Despite the number of times we could/probably should have died on the Delaware River, Steve and I made it about a month before formulating a rough plan for a second river trip. We spent the remainder of the summer drinking beers in the sun on the local reservoir (or nursing our sunburn in the shade on the porch at Burt’s) arguing about the specifics.
Our standards are simple: at least 400 miles, goes from source to sea, and involves at least a handful of stretches that guarantee a miserable physical struggle.
We tossed around a few ideas. The Susquehanna (460+ miles, upstate New York to the Chesapeake Bay) was a solid contender, as well as the Potomac (400+ miles, various upper branches draining into the main channel). The Potomac pulled ahead because of the various gnarly upper branches running through national forests and because both of us were sorely tempted by the prospect of pulling the canoe out of the river in Washington DC, sprinting across a few lanes of traffic, and seeing how far we could paddle down the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall before security took us down.
And then we heard mention of the St John River. This “Rhine of North America” runs over 400 miles from the headwaters on the Maine/Quebec border through remote New England wilderness into New Brunswick before flowing into the Bay of Fundy via the infamous Reversing Falls at the city of St John. The farthest reaches of the upper branches can only be successfully paddled shortly after the snow melts when the water is high, and the lower end is subject to some of the most extreme tides in the world.
Barely-above-freezing river water? Black fly season in the north Maine woods? Tides so extreme they change the direction the river is flowing? SIGN. US. UP.
Being a huge fan of Stan Rogers’ song “Barrett’s Privateers” (an enthusiastic drinking song about a miserable ocean voyage… aka all our favorite things) Steve immediately proposed that we end the trip in Halifax. He had no concept whatsoever of the geography of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, or frankly the Atlantic coast of Canada in general, but once he realized he could be belting out the bit about “I’M A BROKEN MAN ON A HALIFAX PIER” from an actual Halifax pier there was no talking him down. At all. The few times I tried to explain that there was an entire province and a very large, very mercurial body of water between the city of St John and the city of Halifax, he just burst into song.
Lucky for Steve, I love a logistical challenge and my current job involves a lot of time sitting at a computer getting yelled at over the phone by angry tourists. I plotted out some routes, crunched some numbers, and determined that with about six weeks and some VERY careful monitoring of the tides… we might actually be able to pull this off.
We had nailed things down to the point of the trip being mostly-not-sketchy, and then a massive wrench was thrown in the works: I got a job offer in northern Michigan as a park ranger and EMT that requires me to report for duty on May 28th. Since we had originally planned on reaching Halifax sometime around June 14th, this was slightly inconvenient. Fortunately some research into the climatological records of New Brunswick revealed that the ice traditionally goes out on the St John around the end of the first week in April, and since we’d been planning to order dry suits for a while anyways, we decided that we might as well just push the start date back to April 17th. It’s not like the water would have been that much warmer if we started in early May, anyways.
At this point we’ve collected the gear, stocked up on camping food, put together every map we can find, and scraped every last penny out of the couch cushions to throw into our adventure fund. It’s a matter of days until we load the boat on the car and head north, and we look forward to sharing the shenanigans with everyone paying attention to this blog. Since we won’t always be able to update here immediately, feel free to follow us on Instagram via @typetwofundamentals.
We’ve also spent hours trying to convince our friends, families, and coworkers that we (probably) aren’t going to freeze to death, drown, or be eaten by bears. Neither of us can fathom how anyone who’s heard about our past trips would hear “Steve and Emily armed with rocks paddles vs. fully grown black bear” and not put money on us.