I guess in this day and age, where technology and modernity has pussified the human race, 50 miles of walking is unthinkable. Keep in mind that the Corps of Discovery, on its odyssey to the Pacific Ocean and back from near present-day St. Louis, often covered 40+ miles in one day (note that they deployed small groups on foot to scout and hunt while the provisions were kept in the mackinac style boats they used for the water portion of the journey). I myself have done many 50 mile trips, sometimes covering up to 20 miles in one day. All you need is time, good footwear and some Red Man chew.
LOL! So our discrepancy in what "near" means is based upon the relative degree of erosion of our 'manliness' by modernity? Look, Meriwether, I've pulled some long treks by canoe, on foot and particularly by bicycle in my day, too, and I still think Kalamazoo isn't "near" the Kankakee River. Maybe I'm just a whiner, though.
Twenty miles? Why not 30? Oh, and Red Man is for tenderfoots who can't handle Copenhagen.
Good heavens we are manly, though! We should do Old Spice ads! Upon reading your first post in this tangent, I actually contemplated for a few moments how neat a trek it would be to canoe from Kankakee to Minneapolis and obviously checked out the rivers around Kalamazoo. But why not the Chicago Portage? It was only the most important route in the Northwest Territory, giving rise to a city significantly larger than Kalamazoo or South Bend. We could catch a Cats game on the way, too.