You can cover tens of miles in a day, and carry all the comforts of home with you. Quietly paddling your way along a river or the shores of a lake, you glide across the water making no more noise than a fish jumping to eat a nymph skating across the surface of the water. The local wildlife pays you little heed as you glide by allowing you to see their natural habits as they go about their day.
This is what life can be like on a canoe trek. Your canoe provides you a great platform to enjoy the outdoors. It also gives you a spacious vehicle to carry your supplies. Unlike backpacking, it can be truly silent, and when you make camp at the end of the day, you are not exhausted from the long trek carrying all your supplies on your back.
The canoe has been in existence for tens of thousands of years. Canoes constructed of birch bark and sealed with pitch were a reliable transport mechanism for the native American people, as well as a tool for explorers like Samuel de Champlain, Alexander Mackenzie, and Meriwether Lewis and Samuel Clark. It still remains a practical mode of transport for fur trappers and naturalists.
It has perhaps the most versatile design of any boat in the world. Its symmetrical hull makes it as easy to paddle in reverse as forward. It can be powered by one or two paddlers. Some designs can even accommodate a sail or a motor. Its shallow draft allows it to traverse waterways completely inaccessible to other boats, and when an impassable obstacle for a canoe is encountered, the rigid frame of the canoe allows you to carry the loaded canoe around the obstacle.
So the next time you are looking for a way to get away, take a paddle in a canoe!
