Paddlers participating in a 250-mile canoe trip stopped in Cincinnati on Thursday. The Ohio River Way Challenge is an annual 10-day expedition that promotes recreation, research and appreciation of the waterway.
Participants wake up at dawn and paddle all day, traveling from Portsmouth, Ohio, to Louisville, Kentucky.
Maud Bartlett is taking part in the Ohio River Way Challenge for the second time this year.
“Last year was my first year and I was just impressed that I could make it,” Bartlett said. “It made me love the river though. I just want to come back to it like an old friend now.
Each evening the paddlers moor the boats — 30-foot long voyageur canoes — in river towns. They meet with people in the communities and discuss the Ohio River.
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“Learning and getting to see how much people care and the ways in which they show that — whether its investing in their riverfront or in riverfront venues, or in their industry around the river — has just been really interesting to me,” said University of Kentucky student Sylvie Eckel.
Eckel and other UK students are participating in the Ohio River Way Challenge as part of an internship program.
The combination of scholarship and river travel inspired the theme for this year’s Ohio River Way Challenge: a boatload of knowledge.
The 250-mile expedition on the Ohio River retraces the route intellectuals William Maclure and Robert Owen paddled from 1825-1826. The two men led a “boatload of knowledge,” filled with scientists and educators, down the Ohio River, communal history researcher Donald Pitzer wrote. They departed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and arrived in Indiana a month and a half later. The passengers’ destination was the intended utopia at New Harmony, Indiana.
Present-day paddlers will complete their trip in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday.