Summer Sunday: Paddling the Colorado with Kids

07 Sep Summer Sunday: Paddling the Colorado with Kids

In the fall, weekends go quickly. There are errands to run, and people to see. The fridge is empty, and the house needs cleaning. But all everyone really wants to do is get outside and soak up the last few days of summer before winter sets in. So on a recent such weekend, our family headed to Grand Junction to do it all. We still went shopping, we still visited a friend in the hospital, but we also headed to Rimrock Adventures, where we rented duckies and floated the Blue Heron section of the Colorado River for the better part of an afternoon.

Siri (age 7) gets ready to run a rapid.

The great thing about this adventure was that it was easy. We called in the morning to rent boats. When we arrived, our shuttle was ready. Duckies, large inflatable kayaks that self-drain, are very stable and almost impossible to flip. There wasn’t a single section of the river where I felt worried about our girls (ages 4 and 7). In fact, the rapids are so few and far between that my husband, Andy, actually dragged the duckies up river to run a rapid again. At one point, we even had the two girls together in a boat while we paddled along together, catching up for the first time in weeks, looking up at the red rock rising above us. We pulled off midway to eat a great picnic. The Blue Heron lived up to its name: we saw tons of blue herons. We jumped in the river to swim often. And when we finally returned to Rimrock Adventure’s beach, we just left the boats by the shore, walked up to the ranch, rinsed off, changed, and hopped back in our car. Brainless.

But a few confessions. This section of the river is not the most pristine. There were definitely times where we advised the girls not to swim (what is that murky water flowing out of that drainage pipe—muddy runoff or….). We passed by oil rigs. We saw other boaters. We saw jet skis. We definitely all showered well when we got back to Telluride late that night.

Yet, what we lost in serenity, we gained in fun. We got our back-to-school shopping done. We saw the people we needed to see. And we still managed to pack in a great (mini) adventure. In the fall, when everything’s cracked up to super speed, that counts as a good weekend.

Andy and Quincy (age 4) come over to grab some cooler snacks.

If you want to go paddling in GJ….

Call Rimrock Adventures a few days ahead if you can. We got the boats and a shuttle the same day, but they suggested that was not always the case.

Bring a cooler with lots of ice, snacks, and drinks.

Bring a spare set of shoes to change into afterwards—our shoes were muddy!

Have beers afterwards on the patio at Kannah Creek Brewing Company. Great ales and tons of kid friendly treats.