New Jersey Woman's 2,000-Mile Canoe Trip From N.Y. To Chicago

To Margo Pellegrino of Medford, there’s no better way to raise awareness about water quality than ride a canoe for 2,000 miles.

That’s exactly what she’s doing as she’s spent the last month in her 20-foot vessel, riding from New York to Chicago, with an expected arrival time between July 18 and 20.

“I do not want to be a part of ruining the beautiful, alive, blue-green planet that is Earth,“ she wrote on her blog, https://paddle4blue.wordpress.com, which has chronicled every day of her journey.

“It’s the only home we’ve ever known.”

There have been some obstacles, certainly. Pellegrino said in The Asbury Park Press that it has been a “slow, wind-in-your-face journey” with frequent thunderstorms.

Many nights, Pellegrino and a logistics manager, who follows by car, spend the night camping in a tent. But, as they said in the report, they never think about turning back.

They also get to do some sightseeing - and locals welcome them with open arms. One restaurant in Michigan welcomed her with a message board that said, “WELCOME MARGO PELLEGRINO.”

One day, she found herself holed up for the day in Caseville, Mich. because of winds which “whip the trees into dramatic frenzy on land and make for high swells and intense chop on Ocean Huron.”

“Yes, it really is an ocean out there!,“ she wrote in her blog. “A freshwater, inland one. Chop and swell are great fun but not when you have any distance to travel and the two collide in your face,” she said. “Makes for miserable, injury inducing paddling, nevermind the obvious safety aspect.”

Pellegrino started her advocacy in 2007 after having an epiphany while cleaning her fish tank. After seeing what can build up inside the container, she came to realize that chemical runoff, soap and other human devices cause noxious patches of algae to form, choking native aquatic life, diminishing water quality and hampering eco-systems, according to The Asbury Park Press.

“I realized that it’s all one system,” she said in the report.

Photo: https://paddle4blue.wordpress.com