Jonathan Trappe, a balloonist who had been attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean but was forced to land in a remote area on Newfoundland's west coast, was picked up on Friday afternoon by a helicopter that had been chartered by CBC to conduct an aerial survey of the area. 
 
 "I've never been so glad to see the media," Trappe told CBC News videojournalist Lindsay Bird when she found him. 
 
 'I've never been so glad to see the media.'—Jonathan Trappe 
 
 Trappe left Caribou, Maine, near the New Brunswick border, on Thursday in a small boat suspended below more than 300 helium-filled balloons. 
 
 He may not have made it to his European destination, but Trappe said the journey was about more than that. 
 
 "We set out on this expedition for the adventure, and we got the adventure," Trappe said. 
 
 "The destination was always unknown, and it's pretty grand where we've come in to. It's not the destination I set out for, but it's kind of the way with real adventure — adventure isn't what you planned on, it's what you find, and that's what we have today." 
 
 Trappe said he was burning through ballast too quickly to make it across the Atlantic and was forced to choose between landing in the isolated woods Thursday night or ditching over the ocean sometime Friday. 
 
 'Hmm, this doesn't look like France' 
 
 Once he was on the ground, Trappe said, he contacted his crew via satellite message to assure them that he was safe and there was not an emergency. 
 
 "The Atlantic Ocean has been crossed many times, and in many ways, but never quite like this," Trappe said in a promotional video. 
 
 "Hmm, this doesn't look like France," Trappe wrote in a post on his Facebook page Thursday. 
 
 Shortly after, Trappe posted that he had set up an exposure canopy on his boat to settle in for the night and included a link to a satellite map showing his location. 
 
 Trappe, who had intended to become the first person to fly across the Atlantic with only the aid of cluster balloons, landed in a remote area south of the small Bay of Islands community of Lark Harbour. 
 
 Much of the area surrounding where Trappe landed is impassable. 
 
 There are no roads leading to the location, but residents had been trying to reach him on ATVs, without success. 
 
 Trappe has made a name as an adventurer using clusters of balloons, including flying in a house, much as in the Disney-Pixar animated film Up. ||||| His goal was simple, he told authorities. He was hoping to protect his pregnant fiancee from a violent ex-boyfriend. 
 
 
 
 There was just one, rather formidable, obstacle in his way: the Canada-US border. 
 
 The solution devised by the 25-year-old American – floating down a river that separates the two countries on an inflatable mattress to illegally enter Canada – was ingenious, but it led this week to a two-month jail sentence. 
 
 The American, identified as John Bennett by a crown prosecutor, first tried to legally cross the border between Calais, Maine, and the Canadian province of New Brunswick on Wednesday. He told authorities he wanted to see his girlfriend who lived in Canada, in the small town of St Stephen. He was denied entry after a background check turned up pending mischief charges in the US. 
 
 Hours later he headed to his local Walmart, a court in Canada heard on Thursday. He bought an air mattress, inflated it, fashioned a wooden board into a paddle and set sail on the St Croix river, a tidal river 500 yards wide that sits between Maine and New Brunswick. 
 
 As he floated along the river, he was spotted by a local resident who called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said Peter Thorn, a lawyer representing the public prosecution service of Canada. The RCMP headed to the area and found him soon after. “He was wet and carrying his boots and matched the description that the witness had given,” said Thorn. 
 
 The young man immediately admitted to police that, driven by concerns over his girlfriend’s safety, he had crossed the river after being denied legal entry to Canada. “He, in his mind, thought he needed to do what needed to be done to get over there to see her and ensure that she was OK,” said Thorn. “But there has not been any corroboration on the so-called fiancee’s side of the story, meaning we don’t know the accuracy of what he was saying.” 
 
 He was arrested and held in police custody overnight. During a court appearance on Thursday, he pleaded guilty to failing to appear at a border crossing. Bennett, who has no fixed address but is believed to reside in Calais, Maine, was sentenced to two months in jail in Canada, after which he will be returned to the United States. 
 
 While this was the first time he had heard of someone making the crossing by air mattress, Thorn had had other cases where people had crossed the border by swimming or crossing the railway bridge. Some were people who refused to recognise land borders, others suffered mental health problems. “And there are other people who are overcome with desire to come across even though they have been rebuffed at the border, for whatever reason,” he said. “I don’t think this is the only case of a so-called love interest that has caused a person to break the law to go over there.” 
 
 Still, the reaction to the case has surprised him. Some swooned over the gallantry of the act, with Thorn overhearing one person remark that they wished someone would carry out such an act for them. “I sense that there’s this element of a Romeo-Juliet type of thing. I think that’s part of it.” 
 
 Others delighted in the idea of floating along the tidal river, said Thorn, such as the judge who told the accused in court, “Pardon the pun, but it seems to me you wanted to get there, come hell or high water.”
– A US balloonist who was trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean using hundreds of helium-filled balloons has landed short of his goal in Newfoundland. With sense of humor intact: "This doesn't look like France," he posted on Facebook. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported today that it used a helicopter to retrieve Jonathan Trappe from the remote area where he landed a night earlier. "It's not the destination I set out for, but it's kind of the way with real adventure," Trappe told the CBC. "Adventure isn't what you planned on, it's what you find, and that's what we have today." Trappe landed safely in a rugged area near York Harbour after reporting that he was having trouble controlling his balloons yesterday evening, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Instead of using a conventional hot-air balloon, Trappe was using more than 300 colorful helium-filled balloons, like those used in the animated movie Up. He said his calculations indicated he wasn't going to make it to Europe, so he decided to set down on land before crossing over open ocean.