have been about 8 miles. I am sure local historians have it all figured out.

Little River meanders southwest and west maybe 13 or so miles and joins the Wabash just west of Huntington.

Next: The Wabash River.

Following Verlen and Valerie-III-The Maumee

2009-12-10T09:06:00.001-05:00

Wikipedia: "The Maumee River is a river in northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana....It is formed at Fort Wayne,,,by the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers, and meanders northeasterly for about 130 miles through an agricultural region of glacial moraines before flowing into Maumee Bay..."

That St. Joseph River at Fort Wayne is not the same as the St. Joseph River that flows through South Bend and into Lake Michigan. Sometimes it is called the Little St. Joseph or St. Joseph of the Maumee. Like the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan, the Kalamazoo, the Grand, and River Raisin, its headwaters are in Hillsdale County as are the headwaters of the Tiffin River that flows into the Maumee at Defiance, Ohio. Got all that?

More from Wikipedia: "The mouth of the river at Lake Erie is wide and supports considerable commercial traffic including oil, grain and coal. However, about 12 miles upstream, in the town of Maumee...the river becomes much shallower and supports only recreational navigation above that point."

Valerie on the Maumee: "On the Maumee River we got a close-up view of winter because we were fighting our way upstream with our noses close to the bank...In spots the river was so low that our canoes scraped bottom on the rocks. We paddled over many rock ledges...places where my paddle was useless. Even the pole I used to push myself forward failed to find purchase on the flat rock bottom. It became a game of quick switching from paddle, to pole, and sometimes grabbing branches on shore to pull ourselves up the current..."

Verlen on the Maumee: "The Maumee is deep and wide with lots of ocean going and industrial traffic through Toledo. Above the town off Maumee the river changes to shallow limestone ledges and riffles and occasional small rapids up to the town of Napolean. Then it remains a fairly consistent flat land, typical Midwest mud bank river right up to the heart of Fort Wayne."

As they were paddling upstream beyond the city of Maumee and crossing under the I 475 and US 23 bridge they were just a short ways south of the site of the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, the pivotal battle of the Northwest Indian Wars. Look it up.

At Defiance the Hillsdale County-headwatered Tiffin River joins the Maumee, though that would not have impressed the Krugers much since it is kind of a dinky river and the fact it came from Michigan probably didn't excite them like it does me. The much larger Auglaize River comes in from the south at the same general location.

In the mid-1800's the Miami and Erie Canal ran parallel to the Mamuee along the left (north) bank from Defiance to Toledo. The most that the Kruger's would have seen of it would have been remnants of the towpath now used for recreation. At Grand Rapids the Providence Metro park has a summertime operating section complete with water, canal boat and locks. The canal otherwise is under the pavement of Indiana 424 and US 24 all the way to Toledo.

The Wabash and Erie Canal ran alongside the Maumee on the right (south) bank between Fort Wayne and Defiance.

The coming of the railroads doomed the canals.

A thing I notice about the Maumee is that they farm close to the river. There is not that nice border of trees and woods that I am used to seeing in following Michigan rivers. As they paddled into the east side of Fort Wayne the Krugers would have noticed riverside woods more like Michigan. It is called the "River Greenway".

The Kruger's went up the Maumee in December. My satellite image overhead view of the Maumee looks like April. The trees are leafless and the fields have not yet been planted but the grass in lawns and golf courses is green.

The paddle up the Maumee ends in Fort Wayne because that is where the Maumee begins, at the confluence of the Little St. Joseph and St. Mary's Rivers.

Next: The Maumee-Wabash portage.

Following Verlen and Valerie-II-Lake Erie

2009-12-09T19:05:00.000-05:00

When Verlen and Valerie rode the current of the Detroit River out onto Lake Erie they were each paddling a Kruger designed and Kruger built Sea Wind expedition canoe. The two 17' 2" canoes could be catamaraned into one stable watercraft which could be paddled and guided by one person if convenient or necessary. Each had a sailing rig.

Kruger Sea Winds look like rugged kayaks with large cockpits but they are propelled by single bladed paddles and steered with a foot-controlled rudder. The Sea Wind was an experience-based improvement of the Kruger Monarch, which in turn was an improvement of the Kruger Loon. Steve Landick used a Monarch for the last half of the Ultimate Canoe Challenge. Verlen used his Loon for the entire 28,000 miles.

The Krugers had started in the Arctic Ocean in June of 1986 and had gone upstream on the Mackenzie River about 1,800 miles, all the way across Canada, through the Boundary Waters to Grand Portage, across Lake Superior in the winter time to Au Train from where they paddled and portaged across the Upper Peninsula to Lake Michigan, then through the Straits to Lake Huron. After Lake Huron it was through the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.

Verlen and Valerie were married shortly before they started this trip which they sometimes called an extended on-the-water Honeymoon. They eventually divorced and both remarried, Verlen twice.

In All Things Are Possible author Phil Peterson describes what is next: "After paddling past Detroit, the team will head into Lake Erie to Toledo, up the Maumee River to Fort Wayne, overland into the Wabash and south across the state of Indiana to the Ohio. Paddling up the Tennessee River, the team will follow the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway to Mobile, Alabama. From Mobile, the team will paddle east around the Gulf of Mexico to Miami, Florida." I intend to follow Verlen and Valerie at least as far as Mobile, maybe farther.

Jon Young has loaned me his precious find, a hard-bound (in red) book containing all of the Two Continent Canoe Expedition Newsletters. It has been signed by both Verlen and Valerie. Many of the Newsletters are addressed to Milton Owen of Jeffersontown Kentucky so I assume he is responsible. I will try to find a way to thank him as I have thanked Jon for the loan.

Take note, I am trying to follow the Krugers' path. In no way am I trying to relate any part of their untold story of the expedition.

Coming out of the Detroit River after you turn the corner, so-to-speak, around Pte. Mouille which shelters the mouth of the Huron River, it is a straight shot across the west end of Lake Erie to Maumee Bay, never far off shore. The main onshore physical features in view would have been the various power plants, nuclear and coal fired..

At Monroe, the River Raisin flows into the lake. That is of interest since its headwaters in Hillsdale County, Michigan, are very close to the headwaters of two tributaries of the Maumee about which I will comment later. The headwaters of the Raisin are adjacent to the headwaters of the Grand and Kalamazoo Rivers, and not far from the headwaters of the St. Joseph River. All three of those rivers flow to Lake Michigan.

Paddling by Monroe they were passing the site of the Battle of Frenchtown during the War of 1812, and American defeat known as the "River Raisin Massacre." Look it up.

As you enter Maumee Bay after passing the end of Woodtick Peninsula (one of my favorite geographical names) you leave the blue waters of Lake Erie and enter the mud-colored water of the Maumee River and shortly you are in downtown Toledo.

The only mention of the Lake Erie crossing in the Newsletter was Verlen's comment "We left Michigan by crossing the west end of Lake Erie and then headed up the Maumee River."

Next: The Maumee

Following Verlen and Valerie

2009-12-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

So far as I know there has been no write-up on the Krugers' 1986-1989 Two Continent Canoe Expedition from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn like the book One Incredible Journey by Verlenand Clayton Klein or The Ultimate Canoe Challenge by Verlen and Brand Frentz. In Phil Peterson's All Things Are Possible four chapters (48 pages) are devoted the Two Continent trip. The total number of pages covering Verlen's whole life are 302.

As a sort of old man's salute to those two 20 years after they did it I have been following portions of their route on Google Maps. This lets me fly above them with maps, satellite photo coverage and something Google calls "Terrain", which is good for observing waterways and surrounding topography. I also look at topographic maps on TerraServe or MapQuest for details on such things as portages and canals.

I sometimes tap Wikipedia and other Internet sources for the history of various places that interest me. Thus I like to think I am in some minor way duplicating the extensive research that Verlen did with books, maps, atlases and correspondence in preparation for the expedition.

In 2008 for Charlie's Odyssey, and in the spring of 2009 for the Detroit-to-Chicago Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge, I followed the paddlers with what I called my "Virtual Helicopter". This system involved using Google Earth satellite coverage, tilting the perspective and following up and down the rivers and shores at various levels above the tree tops.

For this project I think that approach is too fast and mechanical. This time I'm going to use what I think of as the "Seagull" system. Slower and much quieter, so-to-speak. I will use Google Maps map and terrain coverage to see where I am and am going or have been, and the satellite coverage to see what the waterways and surroundings actually look like. Then I sort of fly upstream or down like a seagull follows a stream.

As you who paddle know, from the canoe on the river at paddler's eye level all you really see is the river and its nearby banks. On backwaters or lakes your view expands to include more sky and farther shores and maybe distant highlands. Using the Seagull approach, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I can look down like God from any height and see what paddlers can't.

For my first exercise I looked at their route from the mouth of the Detroit River across Lake Erie to the mouth of the Maumee at Toledo.

This is familiar territory to me and my computer since Hugh Heward and his crew in 1790 and the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challengers in 2009 paddled across the lake from the Detroit River to get to the mouth of the Huron River for their upstream struggles. Also, the mouth of the Huron was where my hero Charlie Parmelee started upstream in the snow on his 2008 Odyssey. Further, in 1680 LaSalle rafted across the mouth of the Detroit to get to Ontario on his way to Niagara after having walked across the the wilderness of the Lower Peninsula.

I invite you to join me in following Verlen and Valerie. As usual, if you want to opt out, just let me know.

Charlie's 2009 Odyssey - IV

2009-12-08T06:42:00.001-05:00

Here is a good-mood message if I ever got one......

Jim Woodruff
thetopologist
On the Grand River
in Delta Township

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, Beaverwood13@aol.com <Beaverwood13@aol.com> wrote:

From: Beaverwood13@aol.com <Beaverwood13@aol.com>
Subject: (no subject)
To: woodruff.jim@gmail.com, thetopologist@sbcglobal.net, stock.karen@gmail.com
Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:34 PM

Hey Captain
Wednesday looks like a pretty crappy day of rain and snow and cold....Hey I know... ....another perfect day for can-o-wing....That's canoeing when its snowing...Ha!!
Come on ......that's funny! .....and the rain will wash the turkey turds off me boat.......
So get to bed early on Tuesday and we'll start where we stopped on 127 and paddle up to the Maple Grove Rd. boat launch ...more trees in the river so it will be slower going ...... be ready to make like a pissed off beaver in a lumber yard...... we' ve got some holes to chew ...anyone that.. wood.. like to join me is welcome.......
......wood like.....come on ...that's funny!....... Day don't call me da beaverwood tirteen guy fer nuttin you know .....If you can't laugh with me ...you can at least laugh
at me...just as long as you laugh........
See you on the water....your paddlin pal....Charlie P.

Charlie's Odyssey III

2009-12-07T09:26:00.001-05:00

First day's report. He sounds pretty perky this morning.

Jim Woodruff
thetopologist
On the Grand River
in Delta Township

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, Beaverwood13@aol.com <Beaverwood13@aol.com> wrote:

From: Beaverwood13@aol.com <Beaverwood13@aol.com>
Subject: (no subject)
To: stock.karen@gmail.com, thetopologist@sbcglobal.net, woodruff.jim@gmail.com
Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 9:05 AM

Good morning Captain Woodruff
Had a great day on the water yesterday.....The walk was nice ....but windy....mounted a push pole to front of canoe like Mark had on his canoe for the Ulitimate ....worked much better...thanks Mark ...I added a foam bicycle handlebar grip for comfort and insulation......remember all the controversy on the canoe cart last year....we found the perfect cart......the perfect handle....now we need the perfect hand grip.....get to work everyone.....water level was up...it helped me over some of the log jams and created stronger back eddies...love those back eddies.
On the river....lots of ducks, gooses or is it geeses.....ok it's geese,
muscrats, fox, red and black squirrels ....a few hawks, lot's of tweety birds, a couple pileated woodpeckers and deer...raccoons and turkeys just before dark....
The turkeys were roosting in the trees above and along the river....Danger..Danger.... Will Robinson...turkeys will let you paddle right under them and just before they fly they lighten their load ...and when there's twenty or thirty all in a bunch...or is that a gaggle or google....or a herd or a flock.....actually I don't know what it is but I can tell you when you hear them flappin those big wings ......do not look up.......luckily I dodged the bullet but the canoe took a few direct hits.....winter time on the river ...
not as shitty as you might think...or is it?.....I hope to paddle from 127 to Maple Grove boat launch on wenzday..... or is it wenstay.....anyone who wood wike to waddle awong wet me know......see you on the wadder....Charlie P..

Charlie's 2009 Odyssey-II

2009-12-06T18:57:00.001-05:00

Charlie called from the river at 1:30 PM saying he's near Tomkins Corners and it was going OK. That means he had passed Onondaga and had made the big turn from heading south to heading east.

Call just before 6 PM. Day One is done. He's pulling out at US 127 and heading home for the night. He didn't sound too perky.

Charlie's 2009 Odyssey

2009-12-06T09:06:00.002-05:00

9:00 AM Sunday. Call from Charlie's wife Deb. He's on the Grand River heading upstream.

Your Kalamazoo and St. Joe Rivers Winter-Time Trek

2009-12-03T20:49:00.000-05:00

Email exchange with Charlie Parmalee:

My masochistic hero! Taking stupid pills again? I'm with you all the way from my warm chair in front of my glowing screen with my bottle of Coors.

Kit Lane, author of "The Grand" which I have donated to GRE 2010, has done a book on the Kalamazoo. I have a copy. She is working on a book on the St. Joe. I'll find out how far along she is. By copy of this I will let her know what you are about to do. She will want to follow along. If she is not "birding" in some ridiculous place such as Estonia, Bolivia or Oman, I am sure she will want to come out and watch you suffering someplace.

