![]() ![]() "'You’re gonna die.' All this kind of stuff." "On my mother’s side, my aunts and uncles, most of them, were basically saying, 'You’re crazy,'" Dana's younger brother, Jeff, says. He estimated the trip would take two years. (McClelland and Stewart, 1987)ĭon Starkell spent the next 10 years planning a route. That’s like what I wanna be.'" A map of the route from the "Paddle to the Amazon" book. And it was a couple years later, when I was 9 years old, that he came up to me and he said, 'Dana, how would you like to get in a canoe one day, and we’ll paddle so far south, we’ll paddle right outta winter?' You’ll start to see snakes and parrots and monkeys hanging from the trees.' And I’m like, 'Yeah, monkeys. "Next thing you know, he was getting out books and researching rivers and connecting routes together. "I told my dad when I was 7 years old," Don's older son, Dana, begins, "I said, 'Dad, you know what I wanna do one day? I wanna walk to the jungle and be like a monkey, you know? ![]() Because the Starkells’ plan was to paddle 12,000 miles from Winnipeg to Belém, Brazil, on the mouth of the Amazon River. Or, they might have laughed to hide their fear. ![]() Friends and family members present at the launch might have laughed because they expected the Starkells to give up by the time they got there. The Amazon Hotel was a seedy flophouse on the outskirts of town. As they paddled off, Don made an announcement. On the morning of June 1, 1980, Don Starkell and his two sons climbed aboard Orellana, their orange, custom 21-foot canoe and launched on the Red River from a park near their home in Winnipeg. (The Grand Forks Herald) This article is more than 5 years old. Don (left), Jeff (center) and Dana Starkell, pictured here leaving Grand Forks, North Dakota, on the Red River, left Winnipeg in hopes of paddling all the way to the Amazon River. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |