Cross Country Canoe

I didn’t plan the route, I never do. I just intended to paddle my canoe from coast to coast. Alpo Dog Food was a sponsor for the trip and when I got out there, they gave me a dog and lots of dog food and coupons for dog food to hand out to people along the way.

I named the dog, a lab puppy, Windsor. I used to have a dog at home, a lab I named Windsor after my favorite whiskey, so I guess you could fault me for lack of imagination in the dog naming arena. But he was a cute little guy and I enjoyed training him.

I was kind of nonchalant about the whole endeavor. By now I’d had several adventures that were covered extensively in the press, so in my mind I just had to put the canoe in the water, put the dog in the canoe with our dry good supplies, attach a little two-horsepower engine and take off. Some press was involved, but it was mostly Alpo’s doing as they wanted to get some good publicity out of it. So, I didn’t have crowds cheering me on. It was like an everyday thing.

The first river I had to traverse was the Columbia River. It has some of the biggest locks and dams: 70-80 feet high. For comparison, the locks in the Erie Canal are 6 -7 feet high. You look up and all you see is the sky with walls around you. It was almost like the skylight in a car. Gates close, the water starts rising. There’s nothing you can do about it. My whole theory in life is, if someone has done it, it’s safe to do. If someone hasn’t done it, then it’s scary. I don’t think anyone had ever been in a lock in a canoe, and I have to admit I was a little scared for the first time because there’s nothing you can do if something goes wrong.

The second river was the Snake River which is big and wild with serious rapids. And I was stupidly going up the rapids, against a current that was being fed by water flowing down from the Continental Divide. That’s what you get when you don’t plan. But if you find yourself in that situation, and I hope you never do, stay as close to shore as possible where you’ll be getting backwash that should help you along or at least not fight you. I left Windsor in the canoe under a tarp and I was pulling the canoe with a rope from the shore. Then I lost control of the canoe. It flipped and I had to go a distance back and get my equipment. When I pulled the canoe in and turned it over, I saw that Windsor had drowned.