Comment on Paddling Maine's Kennebec River on Benedict Arnold's trail

[...] Arnold's troops x faced unspeakably bad weather, ran out of food and endured illness, deaths and countless other hardships in their attempt to sneak through the woods and capture Quebec as part of America's Revolutionary War against England. Following the path of Arnold and his men (and a few women) up the 170-mile (274-kilometer) river route, my band of three was spared the bulky, leaky, 400-pound (180-kilo) wooden bateaux the soldiers used, instead taking kayaks, a 1980-vintage canoe and finally a motorboat. The Arnold expedition had no choice but to forge north the entire way, often portaging the heavy boats around waterfalls and rapids that are now largely gone due to dams. Like Arnold, whose venture was handicapped by inaccurate maps of the time, we too experienced a daunting setback by failing to have GPS or bring along a proper map. [...] we gradually made our way out of the trap and, following the sounds of logging trucks off in the distance, reached Madison's landing just before dusk. The powerboat also eased our passage from the ocean's edge at Phippsburg to Swan Island, the site roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) inland where Arnold and his men made landfall after sailing in several ships from Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the start of the expedition. Other notable sites along the Arnold Trail include Fort Western in Augusta, Arnold's staging site for the assault; and Fort Halifax in Winslow, encampment site for Arnold's troops.