Where are you launching on the Grand? When? What do we call the trip? Charlie's Odyssey 2009?

By copy of this I will ask Geneva Wiskeman for something on the history of those towns.

Also by copy of this to Bryon Ennis I will notify G.R.E.A.T. that you are invading their territory.

Remember, when LaSalle ran into ice he put runners on his canoes.

Jim Woodruff
thetopologist
On the Grand River
in Delta Township

--- On Thu, 12/3/09, Beaverwood13@aol.com <Beaverwood13@aol.com> wrote:

From: Beaverwood13@aol.com <Beaverwood13@aol.com>
Subject: (no subject)
To: thetopologist@sbcglobal.net
Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 6:36 AM

Hi Jim
I have been scouting (in the truck) the Grand River to Liberty and portage to the north branch Kalamazoo to Albion, south branch Kalamazoo to Homer and portage to the St. Joe River. I went as far as the Town of Colon....... Scouted the little towns on highway 60 where the rivers cross the highway.
I'm sure there's some history in each little town....I wonder if anyone has wrote it down. There was a recent fire in the town of Union city.
They were there with a fire truck and boom truck boarding up the windows and doors. I like to stop at these old towns along the river when I'm on a trip.
An old restaurant or old store with creeky wood floors are favorite places for me....dont even let me into an old hardware store....you'll never get me out of there.
I checked out the land portages and the ones around the dams, took some notes on which side to portage the dams and best take out / put in places.
I'm hoping to paddle this trip this winter if the water stays open long enough. If I get through the small stuff in December the bigger part of the St. Joe
will probably be open longer. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do the trip all at once. Maybe 3 - 4 days at a time. I'm trying to fit it in between family get togethers, band practices, the holidays and G.R.E. 2010 meetings. So I'm packin up my gear, fluffin' up that 0 degree sleeping bag, packing my woolies and
hot chocolate and hoping the weather holds for a couple more weeks. I figure it will take a couple weeks with the short hours of daylight and the water being a little low I will have to pole and line up some of the smaller places on the Grand River and North branch of the Kalamazoo. Anyway I want to have you along
again on this one.....same as before.....you in your easy chair, nice, warm and dry, suckin down a Coors beer.....eating a * * * *..ING STEAK.....
And me in the canoe freezing my ass off, slogging up creeks, eating power bars and other healthy shit, drinking gatorade, sleeping in the canoe and sadly but true enjoying every minute of it. So get stocked up on beer and steak and get ready for the show coming soon to a river near you.

Your paddling pal, forever loyal and greatful Servant.............Charlie Parmelee

Sneak preview

2009-11-18T13:46:00.000-05:00

The statue of Verlen Kruger which will stand by the Grand River in Portland has been bronzed and delivered to Mike Smith's house out in the country west of Portland. There was a viewing Tuesday night attended by his wife Jenny, son John, grandson John, and many of Verlen's fellow paddlers and friends (including me). There will be other chances to view it.

I think you will agree he looks good in his Tilley hat with his paddle as he will be looking up the Grand River at Thompson Park in Portland. His clothes and boots look very authentic.

Verlen Kruger Memorial Association leader Dan Smith has scheduled the dedication ceremony for Saturday June 26, 2010. Meanwhile there is considerable work to be done to get the plaza and glacial boulder mount ready for erection of the statue.

Obviously there will be expenses involved in getting this project finished so contributions to the memorial fund will be welcomed. Here's the link in case you want to buy a brick or donate: http://www.verlenkrugermemorial.org/

Veterans Day Visit to Verlen Kruger

2009-11-13T11:56:00.004-05:00

On Veterans Day I went across the river and visited Verlen's grave.

He and I are both veterans of World War II. Born the same year, we were both on occupation duty in Korea after the Japanese surrendered. I was Commanding Officer of the 69th Army Engineer Topographic Company in Seoul. He was flying his P51 (Named "Sweet Genevieve" in honor of Jennie) out of Kimpo Air Base a few miles toward China.

When we were kids it was called Armistice Day. Every November 11 at 11 AM the school kids would stand up and face to the east in honor of those who fought in World War I.

I put my hand on his gravestone and said a few words of gratitude on behalf of all of us.

I showed some visitors pictures of his funeral in Phil Peterson's book All Things Are Possible.

The 19th Century Verlen - 4

2009-11-12T11:37:00.001-05:00

"My clothes for this tour consisted of a complete suit of grey flannel for use in the boat, and another suit of light but ordinary dress for shore and Sundays. The 'Norfolk jacket' is a loose frock-coat, like a blouse, with shoulder straps, and belted at the waist, and garnished with six pockets. With this excellent new-fashioned coat, a something in each of its pockets, and a Cambridge straw hat, canvas wading shoes, blue spectacles, a waterproof overcoat, and my spare jib for a sun shawl, there was sure to be a full day's enjoyment defiance of rain or sun, deeps or shallows, hunger or ennui."

Curious about the Cambridge straw hat I went looking on the Internet and sure enough I found a Cambridge Straw Boater Hat at a place called Urban Excess in England. It is a stiff, flat top straw hat with a wide brim (and a black band) specifically for boating on a river. They are priced at 12 pounds (whatever that is in $). I decided I had to have one but they were out of stock.

Verlen always wore a Tilley hat. Son Jim does, too. They are the very best.

Having been successful hunting for the Cambridge straw hat I decided to try the Internet for the Norfolk Jacket and sure enough there it was complete with illustrations. "The principal feature of the Norfolk is the shoulder construction that made it easier to raise a gun to bear on a bird." Two thoughts: MacGregor was a famous shooter and the same action back would have made the Norfolk suitable for paddling.

You can get a genuine English-tailored wool Norfolk jacket for about the price of a kayak.

As for canvas wading shoes, I wore L.L.Bean canvas canoe shoes on my 1948 trip in a wood and canvas canoe in Western Ontario. I still have them.

MacGregor's thousand miler put him and his Rob Roy on the following European rivers:Thames, Sambre, Meuse/Maas, Rhine, Main, Reuss, Aar, Ill, Moselle, Meurthe, Marne and Seine. Lakes: Titisee, Constance, Untersee, Zurich, Zug and Lucerne. Plus six canals in Belgium and France and two expeditions in the open sea of the English Channel.

On my big drafting table in my "Map Room" I have spread out old National Geographic maps and an old British Bartholemew Atlas and am trying to trace his travels. Although the rivers and lakes haven't moved during the last 144 years the international borders have. Since he wrote his book European borders have changed and changed again thanks to wars and their aftermaths. The Franco-Prussian War, World War I, World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union all resulted in border changes and new and different countries where he traveled. Trying to trace Velen's travels in detail can be difficult but at least the effort isn't complicated by such changes.

Historically, consider that while he was making his fun preparations in England the Civil War was raging here. Also consider that 5 years after he paddled in France and what is now Germany there was a war going on there, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

I am always amazed at the amount of map work Verlen must have done to lay out his trips. Like I am trying to follow MacGregor's route, I have been trying to follow Verlen's and Steve Landick's route on the Ultimate Canoe Challenge using "Google maps".

The 19th Century Verlen - 3

2009-11-10T10:57:00.000-05:00

Son Jim put the new Bell Rob Roy 15 in the Grand behind my house Sunday and paddled to Grand Ledge. Maiden Voyage. Great weather. He experimented with wooden paddles; straight, bent and double bladed. Also double bladed composite. Tried raising the seat level with a boat cushion. He loves it. Pat Harrington went along in his genuine 1983 made-in-Oscoda Sawyer Sglass Summer Song, shown below with the Rob Roy.

Robin Barfoot shuttled. She argued that the Rob Roy should be called a kayak. I insisted that since MacGregor, Verlen, Bell and I call it a canoe she should too. I don't know whether I converted her.

I sat on the end of the dock at the JC Boat Launch in Grand Ledge with a beer in my hand (furnished by Robin) commenting and observing like I used to do for Verlen when he was paddling behind my house.

Back to Verlen and MacGregor. I emailed Phil Peterson Sr., author of All Things are Possible, asking him how familiar he thought Verlen was with John MacGregor and his Rob Roy canoes and his travels and books. Phil responded, referring me to page 63 of his book for the only words he wrote on my topic: "Verlen even ordered a Rob Roy out of Denmark, but it wasn't big enough for their needs. Though well designed and built, neither he nor Jerry (Cesar) felt felt it was big enough to carry what they needed." Phil goes on " I believe it was the Rob Roy episode that made him and Jerry elect to build their own boats. I am almost certain Verlen had read MacGregor's books. I don't believe there was anything available on canoeing at the time that Verlen didn't read. I do remember a conversation he and I had in his basement one time when he said he liked the looks of the Rob Roy, but it simply wasn't enough boat for how he planned to use it."

Mark P wrote: "Phil is right on, this is just about the same info I talked to Verlen about on the subject. I think the only major difference other than size of the canoe would be that Verlen added a rudder and used a single blade."

A later message from Phil said: "Mark's comment about 'Verlen added a rudder and used a single blade' is significant. These were enormous changes for an expedition canoe." Then he referred me to page 218 and all of Chapter 26 of All Things Are Possible for insights into Verlen's design strategies.

Next: Some of MacGregor's 1865 voyages on the rivers and canals of Europe.

The 19th Century Verlen - 2

2009-11-06T10:36:00.007-05:00

The dimensions of the original Rob Roy used by John MacGregor for the trip described in his 1866 book A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe were: Length 15', Width 28", Depth 9", Weight 80#. It drew a scant 3" of water.

All Rob Roys (there were 7) were clinker built* of white cedar and oak. Some were built by the boat builder Searles of Lambeth, London. The canoe for the Middle Eastern trip was built by "Mr. Pembry" of London. Apparently the hulls were oak and the decks cedar. At least one survives in a British watercraft museum.

* "Clinker built" is a method of boat building in which the lower edge of each side plank overlaps the one below it. This is also known as "lapstrake." Properly done there is no need for glue or caulking.

Like MacGregor, Verlen was not satisfied with his first craft and kept modifying them. Unlike MacGregor, he didn't have someone else build them for him.

J. Henry Rushton, the world-famous builder of canoes in Northern New York in the latter part of the 19th Century built canoes patterned after the Rob Roys. From the "Louisville Commercial" August 2 1876: "The Rob Roy Model is a boat of oak or cedar fourteen feet long, twenty-six inches wide, about nine and one-half inches deep, and, as all canoes, pointed at both ends, with much sheer and very slight curvature. In a canoe of this sort, weighing about seventy pounds, MacGregor has been cruising hundreds and thousands of miles, on both continents, for years."

Substitute "Loon" for "Rob Roy", "Kevlar" for "oak or cedar" and "Kruger" for "MacGregor" and it could be an article from a 1976 newspaper.

In Rob Roy on the Jordan MacGregor goes into great detail about where everything was stored in the canoe including his pistol and holster on the right side of the cockpit and his brandy bottle on the left. I'll have to ask Valerie where she and Verlen kept theirs.

The name Rob Roy comes from Robert Roy MacGregor, an ancestor of John. He was a famous Scottish folk hero and outlaw of the early 18th century, sometimes known as the Scottish Robin Hood. He was usually known simply as Rob Roy.

The 19th Century Verlen

2009-11-05T10:20:00.009-05:00

In memory of my late wife Elaine I have purchased a Dave Yost-designed Bell Rob Roy 15' KevLight decked solo canoe for my son Jim (also in memory of Elaine I bought daughter Karen a Pongo 140 kayak for the use of her large sons at her cottage on Black Lake and I'm going to buy her a Pongo 120 for herself).

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Bell Rob Roy, but it is kind of a lightweight, shorter version of the Kruger Sea Wind that weighs in at about 40# and has about 8 or 9 fewer layers of Kevlar. It is a beautiful watercraft. I bought it through Ron Sell of Unadilla Boatworks on the Huron River near Dexter. Ron is a Bell dealer. We will be displaying the Rob Roy at the Quiet Water Symposium next March 7 at Michigan State University.

The point of this email is to alert you to the story of the Englishman John MacGregor who developed the original Rob Roy canoe and paddled versions of it for thousands of miles in Europe and the Middle East and wrote three books about these adventures. The parallels and contrasts between his story and Verlen Kruger's are very intriguing to me and I want to share them with you-all. If you are already familiar with MacGregor and the original Rob Roys, stop here.

John MacGregor lived from 1825 to1892. Verlen's life span was 1922 to 2004, thus they lived just a century apart. But while Verlen grew up a sharecropper's son, MacGregor's father was a General who fought against Napoleon. MacGregor had a degree in mathematics from Trinity College in Dublin and studied patent law at Cambridge. Verlen was a plumber's apprentice and plumbing contractor.

MacGregor toured Europe, the Middle East, Russia, North Africa, the United States, Canada and Siberia for pleasure. Verlen toured places like Texas, Japan and Korea thanks to being an Army tanker and a P-51 pilot in the Army Air Force during World War II.

MacGregor's fame as a canoeist came more than midway through life. Likewise Verlen didn't start canoeing until he was 41. Without question, they were the preeminent paddlers of their times.

MacGregor's books pertinent to this tale are A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe, The Rob Roy on the Baltic and The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Red Sea and Genesareth. The illustrations in his books are his own.

Books about Verlen and his adventures are One Incredible Journey by Verlen and Clayton Klein, Valerie Fons' Keep It Moving, The Ultimate Canoe Challenge by Verlen and Brand Frentz and Phil Peterson Sr.'s All Things are Possible.

MacGregor and Verlen both called their craft "canoes" though MacGregor used a double bladed paddle while Verlen used a single bladed paddle with a rudder. Both could be rigged for sailing. Both slept in their canoes when convenient or when circumstances demanded.

MacGregor was 6'6" tall. The dimensions of the Baltic Rob Roy were: Length 14', Stem to beam 7'6", Width (6" abaft of midships) 26", Depth from top of deck (at fore end of well) to top of keel 11", Outside depth of keel 1", Depth at gunwale 8 1/2", Well (cockpit) 32"x20", Weight 60#.

Verlen was maybe a foot shorter than MacGregor. The dimensions of the Loon which he paddled on the 28,000 mile trip (from the Introduction to The Ultimate Canoe Challenge) are Length 17', Width 35", Cockpit about 5' long. Weight 60#.

Here are the dimensions for the Sea Wind which evolved as improvements from the Loon (and Monarch). Verlen used the Sea Wind on the two-continent trip with Valerie: Length 17'2", Over all width 28.5", Width at 4" waterline 25", Middle depth 13.5", Cockpit 20"x87", Weight 63#. These specs are from the Kruger Canoes website. I am surprised at the difference in width between the Loon and the Sea Wind. Perhaps Mark P. can enlighten us.

The dimensions of Jim's Bell Rob Roy are: Length 15', Gunwale width 20.5", Maximum width 28.5", 3" Waterline width 25.5", Cockpit 18"x63". Weight 35-40#. He is 6'3" tall.

To be continued.

Ultimate Kruger Challenge - Report #6

2009-10-05T09:59:00.000-04:00

Brian Weber's Kruger Canoe Adventures blog is being continually updated. By my count the eight "Pro Boaters" have made it to the Harvey Bridge as have the two Florida paddlers. Mark is going on down to Lake Michigan and I think two or three more with him or behind him.

Correction on my 1949 trip down the Manistee, it ended at the US 131 bridge, not M31.

The car we used to get to the river from our home in Watervliet was a 1946 Chevrolet, one of the first off the assembly line after GM started building cars again after World War II. My brother paid $900 for it new. Gasoline was 27 cents a gallon and graduate engineers earned $300 a month.

This trip took place 14 years before Verlen took up canoeing............

Word from Coach

2009-10-04T09:50:00.000-04:00

Word from the Coach (via email)

--- On Sat, 10/3/09, Larry Hoff wrote:

Hi Jim,

This is exciting. Not sure you are still up, but I will be watching Toby's spotter for a couple more hours. May have to get one of those things. Tell Dan, in my eyes he's the champ in this challenge. I know it had to be bad for him to leave. Tell him I know Verlen is very, very proud of him.

These's guys are the best. I feel very honored to have been able to meet them this spring. I can say the same about you and your son, Jim and daugther Karen. You've done well my friend.

Coach

Ultimate Kruger Challenge - Report #5

2009-10-03T22:59:00.001-04:00

Saturday night. There is no joy in Ann Arbor but they are happy in East Lansing.

The Manistee 100 miler is underway. You can follow it on Toby's Spotter. There is a link to it on my blog www.thetopoligist.blogspot.com,

Dan got sick again and is off the river. His wife has picked him up. Mark is doing the 7 mile portage solo and is going to put in the Manistee and go all night. Hopes to "reel in" Toby. Jack is going to join Dan's nephew at the M72 Campground and go down the Manistee tomorrow.

I am reminded of a trip down this same stretch of the Manistee 60 years ago. My late brother Dick and I spent two days paddling down the river, ending at the M31 Bridge. Our canoe was an 18 ft Old Town OTCA built in 1921. It was the same wood and canvas canoe my other brother John and I had used for our long wilderness trip in Western Ontario in the summer of 1948.

Two things stand out in my memory about that long ago Manistee trip. The first is that we froze our butts off trying to sleep in World War II Army surplus blanket sleeping bags.

The other is related to the fact that in those days you could drink safely from the river. I was on my hands and knees taking a drink of the cold, clear water when I heard this tinkling noise upstream. I could hardly believe it but there was my brother urinating in the Manistee with this big grin on his face. I resolved to get back at him but he never gave me the opportunity.

The Old Town still exists. Restored by Scott Barkdall of Skywoods Canoe, it resides at a fancy "old money" cottage in the Les Cheneaux Islands in the UP.

I might miss some sleep tonight with friends still on the river like like I did when Charlie was suffering solo up the Huron in the spring of 2008.

Ultimate Kruger Challenge - Report #4

2009-10-03T09:23:00.001-04:00

The Bradfords' time from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan: 3 days 13 hours 25 minutes. Amazing and congratulations from your awestruck corespondent. Their performance has inspired me to spend time on the Internet looking into racing canoes and canoe builders, the annual AuSable Marathon etc, a phase of canoeing that I haven't paid much attention to heretofore.

The Tres Amigos have been having a tough time. Dan got sick. Mark hoofed it into Mio for medications etc. Wind and rain in their faces and cold. As I said yesterday, the AuSable is proving tougher than the Huron was last spring during the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge from Detroit to Chicago. Yesterday's latest report has Dan doing better. Mark's Spotter showed them maybe 10 miles east of Grayling.

The 100 miles-on-the-Manistee goes this morning, starting time about 7:30 AM. Toby Nipper has arrived from Florida to participate. The start is at the M72 campground west of Grayling, the finish at Mesick.

Ultimate Kruger Challenge - Report #3

2009-10-01T22:15:00.001-04:00

Cell phone call from Dan Smith this morning...bad water conditions...behind schedule...frost on the tents...but still happy to be out paddling. A true acolyte of Verlen Kruger.

Late evening check of the Kruger Canoes blog shows that the Bradfords have made it all the way down the Manistee. The Tres Amigos have gotten through the Mio Pond mess. Mark P. says this is tougher than going up the Huron last spring.

Coach finished his Wisconsin River trip

2009-09-30T21:33:00.000-04:00

I got a message from Coach yesterday (Tues Sept 29) that he was back from Branson and headed back to the Wisconsin River. His plan was to drop his canoe and gear at Muscoda, drive his car to a park about a mile down the Mississippi from it's confluence with the Wisconsin (Wyalising State Park), then hitch hike back to his canoe.

I got another message this evening (Wed Sept 30) that he had put in and had finished paddling down the Wisconsin. He arrived at the Mississippi about 2:15 PM then spent time trying to find the right channel to get to his car. Confusion at the end but success overall.

He will render a final report and send some pictures in a few days. He sends his regards to the Ultimate Kruger Challengers.

So he has done it (and by himself). All the way from headwaters at Lac Vieux Desert at the edge of Michigan's UP to the Father of Waters. As I predicted he turned left at the Mississippi but he did not head for New Orleans. A gutty performance from a man who has earned my ultimate respect. In my prime I don't think I could have kept up with him.

He and his performance reminds me of that old joke about the guy who was proud of always doing things the hard way. One time his son asked how he was conceived. The father replied proudly "Standing up in a hammock!"

Ultimate Kruger Challenge - Report #2

2009-09-30T11:25:00.001-04:00

I'm sitting here feeling sorry for the Challengers. They have been facing more brutal canoeing conditions than anyone I know since Charlie Parmelee started upstream into a tough current on the Huron River at the end of March 2008....in the snow.....after a cold night's semi-sleep....in the snow..

I am following closely Brian's Weber's reports in Mark P's "Kruger Canoe Adventures". www.krugercanoes.blogspot.com

Team Bradford made it to Grayling last night, having passed the Tres Amigos early on. There are pictures on the blog of their new racer. It is one mean looking skinny black Crozier canoe named "Bushwhacker". They are now doing the 7 mile portage up M72.

The Tres Amigos (Mark P., Dan Smith and Jack Murgatroid) have not yet reached Mio Pond where they face a nasty walk after they portage the dam since the DNR and/or Consumers Energy decided to pull down the pond level 8 feet for dam repairs. That is apparently affecting the AuSable's current also. Yesterday's brutal headwinds and rain made for a tough day but I understand they had a good fire last night and slept good.

Be sure to look at the new Spotter displays. Mark's Seawind and the Bradford's "Bushwacker" are both sending signals which allow you to chose backgrounds of maps, satellite images or "terrain", the latter being very good for tracking waterways.

Chuck Amboy is hustling the newpaper Grayling Avalanche for coverage. He has issued a "press release". We are going big time!

Ultimate Kruger Challenge 2009

2009-09-28T09:36:00.002-04:00

The Ultimate Kruger Challenge 2009 is underway.

The Challenge, a project of the Verlen Kruger Memorial Association, is to paddle and portage all the way across the Lower Peninsula from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan starting at the mouth of the AuSable River at Oscoda. The Challengers will go upstream on the AuSable to Grayling, then make a 7 mile portage-on-wheels via Highway M72 to the Manistee River where they will put back in and paddle the rest of the way to Lake Michigan, a total of 271 miles.

The "Tres Amigos" - Mark Przedwojewski, Dan Smith, and Jack Murgatroid - started up the AuSable yesterday afternoon about 4:30 with the intention of finding a high and dry campground before the storms hit. A message from Mark at 7:15 PM said they had pulled off and set up camp.

They are paddling Kruger Seawinds. Mark P. has a new Spotter on his. You can follow their progress on Mark's Kruger Canoe Adventures blog, of which Brian Weber of Wisconsin is the Blogmaster.

Bob Bradford and son Mike in their tandem racing canoe planned to start this morning. A message from Bob last night said they saw "three bums" heading up the river. I'm trying to find out more about the Bradfords' canoe. They also have an active Spotter.

I think there is a 100 miler in-one-day on the Manistee on October 1 involved with all this. I'll let you know when I get it straight.

No word from Coach yet after his Branson trip.

Coach is off the river

2009-09-23T09:39:00.002-04:00

On Sunday Coach went to the Packers game then returned to his takeout place at Prairie du Sac. Stayed in a motel. He was pleased that he had no more dams to portage but was concerned about low water.

Monday he paddled to Muscoda. I don't have details. Camped out Monday night. Woke up at 4 AM. Raining outside. Also raining inside since he did a lousy job of re-water proofing his old fly. He got soaked. I'm thinking of taking up a collection to buy him a decent tent and fly and a Verlen Kruger-type comfortable mattress.

Here is how he described some more of his miserable day Tuesday: "I did not have a confirmed ride back to Prairie du Sac, so I hid all my gear in some brush and went to a local gas station to see if anyone stopping for gas would give me a lift. The first person took me about 10 miles. Then at another gas station I got a ride for about 20 miles and at a third I got a ride back to my car. I quickly hurried back to Muscoda, packed up my stuff and headed for my sister's all the time thinking how I was going to finish this trip." Then he tells a garbled tale of missed phone calls and wrong dates but he finally got home and went to Branson, Missouri, as scheduled.

On the way home from Branson he intends to put back in the river and finish the trip to the Mississippi. I'm afraid he will turn left and head for New Orleans.

Coach on the Wisconsin - Day 6

2009-09-19T09:32:00.005-04:00

Coach reported to Karen Friday morning. He talks fast and we have trouble spelling some Wisconsin names but here goes.

He spent the night near the Petenwell Dam. On Friday morning, as planned, he biked around (rather than paddling/portaging each) three dams with one trip when he arrived at Wisconsin Rapids downstream of Stevens Point. After the third dam as he was about to put back into the river a native told him the channel he was proposing to put into led not to the river as Coach had believed, but yet another dam. With that information Coach abandoned the river route and bicycle portaged about 9 miles to Nekoosa on roads that ran along the river.

He put back in the river south of town and paddled downstream into the Petenwell Flowage - I think the second biggest reservoir on the Wisconsin. As he was standing in the water to enter his craft, a passerby advised him to "Get out!" of the water because what he was standing in was a toxic algae bloom. Once in, it was an easy paddle across the flowage.

He planned to go through the Wisconsin Dells (Portage, WI, approx. 300 mile mark) but we do not yet have a report.

A recent story on NPR about toxic algae blooms.

Coach on the Wisconsin - Day 5

2009-09-17T23:28:00.001-04:00

When he arrived in Stevens Point last night Coach did not stay in a motel as planned. Instead he ended up camping after dark in some park. Awoke this morning to find he was laying next to a "No Camping" sign in a wet sleeping bag.

Four more dams yesterday plus he wasted an hour not realizing he was circumnavigating a large island. He thought he was still going downstream until he saw the same two fishermen for a second time. I'm confused just trying to describe it. Maybe it is because he Emailed me directly instead of using the Karen connection.

In a late morning call to Karen he said he was looking at maps of what he was facing downstream, the second largest flowage on the entire river plus 3 dams at Wisconsin Rapids. Thinking about wheel portaging all three in one long trip. We will have to wait for the next report to find out what he decided.

There may be an interruption coming up since he says he's going to go to the Packers game Sunday.

Coach on the Wisconsin - Day 4

2009-09-16T15:24:00.001-04:00

Noon call from Coach. He is at the Rothschild Dam on the south side of Wausau. That means he paddled late again because he is far beyond yesterday's goal of getting south of Merrill. He camped at Gilbert Park on the north side of Wausau.

If you are following Coach on Google Earth or Google Maps you will see that the river and the highways are never far apart on this stretch.

He had to portage five dams yesterday. He says the dams are driving him nuts since it takes so long to get around them. The portages are 1/4 to a mile long and he's glad he has his traveling junkyard folding bike portage rig.

He's dreading the portage at the paper mill at Mosinee where he hears he will have to call the mill and wait for an escort to arrive and take him across their property. I sympathize. I looked at the papermill complex on Google Maps Satellite. It's a big and complicated beast. The Wisconsin is an industrial river many places. Also spectacular other places.

