“We had no real idea how long the trip would take,” Kohler, 68, recalls. “We were so new at canoeing, in fact, we didn’t even know many miles per hour or how many miles we could even go in a day.”
On Thursday, June 3 – 42 years and change after departing on that northbound trek to Hudson Bay – Kohler will push off from the same East Leaf Lake boat ramp on another epic canoe trip. Only this time, he will stay in the Mississippi River Watershed and paddle south on a 2,100-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico.
He’ll paddle across East Leaf Lake and into the Leaf River, which flows into the Crow Wing River, before entering the Mississippi River at Crow Wing State Park south of Brainerd, Minn.