We had a Trailmates trip to paddle some canoes down the Colorado River. Officially, only Geneva is in Trailmates, but I took Acacia too, since there's not much chance I'll do this again.
There's a campground on the river, just south of Needles. We left plenty early on Friday, but it took 6 hours to get there. Saturday morning, you get up, and they bus you upstream 11 miles, and you get to drift/paddle back to camp. They provide a sack lunch (in a zip-lock bag, just in case), and build a big barbeque dinner at the camp, too.
Apparently, it's really easy to flip the canoes over, so the standard practice for beginners is to bring some heavy sprinkler pipe and duct tape two canoes together into an unflippable catamaran. It also makes it more fun, 'cuz the kids get to be with their friends.
We paddled for a while, then pulled up on a beach to eat lunch. Paddled down a little while more, and pulled up on the other side, so the kids could "go swimming in Arizona". The water was chilly, but not too cold for the kids, and it was nice and sunny to dry them out soon enough. We also had some big squirtguns for water wars between canoes, but that only happened right at first 'cuz we were slowpokes and didn't run into any other friends after the launch point.
We were out for about 5 hours in all, which was plenty, but it was fun. Maybe I will do it again...
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