This was my first ever canoe-camping adventure, and actually crossed something off my “bucket list” — going on a multi-day canoe-camping trip. I’ve kayaked a fair bit before, but have only been canoeing once or twice, and only on lakes, so in very calm water. For this trip, I was lucky enough to just tag along on something organized by Erika’s friend, Tom. He has actually done a very similar trip a few times before, so it was good to have someone who knew the score to point us in the right direction.

We rented canoes through Rimrock Adventures, so we put in at their location in Fruita, and had them pick us up and shuttle us back there (where we left our cars). I found camping in canoes really awesome, and it was closer to car camping than it was to backpacking, in that we could carry a lot of equipment (and beer), without it being a burden. Since we’d just paddle all day, then pull up to a beach-front campsite, we didn’t really need to carry things around much. We also didn’t even need to paddle that much, since the current of the river carried us a lot of the way. We actually had to watch our progress and make sure we weren’t going too fast, and pull over and take a break if we were! Unfortunately, at the last minute we found out there was a fire ban, so we had to keep our meals simple enough to be able to be prepared on a small stove. Bit of a bummer, but not much we could do about it.

The first night we camped at “Cottonwoods 4” campground, which turned out to be a mosquito breeding ground. It was pretty brutal. I’ve never been amongst so many/such aggressive mosquitoes. I don’t even normally get bothered too much, and they attacked me. Others (including Erika) got absolutely mauled. We had to dash back and forth to the tents/waterfront, to try to avoid the worst of it, and all ended up turning in pretty early just to escape to the safety of our tents. That day was our first on the water, and we saw a bald eagle aerial-dogfighting with another bird, battled some crazy canyon-windtunnel-headwinds, and lounged around in camping chairs literally in the river.

Up early the next day, quick breakfast, and bail out from mosquito-town. We got moving, all hoping that our campsite that night was less painful. As it turns out, it definitely was, although it was a bit of a challenge to actually get to. Tom had warned us that it involved some technical paddling to get there, just because you had to make some quick maneuvers across some small whitewater and fast-moving current. I think we were all freaking out a little bit, and so we scouted ahead, figured out exactly how we were going to tackle it, and then headed in, one boat at a time. It was well worth it. Such an amazing campsite. We had our own private, beautiful, sandy beach. Earlier in the day, we also saw an Amtrack train (the line runs right down in the canyon, next to the river) which was pretty fun. Apart from some wind around dusk (my tent blew away and rolled up the hill before I had it staked down!) there was absolutely nothing to complain about at this site. It was gorgeous.

On the last morning, we got moving and kept heading downriver. Towards the end of paddle-time (noon-ish) is when we got into some really flat/open, boring landscape. It was pretty amazing how different it felt to the breathtaking canyons of most of the previous 2 days. We found the take-out, unloaded, waited for our shuttle back to Fruita, then squared up, packed the cars, and headed back to Denver.

I had an amazing time, and it really set me up for my next adventure, a multi-day canoe adventure in the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area (more on that soon).