The weather is a bit cooler and he has a tail wind.

He plans to stay in a motel at Stevens point tonight (River Mile 205).

Coach on the Wisconsin - Day 3

2009-09-15T22:16:00.001-04:00

Noon call from Coach from Tomahawk. He said it was absolutely gorgeous there. I assume he meant the river and environs not the town.

Last night he camped in the woods at Kings Dam upstream from Tomahawk. That means he got through Rhinelander yesterday afternoon and portaged the dam there. He says he has portaged "5 or 6 dams" which also means that he has lost count already. There are 26 total on the whole river.

He hoped to portage 3 or 4 more today and get south of Merrill which is River Mile 138. Then he intends to slow down a bit. He didn't say how late he paddled last night. Karen doubts that he will really slow down. We'll see.

Merrill is about as far south as Northport at the top of the Leelanau Peninsula (the "Little Finger") in the Lower Peninsula.

Coach on the Wisconsin - Day 2

2009-09-14T13:11:00.003-04:00

Another call from Coach just before noon today. He said it was a long night. Ended up throwing his sleeping bag on somebody's dock.

He has gone through the Rainbow Flowage (pictured above - they call backwaters behind dams in Wisconsin "flowages") and has made the portage. The Rainbow Dam is about 12 miles southeast of the town of Woodruff, my favorite Wisconsin town.

Lovely warm day, no breeze yet, nice lazy river. Intends to make Rhinelander this afternoon.

Coach on the Wisconsin River - Day 1

2009-09-13T22:30:00.006-04:00

Coach called Karen at noon to say he was on the river and paddling. He had first put in at the US 45 bridge because he had been advised that the first five miles was impassable but then he ran into some canoeists who said that it was fine so he pulled out and went back to the beginning at Lac Vieux Desert. He put in at the dam and is now going downstream.

I looked for the dam on Google Maps and Google Earth. I couldn't positively locate it but there is a nice photo of the beginning of the Wisconsin on Google Earth. I entered "Lac Vieux Desert Wi" to search.

Coach called again at about 8 PM. Said he was getting close to Eagle River. Beautiful day, nice winding creek, great weather, trees changing, nice current. Sounded like he was going to keep going. He doesn't pause to smell the water lillies.

Coach on the Wisconsin River - Preliminary Report

2009-09-12T15:38:00.007-04:00

Larry "Coach" Hoff plans to launch his Kruger Seawind expedition canoe on Lac Vieux Desert (from French for Lake of the Old Clearing or Old Garden) on Sunday September 13 2009 and go all the way down the Wisconsin River to the Mississippi River by September 22. As usual, he will look like a traveling junk yard with his folding bicycle portaging rig stuffed in behind the seat.

Coach, shown here with his gear during the 2009 Hugh Heward Challenge. Nancy Anderson looks on.

Lac Vieux Desert, the head lake of the Wisconsin River, is a relatively large and shallow lake which lies astraddle the UP/Wisconsin State Line southeast of Watersmeet. It's drainage area is one of only two places in Michigan in the Mississippi watershed. (The other is in the Lower Peninsula in Berrien County at the Indiana border.) Thus if you put some used beer in the woods up there it will eventually flow into the Mississippi, down the big river past St. Louis and New Orleans and end up in the Gulf of Mexico....a long trip.

The Wisconsin is that state's longest river at 430 miles, some 160 miles longer than the Grand, Michigan's longest river. Quoting from Wikipedia: "It flows south across the glacial plain of central Wisconsin, passing Wasau and Stevens point. In southern Wisconsin it encounters the terminal moraine formed during the last ice age, where it forms the Dells of the Wisconsin River. North of Madison at Portage, the river turns to the west, flowing through Wisconsin's hilly Western Upland and joining the Mississippi approximately 3 miles south of Prairie du Chien. Although the river was originally navigable up to the city of Portage 200 miles from its mouth, it is now considered non-navigable beyond the lock and dam at Prairie du Sac."

The Wisconsin exits Lac Vieux Desert at its southwest corner the promptly turns northwest almost reaching the Michigan border before it turns south again approximately paralleling US 45.

Coach anticipates some problems with low water at the beginning. We'll see whether he does the upper river by canoe or bicycle.

Great evening on Lake Huron at the Schneider Cottage

2009-08-16T21:20:00.003-04:00

Friday night I enjoyed the hospitality of daughter and son-in-law's friends John Schneider and Sharon Emery at their Lake Huron cottage, so often mentioned in John's column in the Lansing State Journal (I am a faithful reader). They are responsible for Ken and Karen having a cottage on Black Lake (long story). Their friend (and Sharon's former work colleague) Meegan Holland took the long way to Cheboygan but made it in time for a delicious meal featuring Lake Huron-caught (by John) Chinook salmon. An interesting bunch and a marvelous evening all around.

Further revision of LaSalle's route? Another exercise in topology*

2009-08-12T12:31:00.001-04:00

In my June 14 2009 Email "Revise LaSalle's Route? An Exercise in Topology" I discussed the new "tools" that have become available since I did my original research including Internet access, satellite imagery and the Natural Features Inventory pre-settlement vegetation maps.

In that memorandum I described what I believe to be a more accurate designation of the LaSalle party's probable route from where they abandoned their elm-bark canoe along side the Huron River to where they built the raft to float across the Detroit River.

In this exercise I am re-looking at how they got from Ft. Miami to the Paw Paw River valley on the first day of their cross-peninsula trek on March 24, 1680.

Those of you who know the Twin Cities know that downtown St. Joe where Ft. Miami was located sits on top of a very steep bluff overlooking the St. Joseph River on the north and Lake Michigan's beach on the west. Now the river is confined by Corps of Engineers' breakwaters to a straight west course out into the lake. In LaSalle's time it was free-flowing and curved around the base of the bluff a ways before entering the lake. The actual entrance shifted north or south over time according to the whims of storms and the along-shore current.

The Paw Paw River flows into the St. Joseph River from the northeast through an extensive low-land which in LaSalle's day was a large marsh. The extent of that marsh is shown very plainly on the pre-settlement vegetation map of Berrien County. The confluence of the Paw Paw with the St. Joseph is about 3/4 mile east of and inland from the Lake Michigan shore. The marsh extended most of that distance. There were low sand dunes between the marsh and the big lake.

The high and dry ground on both sides of the St. Joseph River was covered with a beech-sugar maple forest according to the pre-settlement vegetation map as was the dry land south of the Paw Paw River marsh now occupied by the City of Benton Harbor.

When LaSalle concluded that his ship the Griffon was lost and that he would have to return to Niagara by walking cross-country his first problem was getting across the St. Joseph River. They had walked up the Lake Michigan beach from the south and climbed the bluff to get to the fort. I am surprised that the two men occupying the fort didn't have a canoe but apparently not because LaSalle's party built a raft to cross the St. Joseph. LaSalle said that took them half a day on March 24, 1680.

My first job in this exercise is to figure out where they would have been able to cobble together a raft. It makes sense that it would have been on the left bank of the St. Joseph where there was relatively level, dry ground (as opposed to where the river flowed against the steep bluff or marshland) and where the river bank was covered by trees. This assumes that LaSalle and his men would have made their raft by lashing together riverside downed trees or large branches with vines.

A close examination of the pre-settlement vegetation map and the USGS Benton Harbor Quadrangle topographic map (1:24,000 1970) shows that the closest such place to the fort would have been along the left bank of the river a little less than a half mile downstream of the Napier Avenue Bridge (Napier Avenue follows the trace of an old Indian trail that eventually led to the Kalamazoo River ford). That location would have been about 1 3/4 miles from the fort. The route from the Ft. Miami Historical Marker would be kitty-corner south to the intersection of Wayne and Broad Streets then down Broad Street (past the house where my late wife Elaine grew up) to the bottom of the hill and then following Ann Street upstream along the river bank.

The next question becomes would they have crossed the river directly or would they have floated downstream before they landed and got off the raft on the right bank? If they could have floated or poled about 3/4 mile downstream they could have landed on a prominent point just beyond a gully cut in the right bank by an intermittent stream. They would have run into some marsh before they could reach the bank at that point but in spring flood the water level would probably have been high enough. Today Parker Avenue comes down to the river at that point, about a block south of Benton Harbor High School.

That side of the St. Joseph River was also covered with beech-maple forest. About a mile to two miles to the east began more open oak-hickory forest. LaSalle was deliberately avoiding Indian trails and open woods, savannas or prairies for fear of Iroquois war parties so he would have headed northeast along the edge of the Paw Paw River marsh still in the beech-maple woods until the marsh ran out where the Paw Paw flowed out of a relatively narrow valley.

To follow that route today you would zigzag through Benton Harbor on Empire Avenue, Colfax Avenue, East Market Street, Highland Avenue, Paw Paw Avenue and Territorial Road.

The area where LaSalle and his men would have started up the Paw Paw River valley is now mostly occupied by the Southwest Michigan Regional Airport.

The pre-settlement Paw Paw River marsh was over two square miles in area. It's extent can be plainly seen on a topographic map or by observation from high ground in St. Joe or Benton Harbor.

The vegetation type of the Paw Paw River valley bottom was (and mostly still is) mixed hardwood swamp. I believe the travelers would have been following the edge of the beech maple forest above the mixed hardwood swamp. Remember they were traveling in the leafless season thus would have been able to hike along away from the river a ways just keeping the left bank of the meanders in view without having to follow closely the Paw Paw's extremely sinuous path.

The problem of trespass on private land keeps us from laying out a trail closely following LaSalle's but there are places where the 1680 experience can be sampled such as the Sarrett Nature Center between Benton Harbor and Coloma, adjacent to the Watervliet Airport runways, and the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy's Paw Paw River Preserve.

* In case you have forgotten or never knew, "topology" is defined as the topographic study of an area in relation to its history.

LaSalle Relay Inaugural - Second Leg

2009-08-08T12:27:00.001-04:00

Son Jim took advantage of another of his unpaid State Worker furlough days to bicycle another leg of the LaSalle Relay St. Joe-to-Detroit River cross-peninsula route. You will remember that on July 24 he and fellow State Worker Dale Turton bicycled the route from St. Joe to Kalamazoo. I reported on that trip by Email of July 28.

This time on Friday August 7 he started at Springport and bicycled to the Waterloo Farm Museum. His route took him through Tomkins Center, Rives Junction, Pleasant Lake and Munith. He crossed the Grand River on the Maple Grove Road bridge. I volunteered to drive "Sag Wagon" for him and caught up with him in my Chevy Malibu Maxx at Munith and then waited for him at the Farm Museum.

Before heading back to his bicycle-carrying Pontiac Vibe parked at the Springport High School we toured the Portage Lake Swamp and Hugh Heward portage territory crossed by Charlie Parmelee and Doug McDougall in 2008; walked, waded and back-portaged by Neil Miller and Brian Prodin on April 17 of this year, and portaged with wheels by the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge paddlers this last spring. We were really impressed by the difficulties of terrain and distances covered by these guys in 2008 and 2009 and by Hugh and his Frenchmen in 1790.

On the return trip we took an alternate route and made the Berry Road Bridge crossing of the Grand. You may remember that I believe the LaSalle party's 1680 encounter with the Mascoutin Indians (who mistook them for an Iroquois war party) took place at the Grand River crossing between the Maple Grove Bridge and the Berry Road Bridge.

The Jackson County roads were uniformly good to excellent for bicycling in contrast to Calhoun County's poor roads that we had explored by car earlier. The scenery and terrain are very attractive.

On a trip to Ron Sell's Unadilla Boat Works earlier in the summer for Jim to try out a Bell Rob Roy solo canoe we explored the route LaSalle had walked from the site of today's Waterloo Farm Museum to the Huron River at Dexter. Island Lake Road, which follows the old Indian trail, is very rough and unsuitable for bicycles as are most of the roads leading to it. Our tentative plans for next year's LaSalle Relay call for this 6 1/2 mile stretch to be hiked. If we go for bicycling beyond the Farm Museum we will have to work out an alternative route.

Jim is hoping for opportunities to bicycle the gap between Kalamazoo and Springport before he goes on the Dalmac Lansing-to-Mackinack bike tour on Labor Day weekend. We have not yet reconnoitered the roads between Kalamazoo and Pennfirld in Calhoun County by car.

LaSalle Relay Inaugural - Details, as promised.

2009-07-28T22:51:00.006-04:00

(posted by Karen - written by the Topologist)

The LaSalle Relay Project has been launched by two intrepid bikers doing a 62 miler from St. Joe to northwest of Kalamazoo.

On Friday July 24 at 10:30 AM son Jim of Grand Ledge and his friend and fellow State worker Dale Turton of Kalamazoo took advantage of the first of Governor Granholm's mandatory unpaid furlough days to take off on their road bicycles from the Ft. Miami Historical Marker on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan and the mouth of the St. Joseph River on a route designed to trace the great French explorer LaSalle's Spring of 1680 hike up the Paw Paw River Valley on his way across the Peninsula to Lake Erie.

On hand to cheer them on was a group of my late wife Elaine's relatives who live in St. Joe and Sodus plus my niece Patty Geisler and husband Geoff of Watervliet who hosted the bikers and had scouted out the route by car.

The bikers mostly followed county roads and crossed the Paw Paw River several times. On their way they traveled via Riverside, Coloma, Watervliet, Hartford, Lawrence, Maple Lake north of Paw Paw (where Dale's brother joined them), Almena and Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery ending at Dale's house northwest of Kalamazoo. The trip took them 6 hours.

