Paddling The Susquehanna River, All 444 Miles

STAMFORD  - A Milford resident with family ties to Stamford, NY, completed a long journey nearly  one year ago, traveling from  Cooperstown to Maryland  by canoe. 

Lance Holliday, of Milford, started his journey last June,  paddling a canoe from the top of Otsego Lake and  traveling the entire length of the Susquehanna River to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It was the culmination of a journey that began in 1977 when he was just a teenager.

At the time, Holliday was 15 and traveled with his friend and canoe racing partner, Richie McIntyre. The teens had been invited on the journey by Vinny Dobler, a Milford school bus driver.  Dobler's plan was to paddle to Miami in a kayak and he invited the two young boys to make the trip. Dobler made it all the way to Savannah, Georgia. The boys, however,  never made it beyond Johnson City, near Binghamton, NY. "I always enjoyed the memories of that first attempt, but regretted not completing the trip," said Holliday.

He did complete  the journey 47 years later, traveling 453 miles  in 13 days, starting out from Otsego Lake. High water levels helped the trip go faster and smoother.  On June 4, 2025, he paddled into the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace Maryland.

The water was as high at the river bank when he started out from Portlandville, after nearly a straight week of rain. He said the high water was both a blessing and a curse.  " I had planned the trip would take around 20 days to paddle, but the water was fast and I would get up in the morning and be on the river by 7 a.m. and paddle all day into the evening until I got tired, which was every day. I would start looking for a place to pull the canoe onto shore before it got too late. That is when I had my most  difficulty," he writes.

Because of the high water, many of the rocky beaches that were normally available when the water is lower, to pull  the canoe ashore, were underwater. He would pull his canoe ashore and sleep inside it for the night. He spent about one year preparing, putting together the supplies he would need, such as dehydrated meats and keeping things as light as possible. He also gathered information from two other paddlers that had completed the trip.

Holliday said he had never traveled the Susquehanna River beyond Binghamton, and there were dams along the river. The further you travel down the river, the wider it becomes. In lower Pennsylvania, the river is a mile wide or more and there are a lot of places where there are large fields of rocks to navigate.Due to the high water, he was forced to look well ahead to pick out the best course to take. "It was difficult by myself, but my canoe handled it all nicely."

The final three hydroelectric dams along the river could not be accessed without pre-arranged notice. He called the dams in late April and attempted to predict the times he would arrive at each of the dams. So as he traveled, he had to judge his speed in order to give the 24-hour required notice to get to the dams at his scheduled pick up time.

Holliday said due to the high water, there were not many people along the course of his travels. "I found the people at the dams very helpful and after the last dam on the Susquehanna, the Conowingo Dam, is huge and is on the short run to Havre de Grace, Maryland. " I cannot describe the overwhelming feeling I had paddling that last stretch of the river on June 4, 2025. The river officially starts at the mouth of Otsego Lake and runs 444 miles downstream, through three states and officially ends at  Havre de Grace.

Holliday, who used to run in the General Clinton Canoe Ragata, which took place over last weekend, explained his reason for making the trip is due his passion for early Susquehanna River travel history, i.e. by Native Americans and the Colonists. "I wanted to see for myself the whole of the river from start to finish as noted on the 'Lewis Evans Map of 1749 of the Susquehanna River'".

Holliday notes that halfway through the trip, he spent two nights at the family farm of  his grandfather, the  Brooks family in Tunkhannock, PA. Griff and Fran Brooks, started the Brook's Barbecue and now Brook's House of BBQ.

Lance Holliday, 62, of Milford, gets ready to dock his canoe in Chesapeake Bay after paddling a total of 453 miles from Lake Otsego last June. He completed a journey started 47 years ago to travel the length of the Susquehanna River.