Neal Moore, 49, sets out from the launch under the Roberto Clemente Bridge in Pittsburgh. Moore's travels will take him from Oregon to New York while he travels up and down some of the nation's biggest waterways. He passed through Pittsburgh on his way to East Brady on Aug. 31.

Some of us dream about packing up and hitting the road.

Maybe it's a fantasy about buying a camper and driving the blue highways.

Maybe it's quitting a job and moving West, dropping everything.

Few of us get to do it. Neal Moore, 49, did.

In some ways, the Los Angeles-born expatriate has been doing it his entire adult life — mostly living abroad in South Africa and Taiwan since age 19. All that time abroad contributed in part to a desire to reconnect with his home country and explore it from coast to coast.

“I've always been a fan of the road books,” Moore said, describing some of his inspiration during a phone interview from somewhere between Pittsburgh and East Brady.

You could say he's doing it backward, going from West to East. You could say he's doing it in an unconventional way. But he might argue he's doing it in the most traditional way possible, by canoe.

“I like the idea of the canoe being the first mode of transport,” he said. “The rivers are the country's first thoroughfare. I thought, what if I did it the wrong way and approached the Statue of Liberty?”

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