LaSalle and the four Frenchmen and one Indian who accompanied him took three days to cover the same distance. They left Ft. Miami on the morning of March 24, 1680, spent a half day building a raft to cross the St. Joseph River (called by them River of the Miamis) then 2 1/2 days bushwhacking up the Paw Paw River valley. In his letter describing the trip LaSalle said "... we continued our march through the woods, which was so interlaced with thorns and brambles that in two days and one half our clothes were all torn and our faces so covered with blood that we hardly knew each other." After exiting the Paw Paw valley into "..woods.more open..." they camped on the edge of a prairie where they had an encounter with Pottawatomie Indians.

When white men explored and settled that area west of Kalamazoo they named it "Grand Prairie." That name survives today as "Grand Prairie School," "Grand Prairie Avenue," and "Grand Prairie Golf Course." When the bikers were traveling on the east end of H Avenue northwest of Kalamazoo they crossed the north end of that prairie.

The exact location of LaSalle's campsite where they were surrounded by Pottawatomie's can't be known but it was probably along highway M43 about a mile east of US 31.

I look forward to Jim and/or others road biking beyond Kalamazoo at least as far the Waterloo Farm Museum in northeastern Jackson County. From there on to Dexter the roads get so bad mountain bikes may be in order. Alternatively we may have to lay out a route that sticks to paved roads but deviates from LaSalle's route. The object is to get to Dexter where LaSalle's men built an elm-bark canoe and launched it on the Huron River.

The next leg of the LaSalle Relay would be by canoe down the Huron through Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti to French Landing with a stop at Belleville's LaSalle statue.

The final leg would be by land to Pte. Moulliee and up to Gibraltar where I am now convinced LaSalle had the raft built that would take him across the Detroit River to today's Ontario.

My ultimate hope with respect to the LaSalle Relay idea is to sucker at least six walkers into hiking from St. Joe to Dexter. I wouldn't object if they did it in stages.

LaSalle Relay Inaugural Slide Show

2009-07-27T20:20:00.001-04:00

Photos from the recent LaSalle Relay Inaugural. Details to follow.

Revise LaSalle's Route? An Exercise in Topology

2009-06-14T14:42:00.001-04:00

Since I did my research on the route of LaSalle's 1680 walk across the Lower Peninsula in the 90's many additional tools have become available to me. Some are technical like my kids' hand-me-down computers which have given me access to the magic of Internet mapping sites.

Others are newly published like the Natural Features Inventory pre-settlement vegetation maps for all Michigan counties.

Still others existed before but I had only limited access to them. I'm thinking of Hinsdale's 1931 "Archaeological Atlas of Michigan", for example. When I was doing my research in the Library of Michigan I could access that large atlas a couple hours at a time at most, and then only on those occasions that I was able to neglect other duties to spend time in the library. Now, thanks to the generosity of Karl Williams, I have my own photographic copy of Hinsdale for the counties I am working on.

Also thanks to Karl and Geneva Wiskemann I have color copies of the pre-settlement vegetation maps of those counties. And thanks to Jean King for her penetrating questions that send me back to the drawing board to justify some of my conclusions. Karl has also pushed my button by sending photographic copies maps showing old Michigan pioneer trails for me to study. These "old timers" (I can call them that, being older than they) are keeping me on my toes.

Enough of the cliches and thanks. Now to what I have set out to do, review and if necessary revise my conclusions from the 90's as to the route of LaSalle's cross-peninsula walk.

I remain satisfied as to the route I think that LaSalle and his men took in 1680 from his fort at today's city of St. Joseph on Lake Michigan nearly to the upper end of the Portage River in the northeast corner of Jackson County.

As I said in my May 25 message "LaSalle Relay-The "Corridor", if I could redo the map with the 1999 Michigan History article and the enlargement that hangs in the Michigan Historical Museum I would move the red line showing his route to take him north of the upper end of the Portage River (see my blog www.thetopologist.blogspot.com).

I am no longer happy with the route I showed the party using when walking to the Detroit River after they gave up trying to go down the Huron and abandoned thier elm-bark canoe. Here is my new take:

I still think they left the Huron at French Landing where the river takes its big bend to the south. I think they then followed an Indian trail that Hinsdale shows and calls the "Potawatomi Trail". This trail generally follows the trend of the Huron between its left bank and a couple of tributaries named Silver Creek and Smith Creek. It does not follow all of the Huron's meanders.

Hinsdale shows another Indian trail paralleling the Lake Erie shore and the right bank of the Detroit River. That trail is now traced by a highway called River Road on some maps and West Jefferson Avenue on others. It was the main Indian trail between the mouth of the Maumee River (Toledo) and present-day Detroit.

Between that trail and Lake Erie the pre-settlement vegetation map shows nothing but marsh to the south and for a long ways to the north. Hinsdale's Potawatomi Trail dead ends at that unnamed trail. I think LaSalle and his men would have turned left and followed the shore trail to the northeast for two reasons. First it would have been obvious from that location that to the south the marsh around the mouth of the Huron was very extensive. Second, they wanted to end up at the bank of the Detroit River, not the shore of Lake Erie.

Following the shore trail in a northerly direction they would have had marsh to their right between them and the river until they arrived at the peninsula now occupied by Gibralter. The pre-settlement vegetation map shows woods right up to the river bank there. They needed live and dead elm trees and materials to make a raft. LaSalle 's plan called for leaving two men to make an elm-bark canoe and go to Michilimackinac, while the remaining four would build a raft and cross the Detroit River to present-day Ontario.

I believe the raft would have been made from riverside downed trees and large branches lashed together with vines. Starting the river crossing at the Gibralter peninsula would have them launching in the shelter of the peninsula and Celeron Island and would give them room to diagonal towards the Ontario shore and land before they could be swept into Lake Erie by the river's current.

I think you who are interested can follow all this on your maps, but we really need to make one for the blog. I'll consult with my daughter the Blogmaster on that.

LaSalle Chronology

2009-06-05T11:27:00.001-04:00

To place LaSalle into his Michigan historical context, here is a chronology of events in and around Michigan involving him. Remember, during his time what would become Michigan and the other Great Lake states was a complete wilderness, sparsely peopled by Indian tribes and frequently visited by war parties, by far the most dangerous being the Iroquois.

LASALLE'S FIRST SIGHT OF MICHIGAN -1679

In his book LaSalle: The Life aand Times of an Explorer, author John Upton Terrel describes LaSalle's first sight of Michigan:

"On August 10 the Griffon stood into the Strait of Detroit. All marveled at the beauty and richness of the country which reached away on each side of the passage. Groves of black walnut and wild plum trees and oaks festooned with grape vines stood like islands in the fine prairies." (Cadillac did not land at Detroit until 1701).

LASALLE AT THE STRAITS OF MACKINAC-1679

After surviving a storm on Lake Huron the Griffon arrives at the Straits. The eminent historian Francis Parkman in his 1879 book, LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West, describes the arrival of the Griffon:

"...and now her port was won, and she found her rest behind the point of St. Ignace of the Michilimackinac, floating in that tranquil cove where crystal waters cover but cannot hide the pebbly depths".

BUILDING FT. MIAMI-1679

LaSalle in the Griffon sailed on to Green Bay where the ship was loaded with furs and sent off to Niagara. Then LaSalle headed south. According to Parkman:

"He pushed on...circling around the southern shore of Lake Michigan, till he reached the mouth of the St. Joseph, called by him the Miamis...It was the first of November. Winter was at hand, and the streams would soon be frozen."

Here he waited for his second in command, Tonty, who was coming down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Parkman goes on:

"The men clamored to go forward, urging that they should starve if they could not reach the villages of the Illinois before the tribe scattered for the winter hunt. LaSalle was inexorable...The men grumbled but obeyed; and to divert their thoughts, he set them to building a fort of timber on a rising ground at the mouth of the river...They had spent twenty days at the task, and their work was well advanced, when at length Tonty appeared."

UP THE ST. JOSEPH RIVER TO THE SOUTH BEND PORTAGE - DECEMBER 1679

Parkman describes the ascension of the St. Joseph River and the portage to the headwaters of the Kankakee River as follows:

"On the third of December, the party re-embarked, thirty-three in all, in eight canoes, and ascended the chill current of the St. Joseph, bordered with dreary meadows and bare grey forests. When they approached the site of the present day village of South Bend, they looked anxiously along the shore to their right, to find the portage or path leading to the headwaters of the Illinois. The Mohegan was absent, hunting; and, unaided by his practiced eye, they passed the path without seeing it."

LaSalle went looking for the portage path, got lost and had to spend the snowy night in the woods alone. It wasn't until four the next afternoon that he found his way back by following the river. Parkman goes on:

"The Mohegan had rejoined the party before LaSalle's return and with his aid the portage was soon found."

The expedition then crossed the portage and launched their canoes in the marshes which were the headwaters of the Kankakee River, then went down the Kankakee to the des Plaines River. The joining of these two rivers forms the Illinois River which they followed south to about present-day Peoria where they built another fort. They spent the rest of the winter working on a ship to be used to explore the Mississippi.

LaSalle decided to return to Fort Miami so with a party of four Frenchmen and the Mohegan they headed back north on the Illinois.

From my "The Search for the Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan":

"Their journey began on March 1, 1680. Attempts to canoe up the Illinois were mostly frustrated by ice. Sometimes they had to haul the canoes across the snow like sleds. Finally they hid the canoes on an island somewhere near present-day Joliet, Illinois, and slogged cross-country through drowned prairie until they reached Lake Michigan. They then walked the beach along the Lake Michigan shore, arriving at Fort Miami on March 24."

WALKING ACROSS LOWER MICHIGAN - SPRING 1680

I have already covered that trip from the St. Joseph River to the Detroit River to Niagara in detail.

DOWN MICHIGAN'S SUNSET COAST - FALL 1680

Returning from Niagara to the Illinois country in the fall of 1680; LaSalle, with 12 men in three canoes, traveled from Michilimackinac down the east shore of Lake Michigan. On their way to the St. Joseph River they passed the mouths of the Betsie, Manistee, Pere Marquette, White, Muskegon, Grand, Kalamazoo, and Black Rivers.

On this trip they would have passed the temporary grave of Father Marquette, who died on this shore five years previously, probably at the mouth of the river which bears his name.

Their route to the Illinois country was again up the St. Joseph to the portage to the Kankakee headwaters at South Bend.

BACK TO FORT MIAMI - JANUARY 1681

On his return trip up the Illinois River LaSalle and his men found the Kankakee frozen so they slogged cross country to Lake Michigan and up the shore to Fort Miami where they spent the rest of the winter.

BY SNOWSHOE AND SLED ACROSS BERRIEN COUNTY - MARCH 1681

LaSalle, his aid LaForest, and 15 men left Fort Miami to go rendezvous with several Indian tribes, hoping to forge an alliance against the Iroquois. Since the rivers were still frozen and snow covered, they walked on snowshoes from the mouth of the St. Joseph River into present-day Indiana, pulling their canoes on runners like sleds.

My Note: How about a " LaSalle Snowshoe Challenge" next winter? On the beach on snow from St. Joe to Michigan City.........(Kruger Sea Winds wouldn't need runners).

TO MICHILIMACKINAC - SPRING 1681

After meeting with his Indian allies in present-day Indiana, LaSalle returned to Fort Miami and then canoed up to Michilimackinac along the east shore of Lake Michigan, the reverse of his trip in the fall of 1680. From there he went all the way back to Montreal.

BACK TO FORT MIAMI - LATE FALL 1681

LaSalle led a large convoy of cargo canoes through Lake Ontario to the site of present-day Toronto. From there, instead of going on west in Lake Ontario, portaging around Niagara Falls and returning to the upper lakes via Lake Erie, he took two weeks to portage from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, then proceeded to Michilimackinac.

My Note: This has always seemed to me to be the hard way to get from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, especially with heavily-laden cargo canoes. Maybe he was avoiding Iroquois war parties. Verlen Kruger never made that portage. He was considering doing it during his Paddle-to-the-Sea trip that never panned out.

From Michilimackinac the convoy of canoes went down the east shore of Lake Michigan, arriving at the River of the Miamis (St. Joseph River) and Fort Miami during the first week of December, 1681.

DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE GULF OF MEXICO AND BACK TO FORT MIAMI AND MICHILIMACKINAC - 1681 & 1682

On this trip of discovery, LaSalle did not go up the St. Joseph River and use the portage to the Kankakee, but rather canoed along the south shore of Lake Michigan in bitter December weather to the Chicago Portage to get to the des Plaines River and the Illinois River.

After exploring the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and having survived a serious illness on the return trip, he was back in Fort Miami by August of 1682. When he arrived, there were several hundred Indian lodges along the banks of the St. Joseph. In the early fall he went on to Michilimackinac, even though he had not yet fully regained his health. In late fall he returned to the Illinois country.

LASALLE HEADS BACK TO FRANCE - 1683

Taking only six men in three small canoes, LaSalle set out for Quebec. He went by way of Lake Michigan, the Straits, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Lake Erie.

LASALLE'S LAST SIGHT OF MICHIGAN

When the three canoes entered Lake Erie and turned eastward towards Niagara, Michigan faded from view to the west. The Michigan shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Detroit River is where LaSalle in the sailing ship Griffon first saw Michigan in 1679. It is also the place where he ended his cross-peninsula trek in 1680.

