Last Tuesday, Neal Moore, 50, paddled his 16-foot red Old Town Penobscot canoe into New York harbor completing an epic 7,500-mile journey across America in over 22 months, traveling through 22 states, while paddling on 22 rivers. 

For 675 days, from February 9, 2020 until December 14, 2021, Neal Moore went the distance in an expedition inspired by the travelogues of Mark Twain, from Astoria, Oregon on the Pacific Coast to the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. He set out to roam “community to community” and write about the people he met.

“I wanted to see the country up close and personal at this interesting time, with the pandemic and all the political strife, to find out what it actually means to be American today,” he said, as quoted by the New York Times.

Traveling by river became metaphoric: Just as rivers connect towns and cities, Mr. Moore said, he began exploring connections between people often separated by race, class, and political stripe.

In the first leg of the expedition, Moore crossed the Great Divide, paddling up the Columbia, the Snake, and the Clark Fork rivers to MacDonald Pass in Montana – 1,078 miles, all upstream and uphill, in a remarkable in 97 days.

He then paddled for 8-months over 3,599 river miles down the Missouri, up and down the Mississippi (with a side jaunt up and down the Ohio to see Paducah thrown in), dodging acres of barges, 1,000-foot tankers, swirling eddies, and the Chain of Rocks to the French Quarter, New Orleans.

By early 2021, Moore headed back north up the Ohio and Allegheny and other rivers to Lake Erie and finally the Hudson River, covering 2,890 river and portage miles to New York City, on the third and final leg of the trip. Along the route, he was forced to complete a 170-mile portage from Syracuse to Albany alongside the Oneida and the Mohawk (due to the NY Canal System shutting down operations in mid-October, 2021).

On his arrival in New York harbor, Moore was met by well-wishers including Bjoern Kils and the New York Media Boat.