The last couple days have been HUUUUUUGE for us!! And I mean HUGE. So many things have been happening recently, I obviously had to blog about it now to fill you in. Things are really moving fast, faster than we ever anticipated… but that’s a good thing 🙂
Here’s the latest news…
1. Matt’s brother, Daniel Lowers, might be joining the expedition! Daniel also isn’t a kayaking expert, but he’s done these kinds of adventures before. For instance, he went with Matt on a roadtrip across the US in an old VW Van. How they made it across the country and back in that hunk-of-junk… I’ll never know. In fact, it literally broke down 6 times during the trip…but that’s a story for another time.
Anyway, we really hope Daniel can take part, but it depends on the financial situation. 2 month expeditions certainly aren’t cheap. Keep your fingers crossed for him!!
2. We now are giving back to the community even more!
From the beginning, we wanted to “raise awareness about the need to preserve the Mississippi River and its surrounding wildlife” (as quoted from our Facebook Page. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a clear plan of what to do. Now that’s changed.
We’ve just teamed up with two amazing organizations: Leave No Trace and Paddle4Peace.
Leave No Trace: promotes “Outdoor Ethics”. In other words, they teach people how to enjoy the outdoors responsibly. By doing this, we can maintain the beauty (and access to) natural land. They’re the perfect organization to help us raise environmental awareness.
Another primary goal of ours was to inspire self of confidence in our audience…that if WE can do this, with very little experience, YOU can do something like this too (see earlier post). The following organization does that for kids (they’re also working for peace, as the name suggests).
Paddle4Peace: Founded by a group of athletes, they paddle to help groups that actively work to foster peace around the world. They’re also developing a kids paddling program to help raise a child’s sense of self-worth and confidence, as well as to keep them outside and on the water.
Besides mentioning these organizations whenever possible (including our video), we’ve got something else in the works too —
Matt and Daniel are going to make and sell survival bracelets (y’know, the ones made out of para-cord) to raise money for the organizations above AND help finance our project. They’ll be selling them before the trip in Bloomington, IN, and throughout the trip in cities along the river.
Help us make our dream a reality by supporting our project (and get something cool in return!)
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To learn more about our expedition and get all the latest updates, follow us on Twitter and check out the Expedition Mississippi Facebook Page!
Expedition Mississippi 