EPILOG

Author Russel McKee, in his 1966 book Great Lakes Country tells about the remainder of LaSalle's career and life after he left Michigan:

"...he soon set sail for France to gain the King's ear. This time Louis XIV paid heed when LaSalle spoke. The explorer captured the court with his New World tales, and captured the King's interest with information about the vast colonial empire awaiting French development. Louis supplied a small army of soldiers and settlers, telling LaSalle to move his colony into the Gulf of Mexico. With four ships, the company sailed in the fall of 1684. In the Gulf, LaSalle knew he was in danger both from the Spanish, who claimed the adjacent land, and from hostile Indians. Without meeting either, he established a colony in December 1685 near the present site of Galveston, Texas,after failing to find the Mississippi on the coastal journey west.

The settlement was a disaster. LaSalle landed with 180 soldiers and settlers, and in a little more than a year, the total had dwindled to 40. Those who remained were mutinous. Heat, barren land, poisonous snakes, and the failure of expected supplies, all cut into the colony. Realizing his only hope was in French Canada, LaSalle decided to push east to find the Mississippi. He would go up that river, he decided, to obtain help for the colony. With a small force he headed east."

He never made it. Somewhere in South Texas in March of 1687, he was murdered by one of his own men. He was 43 years old.

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side IX

2009-06-04T11:23:00.000-04:00

Finishing my 1999 "Michigan History" article:

The construction of the canoe required cutting down a large elm tree---a formidable task with the hatchets the party were carrying. It was also challenging to strip the bark from the tree in one piece without breaking it or cracking it to the point where it would be unusable. The tree would have been either a slippery elm or an American elm. LaSalle, who called the tree by its Iroquois name of arondugalte recorded, "The bark of which can be stripped off at all times though with more difficulty at this season, when it must be continually moistened with boiling water".

To make a canoe from a large cylinder of elm bark, the ends are squeezed together and sewn with strips of bark or roots; gunwhales of saplings, split or whole, are attached in the same manner. Then stick thwarts are inserted at intervals to spread the bark, and ribs of some flexible wood are inserted on the inside. Finally the insides of the ends are caulked with the bark of dead slippery elm, which swells when wet.

Why not build a birchbark canoe? The Huron lies below the southern limit of where the paper birch grew. Although a birchbark canoe is far superior in most respects to a canoe of elm or hickory bark, its construction takes a lot of time, skill and experience---which neither LaSalle nor his men possessed.

With the canoe completed and the sick men and all gear on board, the journey down the Huron began. All did not work out as hoped. As LaSalle described the trip, "For as the river was everywhere encumbered by heaps of wood, which the swollen waters carry down or cast into its bed, we got weary of carrying our baggage every moment when the masses of wood prevented the canoe from passing; moreover the river made wide bends, and we observed after five days of rowing we had made less progress than we normally made in one day's march." So they gave up on floating down to Lake Erie and, according to LaSalle, "...our sick men being better, we resumed our march and reached the strait by which Lake Huron falls into Lake Erie which is a league broad at this place".

The "strait" is the Detroit River and LaSalle and his men reached it downstream of Grosse Isle and upstream of the extensive swamps and marshes where the Huron empties into Lake Erie. Here the Detroit River is more than three miles wide, which is reasonably consistent with LaSalle's estimate.

A little arithmetic can provide a clue as to where the men abandoned their canoe and resumed walking. LaSalle equated five days on the Huron to one day's march, and one can assume a day's march to be about thirty miles. This about the distance from Dexter to the area near Belleville where the Huron makes a big bend to the south (French Landing). I think this is where the party gave up poling, paddling and portaging. They would have followed the left bank of the river on foot down to about present-day Rockwood. By heading straight east from there they would have avoided the drowned lands at the mouth of the Huron and reached the Detroit River south of Grosse Isle.

There two men were tasked to build a canoe and head north to Michilimackinac, while LaSalle and the remaining three rafted across the river. They continued cross country to the shore of Lake Erie, probably just beyond Pte. Pelee, where another canoe was built. Then the Frenchmen and Saget, the Indian, paddled along the shore to Niagara. They arrived there on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1680.

As Professor Prator concluded more than half a century ago, "We shall probably never be able to retrace the great Frenchman's steps with absolute accuracy". There is no archaeological evidence and only LaSalle's one letter documenting the trip. However, given the availability of modern topographic, presettlement vegetation and soil survey maps, we have far better technical resources at our disposal than did earlier writers. Further, if one conducts serious on-the-ground reconnaissance, visualizes things as they were three hundred years ago and carefully matches LaSalle's descriptions to the existing terrain, it is possible to retrace his steps with reasonable accuracy. Finally, we do know one other thing----LaSalle and his companions crossed the Lower Peninsula the hard way.

This is the end of my 1999 article. I will follow up with some remarks on his route pertinent to the Relay idea and a chronology of LaSalle and Michigan's history.

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side VIII

2009-06-03T11:20:00.000-04:00

Continuing from my 1999 article in "Michigan History"

While struggling across the wetlands, the French party experienced an early April cold snap that brought trouble. According to LaSalle, "At last there came an unusually cold night on the second of April, and next day we were obliged to thaw our clothes before a fire in order to be able to use them, for they had become stiff as sticks because we had taken them off all soaked."

The fire gave them away to the Mascouten war party that had been tracking them. LaSalle continued: "Our fire showed us to the Indians who had slept on the other end of the marsh, from which they ran with loud cries to about the middle, where there was a rather deep stream which they could not cross, because the ice that had formed during the night was not strong enough to bear them".

When LaSalle wrote that the Mascoutens were "...at the other end of the marsh", that meant the Indians were ahead of them and across a stream that LaSalle's party had yet to cross. The description of a "rather deep stream" sounds like something bigger than the creeks they had been crossing. The stream must have been flowing across their easterly path in order for it to be a barrier to the charging Mascoutens. In this area, the Grand River flows from south to north, is bordered on both sides by marshes or swamps and is quite deep, especially when it floods.

How did the Mascoutens, who had been tracking LaSalle for several days, end up ahead of him? There were two Indian trails that allowed the Indians to bypass LaSalle's party on either the north or south. The Mascouten's believed LaSalle's party was a band of Iroquois. What better spot to set an ambush than where the hunted ones would be struggling to cross a river in flood?

LaSalle described his party's reaction when the Mascoutens charged and were stopped by the ice and river."We went to within gunshot of them; and either they were frightened by our position of advantage and our firearms, or believed there were more of us than there were, or else recognizing that we were Frenchmen, they did not wish to attack us". The two groups then palavered across the intervening water, the Indians saying they were "brothers" to the Frenchmen. The Mascoutens departed and LaSalle's party continued on their journey.

On April 4 two of the Frenchmen became so ill that they could not walk farther. LaSalle does not describe the terrain traveled on April 3 and 4, but if the party continued in the same direction these two days there would have been more walking in marshes. Even today, there are extensive marshes between the Grand River and the highlands of northwest Washtenaw County, particularly the Portage Lake Swamp in the Waterloo State Recreation Area.

After April 4 LaSalle gave no more dates until he arrived at Niagara on April 22. When the party reached the Huron River they built an elm-bark canoe. It is unclear when he found the Huron River, how long it took to build the canoe or when it was launched on the river. Nor does LaSalle's narrative offer any clue on how the two sick men got from the place where they became incapacitated to the site where the canoe was constructed. According to LaSalle, "I went to look for some stream which might fall into Lake Erie, where we wished to go, to make a canoe, so as to relieve those who were worn out with toil". This sounds as if he went ahead and left his companions and found the Huron River.

LaSalle probably came to a well-used Indian trail adjacent to present-day Island Lake in Washtenaw County's Lyndon Township. At that juncture of time, place and circumstances he would have had no hesitancy in traveling on an Indian trail. It headed in the right direction and following it for eight or nine easy miles took him to the Huron River. Today this trail is Island Lake Road and it reaches Mill Creek near where the creek joins the Huron River at Dexter.

NEXT: Building the canoe

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side VII

2009-06-02T11:19:00.000-04:00

Continuing from my 1999 article in "Michigan History":

The next piece of the puzzle of LaSalle's route is the location of the fens and marshes through which they struggled. In the early spring the trees and shrubs were leafless and there was flooding everywhere from melting snows. Since LaSalle's journey occurred before the southern Lower Peninsula was logged, drained and plowed, the water table was much higher than it is today.

A cursory reading of LaSalle's account or the reading of secondary sources leaves the impression that the party waded through one vast swamp (wetland with trees) or marsh (wetland with sedges and rushes). Actually, they faced a series if marshes and swamps interspersed with higher and drier uplands, ridges and knolls.

LaSalle encountered this series of wetlands after crossing the floodplain of the Battle Creek River, probably near Pennfield northeast of Battle Creek. Going east today across the northern tier of townships in Calhoun County there are several tributaries of the Battle Creek River that flow to the north or northwest. At Duck Lake the tributaries of Rice Creek flow south or southwest. Further eastward lies the divide between the Kalamazoo River drainage basin and that of the Grand River. Continuing eastward, there are two northward flowing tributaries of the Grand River and then the Grand its self. Lowlands that must have been flooded swamps or marshes in the spring of 1680 border all these streams.

U.S. Department of Agriculture soil maps aid in determining the extent and nature of some of these wetlands. These maps show in great detail the types of soil and provide data on the slopes of the land and susceptibility to flooding and ponding, plus water table relationships. The key soil type is muck. Where muck exists today, marshes existed earlier. The maps identify and locate other types of soil subject to frequent flooding or with such a high water table that the land is unsuitable for septic tanks and drain fields. Soils that are flood-prone or water saturated today were wet and flooded during the spring high water in the late seventeenth century.

Highlighting the mucks and the flood-prone soils creates a mosaic that represents a birds-eye view of the wetlands and the intervening dry land over which the LaSalle party traversed. The longest stretch of marsh that the men waded through was twelve miles of almost continuous lowland, located today in Calhoun County's Convis, Lee and Clarence Townships. Interstate 69 crosses the west end of this stretch about one and one half miles north of the N Drive North exit.

NEXT: Ambush

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side VI

2009-06-01T11:16:00.000-04:00

Continuing from my 1999 article in "Michigan History"

LaSalle recorded that on the evening of the twenty-eighth (of March 1680) the party camped on the edge of a prairie where they had encountered the Pottawatomies. Certainly one day's march across easy, open terrain by LaSalle's veterans should have taken them far beyond Grand Prairie. The next prairie the men encountered as they moved east was Gull Prairie, a distance of about sixteen miles beyond the Paw Paw River valley. This would have been a relatively easy march for LaSalle's men except for having to cross the Kalamazoo River.

LaSalle makes no mention of crossing a river on March 28. In fact, he fails to record the crossing of any of the sixteen rivers and creeks he and his men would have encountered between the St. Joseph and the Huron Rivers. The only information in LaSalle's account about building a raft and crossing a river comes from the first day when the party left from Fort Miami and the last day at the Detroit River. Nevertheless, the building of a raft and the crossing of the Kalamazoo would have taken perhaps half a day. But March 28 was not an ordinary travel day. Not only had LaSalle's men come out of the Paw Paw River flood plain, but the open land was rich with game. The men were too busy shooting, butchering, fire building, cooking and eating to make much progress that day. This proves to me that when they camped on the edge of a prairie it was at Grand Prairie (west of today's Kalamazoo), certainly not Prairie Ronde about thirteen miles south, and probably not at Gull Prairie on the other side of the Kalamazoo River.

Clues about where they crossed the Kalamazoo River come from topographic maps and the reminiscences of early Kalamazoo settlers. There was a ford across the river in what is now the city of Kalamazoo, less than a mile north of where the river changes direction from west to north. Riverside Cemetery on the east side of the river is adjacent to the site of the ford and is due east of Grand Prairie.

Today's muck land on the west side of the river, which extends about three miles north, was, according to one Kalamazoo pioneer, an "...impassable marsh and tamarack swamp, covered with water the year round". Given their narrow escape from the Indians, LaSalle's party would likely have avoided the ford and the Indian trail leading to and from it, as well as the marsh and tamarack swamp. Following the high ground on the west side of the river and going downstream (north) brought them to a logical crossing point right where the Kalamazoo Nature Center is today. If LaSalle and his men crossed at this point and headed straight east, they would have been at Gull Prairie, around present-day Richland.

My Note: The rafts LaSalle and his men would have constructed to cross rivers would have to have been small and relatively easy to lash together from downed trees or large branches found at riverside. No need or time for a Huck Finn float-down-river kind. They probably used poles and shuttled across the river two or three men at a time. During my research I found illustrations of such rafts. They probably just waded across creeks. The raft to cross the Detroit River would have to have been large enough for four men and they would have to have paddled. That must have been a tricky crossing. Back to the article:

Two significant natural barriers---Gull Lake on the north and the flood plain of the Kalamazoo River to the south---would have forced the Frenchmen and their Indian companion to travel straight eastward from Gull Prairie. Travel should have been relatively easy. Although hilly, the route to the east all the way to the Battle Creek River would have led LaSalle through mainly oak savanna and oak forest. (remember, they were setting the grass on fire to cover their tracks).The distance covered on March 29 and 30 along this route measures about twenty-seven miles---a reasonable distance for these two days---given the time it would have taken to make a raft and cross the Kalamazoo River.

On March 30 they "...came to extensive fens which were flooded by thaw, and had to cross them in mud or water up to our waists, and our tracks going deep into the mire revealed us to a band of Mascoutens who wanted to kill some Iroquois." The misconception that caused the Pottawatomies to run off---the belief that LaSalle's band was an Iroquois war party---is the same one that caused the Mascoutens to stalk them. According to LaSalle, "They followed us across these marshes for the three days it took to traverse them; but we made no fire at night, contenting ourselves with taking off our clothes, which were wet, and wrapping ourselves in our blankets on some dry knoll, where we passed the night".

NEXT: Where were the fens and marshes?

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side V

2009-05-31T11:13:00.000-04:00

The long discussion of prairies in LWWS IV may have been a sleeper but very important to tying down where LaSalle and his men actually traveled. The following is from my "The Search for Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan", the narrative/monograph of which LWWS is a condensation. (The parenthetical remarks are mine as of today. I would be delighted to debate them with anyone).

Many authors and historians have speculated on LaSalle's cross-Michigan route in books and magazines and newspaper articles. Many others have written about the journey without speculating on the route. Despite all that has been written over the years, there is but one primary source, LaSalle's single letter written to one of his investors in September of 1680.......

Strangely, the most recent authors' routes are farthest off the mark. By far the easiest to disprove are those in two 1992 publications. The most accurate interpretation in my opinion was one of the earliest, that of University of Michigan Professor Clifford H. Prator in the Spring 1941 issue of Michigan History Magazine, then a scholarly quarterly publication of The Michigan Historical Commission.

Volume III of Charles A. Weissert's Historic Michigan, published in 1928, contains an account of LaSalle's journey across Michigan. He states that "The explorer's route, as far as can be ascertained by notes taken during the journey, lay along the highlands between the Kalamazoo and St. Joseph River valleys" (Wrong). He contends that "there can be no doubt but that he crossed Prairie Ronde and Climax Prairie..." (Wrong again). He identifies the marshy wilderness through which the party waded as "...probably the long, flat tract in the lakes east of Prairie Ronde" (Still wrong).

In referring to LaSalle and his men J.S.Morton, author of Reminiscence of the Lower St. Joseph Valley,written in the 1930's says, "They were the first white men to follow the trail that became later the famous Territorial Road (Wrong).

The 1948 book Michigan--From Primitive Wilderness to Industrial Commonwealth, by Milo M. Quaife and Sidney Glazer, includes a map showing a route through southern Van Buren, Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Jackson and Washtenaw Counties. (Right counties but LaSalle traveled through the northern parts). Their route crosses the Huron River rather than following it and ends well upstream of the mouth of the Detroit River opposite Grosse Isle.(Does not allow for the 5 days down the Huron in a canoe).

In a 1949 article in the Lansing State Journal, history writer Birt Darling used Prator's 1941 Michigan History article in an attempt to show that LaSalle may have traversed southern Ingham County. (A real stretch. Birt liked to "localize" and "romanticize " and "popularize" historical happenings in or near mid-Michigan. I am forever grateful to him though, one of his articles led to my discovery of Hugh Heward and his journal).

In Michigan in Four Centuries, Dr.F.Clever Bald, then Professor of History at the University of Michigan, states that LaSalle's route is not known, "...but he probably passed through the second tier of counties above the the Ohio and Indiana boundaries." The book's map illustrating the route of various French explorers has LaSalle passing through the headwaters of the Kalamazoo, Grand and Raisin Rivers which are in the hills of Southern Jackson and northern Hillsdale Counties. (Way off).

Alberta Powell wrote a book for young Americans, LaSalle, River Explorer, published in 1954. She has LaSalle using a canoe to go up the Kalamazoo River.....(No wonder young Americans are lousy at history).

In his 1955 book, Michigan through the Centuries, Dr. Willis F. Dunbar, then Professor of History at Western Michigan University, states that LaSalle "...probably followed the Indian trail, slightly south of present US 12 as far as Paw Paw and thence to about present Ann Arbor by approximately the route followed by that road." (Wrong. Dr. Dunbar couldn't have read LaSalle's letter and come to such a conclusion.)

Then in his 1959 book, Kalamazoo and How it Grew, Dr. Dunbar says "His exact route is not recorded, but supposedly he followed Indian trails which led him through the prairie lands of southern Kalamazoo County" (Farther off than in his first book. LaSalle deliberately avoided Indian trails).

Certain recent history scholars have grievously misidentified LaSalle's route. In their 1992 book The Atlas of North American Exploration, Professors William A. Goetzman of the University of Texas and Glyndwn Williams of the University of London depict a route that avoids Michigan entirely! They show LaSalle's 1680 journey as following the Kankakee River in Illinois and Indiana and then along the Maume River from present Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to Toledo, Ohio, on Lake Erie. Furthermore, they show the route continuing across the open waters of Lake Erie to reach the Ontario shore. This route neither starts where LaSalle said he started, his fort at the mouth of the present-day St. Joseph River, nor reached where most other scholars and authors agree he reached, the Huron River. (This is an unimaginably bad piece of historical and geographical manure......).

In Anka Muhlstein's 1995 LaSalle, the explorer starts his cross-Michigan journey at Ft. St. Joseph, which did not even exist in 1680. Ft. St. Joseph was established upstream on the St. Joseph River near present-day Niles in 1691. This author also names Detroit, which was not established until 1701, as LaSalle's destination, rather than Lake Erie. However, the map in the book purporting to show LaSalle's route has him going to Lake Erie just north of Toledo. The map so distorts the locations and relationships of rivers that the headwater of the St. Joseph River is shown near Ft. Wayne, Indiana, instead of Michigan's Hillsdale County, an error of at least 60 miles. (Pitiful).

(Are you surprised that Dr. Rosentreter didn't include this part of my monograph in the "Michigan History" article? Most of these authors had PhDs in history).

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side IV

2009-05-30T10:57:00.003-04:00

Continuing with my 1999 article in "Michigan History".

LaSalle recounted, "When we had lit a fire on the edge of a prairie we were surrounded by (Pottawatomies), but the man who was on watch awoke us, and we placed ourselves each behind a tree with our guns. The Indians, who are called Ouopous, believed us to be Iroquois, and being convinced that there must be larger numbers of us, since we had not concealed ourselves as they are accustomed to do when they go in small bands, they fled without shooting an arrow". To reinforce the misconception that his band was an Iroquois war party, LaSalle used charcoal from their fire to place marks on tree trunks like those victorious Iroquois used in announcing the taking of scalps and slaves.

To determine LaSalle's route it is important to identify which prairies he and his men crossed the last few days of March 1680. According to the Presettlement Vegetation map, a prairie is an area dominated by prairie grasses and forbs (herbaceous plants) with a tree density of less than one mature tree per acre. One gets the impression from reading Michigan history that Prairie Ronde in southern Kalamazoo County was not only the largest prairie but the only one of real consequence. However, the Presettlement Vegetation map locates forty-nine prairies in the ten-county area it covers. Furthermore, the 1838 Gazetteer of the State of Michigan describes Gull Prairie in northern Kalamazoo County as "the largest body of prairie in the county".

After their escape from the Pottawatomie's, LaSalle's men set fire wherever there was dry grass to obliterate their tracks. In his account of March 29 LaSalle described the prairie they were crossing as being "...four or five leagues broad and so long we could not see the end of it." A league is about 2.75 miles long. This makes the prairie about twelve miles wide. In the early nineteenth century Prairie Ronde was only about five miles across. Certainly the prairies could have been bigger in 1680. They are primarily products of fires that burn off shrubs and tree seedlings, keeping forest encroachment in check. Fewer fires during the 120 years from La Salle's visit until the arrival of the surveyors might explain the difference in the prairies' size. There is another explanation that could justify LaSalle's estimates. Adjacent to Prairie Ronde, Gull Prairie and Grand Prairie were bur-oak openings and oak savannas. Next to those were large and small patches of oak forest. In the case of Gull Prairie, these were far more extensive than around Prairie Ronde. Even Grand Prairie, which was considerably smaller than Prairie Ronde, was surrounded by a significantly larger area of oak openings and savannas.

The Presettlement Vegetation map defines bur-oak openings and oak savannas as having a density of between one and fifteen trees per acre. To a traveler these would seem open and park-like. Some travelers, including James Fenimore Cooper in his "Oak Openings", have likened them to orchards. Even oak forests tend to be quite open and relatively free of underbrush.

If one includes bur-oak openings and oak savannas as part of the prairies LaSalle described, the open country in the Gull Prairie area measures about fourteen miles wide and more than thirty miles from north to south on the Presettlement Vegetationmap. The same exercise in the Prairie Ronde area only measures a width of about nine miles and perhaps twelve from north to south. The Grand Prairie area is about ten miles wide. Considering all these factors, the Gull Prairie area most closely fits LaSalle's size estimate of March 29, 1680.

Given that both Grand Prairie and Gull Prairie are reasonably on line with an easterly exit from the upper end of the Paw Paw River valley, LaSalle most likely did not travel through Prairie Ronde. To have done so would have required a sharp detour to the south.

NEXT: Crossing the Kalamazoo River

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side III

2009-05-29T10:49:00.003-04:00

Continuing with my 1999 article in "Michigan History":

LaSalle's party, which included four coureurs de bois and one Native American, a Mohegan Indian named Saget, left Fort Miami on March 25, 1680. According to LaSalle, after crossing the flooded St. Joseph River (then called River of the Miamis) on a raft, the men "...continued our march through the woods, which was so interlaced with thorns and brambles that in two days and a half our clothes were all torn and our faces so covered with blood that we hardly knew each other."

Thanks to the efforts of three Western Michigan University Professors, we know what the nature and extent of the forest cover was like three hundred years ago in southwestern Michigan. In 1984 Lawrence G. Brewer, Thomas W. Hodles and Henry A. Raup from the Department of Geography published a map entitled Presettlement Vegetation of Southwestern Michigan. They created the map based on upon field notes of the early-nineteenth-century surveyors who moved through a wilderness little changed from that which existed in the late seventeenth century. As part of their job, the surveyors located and identified the types of trees and terrain that existed in Michigan before it was disturbed by the pioneer's axe or plow.

After two and a half days in the briars and brambles, LaSalle's party came out of the Paw Paw River valley and "found the woods more open". But where?

About sixty years ago (seventy now) University of Michigan professor Clifford H. Prator concluded that LaSalle broke into the open woods somewhere in the northwest corner of Kalamazoo County. Trying to follow Prator's suggested route today takes one into the extensive mucklands in the northeast corner of Van Buren County. In the late seventeenth century this was one big swamp. Furthermore, modern topographic maps and road reconnaissance show the party then would have encountered difficult "knob and kettle" terrain where level land is virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, road reconnaissance around the upper end of the north branch of the Paw Paw River about seven miles south of there leads to the area of the Wolf Lake state Fish Hatchery and east up to high ground--about where Highway M-43 climbs up the ridge known to geologists as the Kalamazoo Moraine. This is close to the Van Buren-Kalamazoo county line. The Presettlement Vegetation map shows that this was a transition area from a southern swamp forest to an oak savanna. This is consistent with LaSalle's account of emerging from the briars and brambles and finding the woods more open.

I believe LaSalle actually traveled through oak savannas and forests and the relatively benign terrain of what is now the northern half of Kalamazoo County's Oshtemo Township (approximately along the route of M-43). If LaSalle and his party were on this route, they would have reached Grand Prairie within an easy five-mile walk after leaving the Paw Paw River valley. Grand Prairie was located just west and northwest of present-day Kalamazoo.

Hunger and the abundance of game made the party careless. The sounds of their guns and the trail of partially butchered carcasses attracted an Indian war party, and nearly led to disaster.

NEXT: Surrounded by Indians.

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side II

2009-05-28T10:49:00.001-04:00

Continuing with my 1999 article in "Michigan History":

LaSalle's route across the Lower Peninsula has fascinated authors and historians for many years. There is, however, only one primary source documenting the trip - a letter LaSalle wrote to one of his investors in September of 1680. The text of the letter has been preserved in Pierre Margray's Memoirs et Documents Pour Servir a L'histoire des Origines Francaises des Pays D'outre-mer; Decouvertes et Etablissments desFrancais dans L'ouest et dans le Sud D'Amerique Septenrionale, published in Paris in the 1880s.

LaSalle clearly understood the difficulty facing him. Reflecting in that letter he explained,

Though the thaws of approaching Spring greatly increased the difficulty of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to say nothing of the length of the journey. . . and the danger of meeting Indians of four or five nations, through whose country we were to pass, as well as an Iroquois army, which we knew was coming that way; though we must suffer all the time from hunger, sleep on the open ground, often without food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, such as blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead and skins to make moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing rocks covered with ice and snow, sometimes wading whole days through marshes when the water was waist-deep or even more, at a season when snow was not entirely melted----though I knew all this, it did not prevent me from resolving to go.

At the time of LaSalle's journey, the southern part of the Lower Peninsula, particularly the area between the Grand River valley and the St.Joseph river valley, was largely deserted. Many local tribes had left the area in fear of the rampaging Iroquois. According to LaSalle, it was a sort of no-man's land. "The Indians do not hunt there because it is situated between five or six tribes which are at war with one another, who, because they fear one another, dare not go to these parts without the greatest precautions; they never appear except with the intention of surprising one another, as secretly as possible."

LaSalle knew he had to travel approximately straight east to reach Lake Erie. He used a magnetic compass to determine direction and an astrolabe, which measures the angle of the sun or North Star above the horizon, to determine latitude. He was unable, however, to determine longitude so he did not know how far it was across the peninsula.

LaSalle was in a hurry. He didn't have time to build or acquire a canoe and take the longer route of going up Lake Michigan to Michilimackinac, then south through Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Lake Erie. Going overland through prairies, open oak forests and oak savannas would make for easy traveling, but would leave them exposed to wandering war parties. So LaSalle chose to travel through the Paw Paw River valley. The Paw Paw flows from the east, there were no Indian trails following the river and the southern hardwood forests of the valley made inconspicuous movement possible. The disadvantage was that hiking conditions were atrocious.

