Canoeing The Driftless: A Paddlers Guide for Southeastern Minnesota [Paperback]

David Lind (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2004

Southeastern Minnesota is a paddler's dream. Throughout the forested bluff landterrain, called the "Driftless Area", there are botheasy paddling routes as well as challenging, moredifficult streams all offering beautifull scenicviews and a variety of wildlife. Canoeing TheDriftless contains maps and descriptions forover 50 routes covering 600 miles to help you plan your paddling trip.Information such as route length, difficulty, hazards, as well as points ofinterest, the best put-in and take-out accesses and shuttle routes are includedto help in choosing a trip to fit your needs.Also included are "RiverScenes" which have interesting information on history along the routes aswell as some personal, sometimes humorous accounts of trips on the rivers.Canoeing TheDriftless is written for all levels ofpaddlers, from the beginner to the most experienced paddler.For the beginner to intermediate paddler there arethe main routes on the Cannon, Zumbro, and Rootrivers, for the more experienced paddlers the routes on the Bear, Deer,Whitewater, and smaller branches of the Root River and ZumbroRiver provide more challenging runs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The author, DaveLind, has canoed for over 50 years, beginning with Boy Scout canoe-campingtrips on the Mississippi River and the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area.Dave has paddled extensively in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Northeastern Iowa, onboth whitewater and flatwater routes. He has foundthat the streams of southeastern Minnesota, located in the "DriftlessArea", are a paddlers paradise with scenic easypaddling routes, as well as challenging small stream routes that are notadequately covered in existing paddling books. Over the last ten years he hascanoed every route in this book taking extensive notes on each river trip.

Product Details

• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse (February 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1414042043
• ISBN-13: 978-1414042046
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,652,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dave Lind is a expert in canoeing and kayaking the "Driftless Area" of Southestern Minnesota. Exploring the paddling routes of the area consisting of many streams winding through routes with fantastic scenery and towering limestone bluffs along with frequent sightings of wildlife such as eagles, deer, hawks, fox and of course plenty of fish.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointment, August 31, 2011

By 

Alan D. Donaldson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Canoeing The Driftless: A Paddlers Guide for Southeastern Minnesota (Paperback)

Canoeing the Driftless? Not so much....

I bought this book expecting to find a useful guide to paddling some rivers that, while quite close to my home in Northern Iowa, were unknown to me and poorly-referenced on the Web.

What I found instead was an outdated beginners' guide to (apparently) talking about the streams rather than about paddling them.

Examples:

1) Poorly-done maps. With maps like these, the paddler will have to search a long time to find the referenced access points.

2) Over-estimated trip times. I really cannot imagine paddlers (as opposed to floaters) actually averaging 2 miles per hour: yet that seems to be the norm for this text.

3) Questionable stream difficulty ratings. We tried several of the "moderate difficulty" streams and found them to be discouragingly over-rated.

4) Outdated references. Several locations in the book are described with reference to commercial establishments that no longer exist. I realize that the book is over 6 years old at this point, but references to such "short life time" places might well have been replaced by geographic or map features instead.

5) Water levels not mentioned. Since the USGS has river gages on many of these streams, it would make some sense to refer to those gages rather than to leave the readers guessing as to appropriate stream flow.

The author has a good idea in putting up a website to support the book [...], but the website is incomplete and a bit useless, so the idea fails in this instance.

I'd suggest leaving this book on the shelf.

Al Donaldson

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great guidebook, October 7, 2005

By 

king paddler "john" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Canoeing The Driftless: A Paddlers Guide for Southeastern Minnesota (Paperback)

I have used this book and discovered spectacular paddling rivers for both canoeing and kayaking that I never knew existed in Minnesota. A great alternative to the Boundary Waters!