‘You just take it paddle by paddle’: Man’s plan to canoe across the country passes through the Inland Northwest

With blood dripping from his nose and fog blocking almost all sight , Kyle Parker secured the fastest known time for canoeing the entire Wisconsin River: five days, 19 hours and 22 minutes; 430 miles.

But it wasn’t enough.

Now, Parker is attempting a new trip almost 10 times that length and projected to take seven to eight months to complete.

“Tip 2 Tip,” he calls the trip on his online blog, has Parker walking and paddling from the most northwestern point of the contiguous United States, the Puget Sound, to the most southeastern point, Miami Beach.

“It’s an elephant of a trip,” Parker said. “You just have to take it minute by minute, paddle by paddle.”

Parker said that he lives to be outdoors. He’s from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and went to college for business at the University of Wisconsin, later getting an office job. He spent it looking out the window to the water and hearing co-workers constantly tell him, “I wish.”

“Everybody around me said, ‘I wish I did something like that’ or, ‘Maybe one day I can do that.’ Why not today?” Parker said. “I never want to say, ‘I wish I did that.’ ”

Nate Ziegler, the canoe and voyager chair at the Spokane Canoe and Kayak Club, said that he’d heard of people sailing the ocean or paddling the Mississippi, but that a trip of this length is times 10.

“I think it’s honorable and amazing,” Ziegler said. “We need people in the world to do stupid things sometimes so that we can all question what we’re doing with our lives.”

Parker began on May 2 and spent Wednesday camping at Farragut State Park in Idaho. Thursday, he launches onto Lake Pend Oreille to embark on the next section of his trip.

“The next month is the most challenging part of the trip, for sure, because next month is getting up over the Continental Divide,” Parker said.

Paddling over the deep calm water of Lake Pend Oreille around 5 a.m., Parker will head to the Clark Fork River. So far, his canoe has hit the water of the Puget Sound, the Columbia River and the Spokane River with no problems, but the elevation of the Clark Fork has him worried.

With the most elevation gain per mile he’s experienced this trip, the current will run faster. This combined with the threat of grizzly bears, cougars and a 150-mile portage across the Continental Divide is why Parker considers this the hardest part of the trip.

“I’m really definitely worried about the next part, for sure, and it’s more in the wilderness than I’ve been so far,” Parker said. “I think I’m gonna try to stay kind of closer to civilization, if I can, especially at nights and stuff.”

Parker canoed occasionally growing up but didn’t really find a passion for it until he worked at Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota at around 18. There, he worked six days a week as a canoe outfitter and on his day off would compete with co-workers to see who could canoe the farthest.

It was there he found his passion to pursue these long-distance canoe trips, and last September at age 24, he finished his trip across the Wisconsin River. In the last 24 hours of the journey, Parker said that fog had covered the water. After paddling almost nonstop with little sleep, his body was exhausted. He took many Ibuprofen to help with the pain, but he said it caused his nose to bleed.

He told his support, a close friend of his driving alongside him to give him food and supplies as needed, that if the weather stayed like this, he wouldn’t finish the trip.

But he did.

“That was to push myself and find out my limits, and I think I came close, but I definitely didn’t break,” Parker said. “On this trip, I think it’s to push my limits in different ways, not necessarily the physical as much, but more of the mental.”

Now on this journey, Parker looks to take it slower. On the Wisconsin River, he traveled almost 70 miles a day. Now, he considers 20 miles a good day.

“The goal is not a race. It’s just to experience the trip for what it is,” Parker said. “I appreciate every moment and slow down and meet the people along the way that make this country the country.”

A lot of the trip won’t even be on the water and will be spent portaging where he has to carry his canoe across land before getting to the next body of water. For each portage, Parker straps two carts to act as wheels so he can pull it behind him after tying it to his backpack. For downhill traversal, he rigged up a pair of reins so he can hop in and steer. The only problem is he hasn’t come up with a way to brake.

Darren Bush, who owns Rutabaga Paddlesports in Madison, Wisconsin, sponsored Parker and provided him with gear like the Swift Cruiser 17.8 canoe that he is taking across the country.

Bush said the difference between Parker and others who call him looking for sponsorship for big trips is his emotional intelligence.

“I mean, it’s not about the physicality of it; a lot of people could do this,” Bush said. “It’s mental. There’s people that do things that are physically difficult and then drop out because they just can’t handle the mental part of it.”

Ziegler, who once canoed for six weeks from Luce, Minnesota, to the Hudson Bay, said he never tackle a trip as long as Parker’s.

“It’s just like the physical demands now would be huge,” Ziegler said. “I proved it to myself; you know, my six-week trip, and, at the end of it, like, what did it mean? What’s this gonna mean to him?”

Over the winter, Parker spent six months working two jobs to plan and save up to pursue this dream. He also worked to find sponsors who would help him financially like Bush.

Parker said the first week of walking, paddling and sleeping in tents was tough on his body, but now he’s become used to it. For food, he stocks up at grocery stores he finds along his trail, filling his pack with anything light and snackable. Tuna cans, ramen and pasta mostly fuel him, but every once in a while he’ll stop at a burger place to chat with a local.

He takes the trip in small increments, only planning as far as the next 10 days, as he learned from his first trip that plans don’t last long.

Once he makes his way across the country like a modern day Lewis and Clark and arrives at Miami Beach, he hopes to host a large party. Every local he’s met, he’s invited.

“I’m hoping when I get there, it’ll just be like a scene from a movie where you see all the characters from the entire movie, ‘Oh, I remember you. I met you in Grand Coulee,’ ” Parker said. “But other than that, I don’t really know. There isn’t much of a plan after that.”