NEXT: They are traveling

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side

2009-05-28T10:40:00.000-04:00

In 1999 I wrote an article for "Michigan History Magazine" entitled "LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side". That was not my choice of title. The title of my work of which the article was a condensation was "The Search for the Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan", a perfectly respectable and understandable title, I thought. "Not jazzy enough"; said Roger Rosentreter, the magazine's Editor. When I objected, he said that I have to understand that in order for "Michigan History" to avoid the fate of "Michigan Conservation" magazine, once published by the Department of Conservation (now DNR), it has to attract a large and loyal audience and be self supporting. I guess he has a point. "The Michigan Historical Review" put out by the Historical Society of Michigan is a real sleeper. It's "Chronicle" is a little livelier but not up to "Michigan History". At least I got him to add LaSalle's name. His original title was just "A Walk on the Wild Side". He did a lot of other editing that I objected to and for the first time since college I pulled an "all nighter" trying to unfix some of his fixes in time to make the printing deadline. I can see why such Michigan history authors as Kit Lane, Larry Massie and Tim Kent self-publish so they don't have to deal with editors.

I am going to serialize that article and add comments and notes pertinent to the LaSalle Relay idea. The article was published in the March/April 1999 issue and is illustrated by a beautiful two-page spread showing the Portage Lake Swamp in the leafless season as it would have looked to LaSalle and his party in 1680. The photo was taken by Rosentreter at my suggestion from the bridge over the upper Portage River on Waterloo-Munith Road.

Here we go:

On March 24, 1680, after an exhausting three-week journey from a wilderness fort near present-day Peoria, Illinois, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, arrived at Fort Miami. He had built the small fort the previous fall on a bluff overlooking the mouth of the St. Joseph River, then known as the River of the Miamis. An explorer and entrepreneur whose life's mission was to establish a French commercial empire in the interior of North America, LaSalle learned at Ft. Miami that the Griffon,

the sailing vessel he had constructed the previous year on the Niagara River, had disappeared. Desperate to know what had happened to his ship and its cargo of furs, the thirty-seven year old Frenchman decided to return to the Niagara country. LaSalle believed the shortest and quickest way to get there was on foot. Four weeks after leaving Fort Miami, LaSalle and his men reached Niagara. He never found the Griffon---it disappeared without a trace---but he became the first European to cross Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

NEXT: The route

A refresher - how I do it

2009-05-27T09:50:00.005-04:00

Since I am transitioning from stories of the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge to stories of LaSalle's 1680 journey across Michigan (and a new Challenge) I think it's a good time to remind blog readers - and inform new readers - how I come to know what I know about LaSalle.

My retirement hobby for 23 years has been "topology," topographic studies of places in relation to their histories. I take a primary source describing someone's travel in and about Michigan centuries ago and - using my extensive topographic map collection, library research, and road reconnaissance - work out their route. Surprisingly in the process I prove (at least to myself) that most authors and history professors got it wrong. I'll expand on this in a later post.

All I or anyone else knows about LaSalle's 1680 walk across the Lower Peninsula is contained in a single letter he wrote to an investor back in France in September of 1680, describing his trek by canoe and foot from Ft Crevecoeur to the Niagara Country. For his walk across Michigan from Ft. Miami to the Detroit River I wrote what I call a narrative monograph, scholarly but not big enough to be a book but more than a booklet. I self publish and distribute mostly to historical libraries.

LaSalle Relay - The "Corridor" II

2009-05-26T09:45:00.002-04:00

After our disappointment over the condition of the roads of our previously laid-out bicycling route, it became sort of an adventure hunting up new ways to get across Calhoun County.

The corridor contains some very interesting country; lots of rolling forested hills, small marshes flanked by higher-ground knolls, extensive forested swamps, open and hilly farm lands and in the area of the headwaters of the Battle Creek River, large lowlands that would have been under water in LaSalle's time. Duck Lake is a typical Lower Peninsula lake surrounded by cottages cheek-by-jowl. Prairie Lake is not crowded for some unknown reason. Eastern Calhoun County is not as scenic as the western portions.

Actually, the tentative alternative bicycling route we have laid out is probably closer to LaSalle's actual route than the original. It contains a lot of zigs north and then zags back south but generally is closer to the straight-east line that I think LaSalle established after they ran out of prairie and oak forests where they could burn the grass to cover their tracks.

When we get into Jackson County, if the roads we have chosen on paper prove to be deteriorated we are going to be in tough shape. There are only two bridges across the Grand River and if the county roads leading to them are shot we are screwed. We can't make the bicyclists go cross-country and wade the swamps and swim the river. They might be willing but they would be trespassing on private property and I doubt they could get away with Neil Miller's "Dumb Canoeist" stunt.

Berrien and Van Buren Counties are a long way away and if the county roads closest to the Paw Paw River are not bicycleable (if that's a word) it would be a no go. Under such circumstances I would say forget the bicycling and stick with automobile touring.

Of course if we could sucker some people into walking like LaSalle and his troops did, bad roads would not be a problem.

I hope to get an opportunity to check out the Kalamazoo County roads for bicycling but intend to road tour myself under any forseeable circumstances.

As for Washtenaw and Wayne Counties, I am going to push for hikers and canoeists to finish the reenactment from the Portage Lake Swamp to Lake Erie regardless.

LaSalle Relay - The "Corridor"

2009-05-25T09:44:00.003-04:00

There is a natural geographical west to east corridor across part of the Southern Lower Peninsula through which LaSalle and his men walked and waded in the Spring of 1680. It is bounded at the western end by Gull Lake to the north and the northern bend of the Kalamazoo River Valley to the south. In the central part it is bound on the north by Pleasant Lake and Duck Lake. At the south is Prairie Lake (much larger inLaSalle's day). Pointing naturally towards the west end of my imaginary corridor is the Paw Paw River valley and LaSalle's crossing-place of the Kalamazoo River at the present-day Kalamazoo Nature Center. At the east end is the Portage Lake Swamp (actually a large marsh). Beyond, starting about at today's Lyndon Center, is the Indian Trail that led to the Huron River at present-day Dexter.

LaSalle knew that the mouth of the Detroit River at Lake Erie, which was his goal, was at almost exactly the same latitude as his fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, thus as much as possible he wanted to travel straight east. He deviated from east only to avoid the Indian trails through the oak openings leading to the ford at the big bend of the Kalamazoo River and to get around the large tamarack swamp along that river's left bank north of the ford.

Once he got into what I call "the corridor" about at the location of present-day Richland, I don't believe he ever deviated from straight east. On my 1999 map with the Michigan History article I show him crossing the upper end of the Portage River. I now believe he never did but rather stayed north of the Portage all the way to what Neil Miller, Brian Prodin and I call the Schumacher Road Peninsula. If I could do that map over (and its enlargement that hangs in the Michigan History Museum) I would move the red line showing his route above the river. That would make the place where the two men got sick about at the location of the Waterloo Farm Museum, and have him wading over the marsh to about the Harr Road peninsula and shortly thereafter climbing to the higher ground. I think he would have sensed that higher ground was the divide between the Lake Michigan and Lake Erie watersheds. LaSalle's own words: "I went to look for some stream near which might fall into Lake Erie, where we wished to make a canoe, so as to relieve those who were wore out with toil."

Back to the corridor.

Son Jim wants to trace much of LaSalle's route by bicycle. We have laid out a tentative route using maps and he has been recruiting companions. On the Sunday before Memorial Day we decided to check out the Calhoun County portion on the ground by car. Wise decision.

Together with granddaughter Jessica, we headed down towards Battle Creek and pulled off M 66 at the road leading to Pennfield and the crossing of the Battle Creek River. This is where LaSalle would have left the higher ground and prairies and oak forests and started wading in the marshes.

After just a very few miles of following our mapped-out route - to our chagrin and dismay - what used to be smooth county roads turn into mile after mile after mile of deteriorating blacktop, unsuitable or even dangerous for bicycling. I don't know what the Calhoun County Road Commission plans do about that, but thus far all they have done is erect a lot of "Rough Road" signs.

After much of a day's exploration I would guess that about 75-90 percent of our laid-out route in Calhoun County is unuseable.

NEXT: Hunting for alternative routes.

Inaugural LaSalle Cross-Michigan Relay - Ideas for a new Challenge

2009-05-21T09:31:00.000-04:00

In the spring of 1680 the intrepid French explorer René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, together with four other Frenchmen and a Mohegan Indian, walked from his fort on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan at present day St. Joseph to the site of present day Dexter, there built an elm-bark canoe to float down the Huron River but abandoned it five days later because of all the floodwood in the river, then walked the rest of the way to the Detroit River where it flows into Lake Erie.

A few of us who have been following the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge are toying with the idea of a similar LaSalle challenge. Among us we have considerable experience in historical tours by automobile, long distance bicycle touring like the annual DALMAC tour from Lansing to the Big Mack Bridge, and organized canoeing on the Huron River.

Encouraged by the success of the 2009 UHHC and widespread interest in it, I have been cogitating as to what could be done to remember LaSalle's feat.

Try this for an itinerary:

1. Walk or ride golf cart from the LaSalle/Ft. Miami Historical Marker in St. Joe south along the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan past the LaSalle Memorial boulder to Broad Street. Then go down Broad Street to Clementine's restaurant at the Pier 33 Marina on the St.Joseph River.

2. Ride salmon fishing cruiser up and across and down the St. Joseph River to Riverview Drive marina in Benton Harbor.

3 (a) Automobile tour from Benton Harbor to: (a) Sarrett Nature Center on the Paw Paw River (briars and brambles in river valley) (b) boat launch site north of Lawrence on Paw Paw River (more briars and brambles) (c) Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery (more open woods) (d) Grand Prairie Golf Course (Pottawatomie Indian encounter) (e) Kalamazoo Nature Center (river crossing) (f) Gull Prairie at Richland (burning grass to hide tracks) (g) Battle Creek River at Pennfield (wading marshes) (h) Turkeyville. About 90 miles.

3 (b) Automobile tour all the way from St. Joe to Dexter. About ___miles.

4 (a). Bicycle tour from Turkeyville to Waterloo Farm Museum via Duck Lake, Springport, Tompkins Center, Rives Junction, Grand River (Berry Road bridge or Maple Grove Road DNR launch site--Mascouten Indian encounter) and Pleasant Lake. About 40 miles.

4 (b) Bicycle tour from Richland to Waterloo Farm Museum with meal stop at Turkeyville. About 70 miles.

4 (c) Bicycle tour all the way from St. Joe/Benton Harbor to Dexter. About ___miles.

5. Hike from Farm Museum across Portage Lake Swamp in Waterloo State Recreation Area to Lyon Center and via North Territorial Road and Island Lake Road (Indian trails) to Dexter park at Mill Creek. About 16 miles.

6. Erik Vosteen and Kevin Finney display their elm-bark canoe at Dexter park and maybe put it in the river.

7 (a) Canoe down Huron River from Dexter to French Landing with a stop at LaSalle's statue at Belleville portaging all dams. Two day trip. Possible camping or shuttle arrangements at Gallup Park in Ann Arbor.

7 (b) One day canoe trip down the Huron from Dexter to Gallup Park.

8. UHHC Challengers put their canoes and kayak into the water at Portage Lake and paddle downstream on the Huron River far enough to cover all sections wheeled around going upstream last spring.and do it all in one day.

9 Hike through Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Park system to Lake Erie MetroPark. About 18 miles.

At first this wouldn't have to be done serially or totally or with many participants. Various LaSalle and historical reenactment enthusiasts could do it in uncoordinated bits and pieces. Eventually one would hope for a coordinated, scheduled publicized annual affair like the annual Hugh Heward Challenge 50 miler (which has grown in 10 years from about 5 paddlers to well over 100).

I would sure like to hear anyone's reaction to these ideas. Meanwhile I'll keep cogitating and trying to con people into joining the project.

It occurs to me that this proposed LaSalle Relay is pretty much the reverse of the 2009 Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge only commemorating an event 110 years earlier and on foot rather than by canoe and using the St. Joseph and Kalamazoo River valleys instead of the Grand.. Thus I think you-all who followed the UHHC Challengers would be interested in following the LaSalle Relay if I can pull it off. What do you think?

Son Jim is already planning to do the bicycle thing and is trying to hook some DALMAC types into the project. I have been communicating with Ron Sell on the canoe part.

I would expect to have brief recognition ceremonies at St. Joe, Dexter park and LaSalle's statue in Belleville.

My reporting would include extracts from LaSalle's Setember 1680 letter in the same way I included extracts from Hugh's journal in the UHHC coverage.

Coach's latest adventures; Jon Holmes' log

2009-05-15T07:44:00.009-04:00

I encourage you all to go to Coach's website and read what he has written about his UHHC experience. Click on Current Journal to read his blog, which includes his latest - and final - post about the Challenge, "May 4 - Hammond Marina to Chicago." You can also see where he will be going next. Now that we know Coach, we will be following his exploits with interest.

I have been emailing Jon Holmes' log entries, and his account of the trip is also excellent and very instructive for those who may want to think about this or similar challenges. If you didnt' read the log entries in my emails, or to read the entire log from start to finish, click here. Jon has also started a blog, where we will be able to follow his ongoing "Adventures on the Grand." Schedules for Jon's kayak instruction are available on his website, www.advonthegrand.com

I am encouraging the Intrepids to add their stories to the record of the UHHC 2009.

Jon Holmes, on the river

Nancy Anderson, Coach, Jim in Dimondale