DSLR are great step up from compacts and canon are an excellent
make and quality, but to make sure you avoid problems you really need the L lens as they are weather proofed to some degree, this reflects in the price.
There is a sort of mid point, I have recently been looking at the Nixon Coolpix p520 or the earlier p510, basically they have almost everything, from excellent zoom to gps all in one compact model,
not sure if the weather proofing would be up to the original thread.
Have a look at Amazon, with weather proof camera as a search, you will find many very worthy examples of compact cameras that will take
quite a bashing even dunking allegedly.