Paddle With Purpose River Voyages

The car is full of camping gear and the canoe is on the roof racks. We leave tomorrow morning for the start of the Suwannee River Voyage. We plan two days driving to get there and then we check in with American Canoe Adventures in White Springs, FL on Friday. They will help us shuttle back to our starting point after we reach the end of the river 177 miles downstream. Donations are still coming into our Ripple Effect webpage so we know that people are still hearing about our fundraiser. A big thank you to Georgia David and the staff at Water For People for the shout out in today's WFP Committee Webinar. It may be 20 degrees in Michigan but 80 degrees is only two days away!

We are ready and, after three years, the time has come to deliver on our promise to put the names of our sponsors on the canoe and on the water! To date, we have raised over $11,000 for Water For People since we began planning the Suwannee River Voyage back in 2019. The 2023 version of the SRV will end in the town of Suwannee, not Orlando. We will not get as many miles as originally planned but it will still be a great trip. Thanks again to all of our sponsors who have waited so patiently for us to get back up to speed. If you cannot read their names on the pictured canoe, all of our Gold, Silver, and Bronze sponsors are listed on this blog under the Our Sponsors tab. See you on the water, Gary and Linda

For so many reasons, we were excited about the Suwannee River Voyage (SRV)  and the support our many friends were bringing to Water For People. That made it all the more difficult to get the news that Linda would need surgery and treatment for breast cancer. She had been confidently waiting for recent test results to bring good news but when the results came back on February 14, our lives changed.  She has every reason to believe that good care and the recommended treatments will restore her to the active life she has led. She has surgery scheduled for March 17 and after recovery, she will begin chemotherapy. That will be followed by radiation treatments. We are looking at six months of appointments and time to recover before we can think about other things. For now, the Suwannee River Voyage is being postponed. We believe that a time will come at which we will be able to plan again to travel by river in support of Water For People. Originally, we had planned to start...

Gary, Linda, Dave, Mark, Joe, Aaron At Joint Expo, Dave reminded us of the MWEA Section 11 meeting coming up at the Anthony Ragnone Treatment Plant . Section 11 is a big supporter of Water For People. We needed to thank them for their generous donation to our 2018 Missouri River Voyage so we made the drive to Montrose. After an excellent plant tour by Aaron and an educational technical meeting for the operators and students present, we had a few minutes to talk about how thrilled we were to have had their support. Well they wanted to do it again and they are all in. It was a short business meeting and when all was said and done, Section 11 decided to kick in $2,000! Next time, we will buy the pizza! To see all our Suwannee River Voyage donors and the funds raised to date, click here . You will not find a better group of professionals in Michigan than our friends in MWEA Section 11. They chose to put some of their hard earned dollars into Water For People. Their generosity will ...

Joel, Jeff, Josh, Linda and Gary A big Thank You! to Allison and the MWEA staff for letting the Water For People (WFP) Committee share their space at the 2020 Joint Expo and Operators Day. Joint Expo is co-presented by the Michigan Section of AWWA and the Michigan Water Environment Association. The Lansing Center was overflowing both days, Feb. 4-5, and many stopped at our booth. Our display featured literature on the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) work done by Water For People in nine countries around the world. We had WASH related gifts for over 200 people who donated a dollar and spun the prize wheel. We also managed to fit a 17 and a half foot canoe into our space. This is the Northstar canoe that will travel 684 miles on this year's Suwannee River Voyage. Complete with an inflatable alligator and plastic snakes, the canoe is ready to go come April 2. Some people thought the canoe was a prize when they spun the prize wheel but were quickly informed that, if that w...

Spillway into wetland After a month of flying over Florida (via Google Maps), we found the perfect spot to end our Suwannee River Voyage. The goal was to end as close to Orlando as possible in order to connect our fundraising for Water For People to members of AWWA who plan to attend their annual conference, ACE20. The perfect spot turned out to be the Orlando Wetlands Park , a man-made wetland designed to provide advanced treatment for reclaimed water from the City of Orlando and other local cities. The Park is 1650 acres in size and located in Christmas, Florida. Ending in Christmas is just a bonus. We will be paddling up the St. Johns River which is separated from the Orlando Wetlands Park by a 2 mile section of the Florida National Scenic Trail. The trail runs through the Seminole Ranch Wildlife Management Area which is managed in cooperation with the St. Johns River Water Management District. Gary will be right at home here since he used to work at the Muskegon County ...

Wisconsin River 2017 The World's Largest Paddlesport Expo, Canoecopia, has released the schedule for their 2020 event and we now know when we will be speaking. This will be our first time presenting at the Madison, WI event and there will be 197 other presentations on canoeing and camping. We are lucky to have been assigned to one of the big rooms. In fact, we have been chosen to speak twice, on both Friday and Sunday. Your first chance to hear Five Rivers Voyage: Rediscovering the Midwest by Canoe will be Friday, March 13, 2020, at 6:30 PM. If that one is standing room only, come back on Sunday at 2:30 PM. We will tell the story of the 1,176 mile voyage that took us from Michigan's upper peninsula to downtown Chicago in 51 days. Our friends came up with $13,000 for Water For People in support of that voyage back in 2017. While at the show, we will be able to pick up some replacements for worn out gear prior to the Suwannee River Voyage. One priority will be to ge...

On the 2018 Missouri River Voyage, we used five or seven gallon, white "painter buckets" to carry our food. These had screw on lids but were not completely waterproof as we learned during a Williston, ND downpour. For 2020, we will carry "blue barrels". These are 20 or 60 liter containers designed for river travel and have metal locking bands. We expect to be overrun with raccoons and other critters along the Suwannee River since we will be staying on well used campsites. We hope that the raccoons have not yet learned how to open these barrels. Don't be frightened if you see our pet alligator at Joint Expo. Fortunately for you, the remote controlled version with the life size teeth cost more than we wanted to spend just to scare people during our presentations.

The Suwannee River Voyage bandanas have been ordered from the printer. They will be on display at the Joint Expo on Feb. 4-5. We selected two colors from the Water For People logo to create this design. Green was selected for the fabric and brown for the ink. This is the fourth bandana in the Paddle With Purpose series of voyages. The first was created for the Mississippi River Voyage, the second for the Five Rivers Voyage and the third was part of the Missouri River Voyage. A few of you may have them all. We will have lots of information about Water For People and the voyage at the Joint Expo. Stop by Booth 1213. We will have 150 bandanas and will be presenting one to each of our major Suwannee River Voyage donors. Be a donor, help Water For People and help us reach our goal.  See you there.

We have created a new logo to help promote the Suwannee River Voyage (SRV). It carries over the two orange bands that were used in the 2014 Mississippi River Voyage (MRV) logo. The color was originally taken from the Water For People logo because it created the highest visibility when flown as a flag on the MRV kayak. The SRV logo puts Water For People front and center and also gives a shout out to the organizations that contribute so much to the effort. Look for the SRV logo on the canoe this summer. We will also have it printed on bandannas for distribution to our voyage sponsors.