Hudson Bay Bound by Natalie Warren

 "Sometimes a great adventure lands in your lap."

"...everything that happens, good or bad, is a story. And life is just a string of stories that we collect, over time, and we might as well make them good ones." 

This is a true adventure memoir about two women who are best friends and the two thousand mile canoe trip they take from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay the summer of 2011. What a journey! 

I love these kinds of stories: the challenges and life-changing moments they experience, the humorous camping incidents, and the descriptions that immersed me in parts of the country, the rivers and surrounding wilderness I will never get to see in real life. Plus, there's a very cute dog in it that they adopt at Norway house in Canada, along with some moose and polar bear sightings. It's an interesting and fun read. 

My rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!

Similar reads:

Mud, Rocks, Blazes by Heather Anderson

Force of Nature by Joan M. Griffon

The Twenty-Ninth Day by Alex Messenger

Walking the Amazon

"I had never been to the Amazon ... but it had a mystique all of its own. Surely the trees would be much bigger, the wildlife had to be much richer and more diverse and the people would be that bit wilder and cut off from the outside world. It gave me butterflies to think of spending time in the Amazon."

On a lark, Ed Stafford and his friend, Luke Collyer, decided to walk the entire length of the Amazon River, all 4,345 miles of it. It'd be a first. No one had ever done it before. They thought it might take them a year. Instead, it took Ed 860 days. (Luke quit after 3 months.) Ed experienced mosquitoes, wasps, and snakes, heat and humidity, blistered and infected feet, flooded forests, hospitality and hostility, hunger, exhilaration, depression, boredom and fear. But through it all, he never considered giving up.

There's something about the Amazon that I find fascinating. I like to read about it and imagine going there someday, but I'd never want to walk it like Stafford did. (I'm not a fan of mud or bugs or snakes or 100% humidiy.) Walking the Amazon is both an interesting and readable memoir; Stafford does a good job of chronicling his long journey, but he focuses more on the day to day logistics--the guides, and tribes, money, gear and food, miles trekked, and the problems encountered along the way--than on the Amazon River itself and the surrounding rain forest. I would have liked a little more description, for him to paint a better picture of where he was walking, and what he saw. There's some. Just not enough for me. It's still a really good read. But I'd have to give it a B+ rather than an A for that reason.

Happy Reading!

Two other books about the Amazon that I enjoyed even more than this one:

Another Favorite Read...

 "I arrived in the Alice at five a.m. with a dog, six dollars 

and a small suitcase full of inappropriate clothes."

One woman, four camels, a dog named Diggity and a 1700 mile trek across the Australian outback. Robyn Davidson's Tracks is one of my all-time favorite travel/memoir/adventure books. With four stubborn, sassy and mischievous camels, Davidson travels from Alice Springs across the vast and forbidding Gibson Desert to the western coast of Australia ... alone. It's a crazy, poignant and brave journey. Her funny mishaps with the camels always make me laugh, but it's the inward journey she makes along the way--that hard-earned discovery of truth and self--that I remember most. This is a thoughtful and empowering book.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this amazing book:

"The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision."

"To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and best of all I had learnt to laugh."

Happy Reading!

 

Jungleland by Christopher S. Stewart

"...if given the choice between seeking a lost city in the jungle and not, always pick the jungle."

I love books like this. I think it's the allure of jungle exploration and the idea of a lost ancient city waiting to be discovered. I mean, who hasn't dreamed of being Indiana Jones just once in his or her life? Following rumors of a lost city called Ciudad Blanca, Christopher Stewart treks deep into the Honduran rain forest. He follows in the footsteps of previous explorers and interweaves accounts of their experiences with his own real life adventure. This is a fast-paced and entertaining book. It only took a couple of days to read. Plus, it let me trek through the steaming jungle of Honduras without running into a fer de lance or getting a single bug bite. Jungleland is a definite must-read for anyone who loves travel, wild adventures, or lost cities of gold. I admit, every time I read a book like this it makes me want to set off for some unexplored corner of the world. Too bad there's no job market for explorers any more! But at least there are still books about them. 

Happy Reading!

Visit Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell

"Tell folks that you're making a grand tour of polluted places, and they tend to get excited. A surprising number of people say they want to come along, and, although this turns out to be mostly talk, it's gratifying to know the market is there. Most of all, people want to know about the list. How am I choosing my destinations?"

 Blackwell's destinations include the ruined nuclear reactor of Chernobyl, the oil sand mines north of Fort McMurray, Canada, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, just to name a few. I bet you're wondering why anyone would want to read a book about any of these places, but Blackwell's book is a surprisingly witty and entertaining travel memoir. I also learned a lot about some of the world's most polluted environments. Blackwell has that enviable journalistic way of writing that informs, but doesn't bore. Not only is he adventurous; he's also insightful:

"My mission was to find the world's most polluted places...Only if I found those ecosystems of despair would I be able to implement my conceit of contrarian ecotourism and compose my great elegy for the pre-human world. But instead of finding degraded ecosystems that I could treat as though they were beautiful, I was just finding beauty. The Earth had gotten there first. I went looking for a radioactive wasteland and found a radioactive garden. I went looking for the Pacific Garbage Patch and found the Pacific Ocean."

I love books that take me to new places and this book certainly did that! It even got me thinking I just might want to make a trip to Chernobyl myself one day. I hear it's lovely this time of year. Just don't forget to pack your own Geiger counter; Blackwell says they're very hard to find in Kiev.

Happy Reading!

Check out Bookish Travel for other great travel adventures.