Folbot Holidays (1930s)
by J. Kissner
A series of short articles about trips using Folbot’s folding kayaks. Although originally published in the 1930s as an advertisement for Folbot, this 308-page paperback gem is chock-full of vintage color photographs and articles, including “Enchanted Honeymoon Adventure,” “Folboting with the Scouts” and “Way Down Upon the Suwannee.” Looking at the pictures and reading the stories may just convince you that what you need is a folding kayak to throw in the back of your car, SUV or truck.

 

Canoe Errant (1935)
by Major R. Raven-Hart
Raven-Hart was one of the most prolific cruisers in the early 20th century. Canoe Errant chronicles his trip throughout Europe in a folding canoe (kayak) from 1929-1933. Let him tell it: “Canoe-cruising has occupied my summers for the past five years, giving me some 10 thousand miles—from Lubeck in the north to Les Saintes-Maries on the Mediterranean and Kotor on the Adriatic, and from Budapest in the east to Nantes; and even within this area there must be another two thousand miles of worthwhile waterways, to say nothing of Poland and Greece and Scandinavia and Finland; that canoer’s paradise. Many people like to use the canoe as an accessory; to camp somewhere, canoeing around the central fixed camp and returning there every night. Personally, I prefer to move on every day, to ‘cruise’ in fact, eating and sleeping at riverside inns rather than camping and cooking.” Canoe Errant on the Nile (1936), Raven-Hart’s second book, provides an interesting contrast/companion to MacGregor’s The Rob Roy on the Jordan. Finally, Canoe Errant on the Mississippi (1938) is about a thousand-mile trip from Hannibal to Baton Rouge along Mark Twain’s river.

 

Enchanted Vagabonds (1938)
by Dana Lamb
The newly married Lambs, Ginger and Dana, left San Diego in 1933 and paddled and sailed their hybrid kayak/canoe/sailboat to the Panama Canal. The Vagabond was a 16-foot vessel they had built themselves. What followed is one of the greatest adventure travel tales ever to emerge from the action-packed 1930s. The Lambs shot through mountainous surf, landed on fabled islands, lived through violent storms and weathered nearly a dozen near-fatal wrecks. They were upset in a traffic jam of whales, caught in quicksand, trapped inside an extinct volcano and lost in a shark-infested lagoon.

 

Kingfisher Abroad (1938)
by T. and T. Rising
In 1937, Tean and Tommy Rising took a canoeing holiday with their folding canoe Kingfisher. With very little money, they camp-cruised through Holland, Germany, Austria and Hungary. The Risings encountered many friendly Germans on their cruise, but their writing is tinted with a concern over what they saw. While they could not foresee the scope of the tragedy that would come to be known as the Holocaust, there were some ominous overtones of what lay ahead. Witness this little passage about a visit with Karl, an acquaintance in Germany: “As we walked up the mountains, we passed a swimming bath. It was made of clean white concrete, with good and effective diving boards and sparkling water. ‘Jews are not allowed to swim in this bath,’ said Karl.” The Risings have a talent for summing up a complex scene with a simple phrase, and the narrative is all the more powerful because of it.

 

The Danube Flows through Fascism: 900 Miles in a Fold-Boat (1938)
by William Van Til
This is really a travel book that combines social and political observation with reports of river travel in a Klepper folding kayak down the Danube through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Van Til and his wife Bee started at Ulm, in Germany, and went all the way to Belgrade. Through sun and storm, through friendliness and suspicion, for five weeks they drifted with the timeless flow of the Danube across the ephemeral borders between nations. Among the many falt-booters—paddlers using folding kayaks—on the great river, the Van Tils found an easy fraternity that broke down the cultural barriers that had set the stage for World War I. In 1938, The Van Tils took American river trips that are chronicled in “Connecticut River Cruise” and “The Rideau Canal,” chapters of Folbot Holidays by J. Kissner (see earlier reference).

 

Kayaks to the Arctic (1967)
by E. B. Nickerson
The author, her husband and three sons pack five knapsacks, two duffel bags and eight canvas bags with the parts for three Klepper folding kayaks, including five sets of paddles and much more equipment, and head from San Francisco to Fort Providence in the Canadian Northwest Territories. They kayak 1,000 miles down the Mackenzie River in 10 weeks and finally take out at Inuvik. The trip is filled with sudden storms and idyllic days of fishing and rafting together. Fifty photographs grace the book depicting the Indians, Eskimos, Mounties and missionaries they meet.