What to Expect on a Week Long
Guided Overnight Canoe Trip
Your Experience
Our goal is to offer you a life-changing experience through connecting with nature on the water, on the land, with nature, and through community. We facilitate this with expert canoe guides and renowned artists. Our guides are more than expert paddlers, naturalists, and campers – we appreciate the connection between people and nature, and we lean into that bond to help our participants achieve their personal goals. Through this journey, we connect with each other, become family, and most importantly, we strive to help you connect with yourself.
Preparing for the Trip
The River’s Path has partnered with Outward Travel to help you plan and book all the parts of your trip before and after your Canoe Adventure. They can help you with booking flights, finding a place to stay, purchasing the right travel insurance, as well as other things to see and do around Moab or the American Southwest. We recommend working with Outward because they care about ensuring you have a meaningful experience just as much as we do, and will help you with all the logistics so you don’t have to worry about the details. Please reach out to them for more information at 720-828-7665 or go@outward.travel.
If you’d like to arrange your own travel, please plan to fly into Canyonlands Field Airport in Moab, Utah (airport code is CNY). Connections are available from Denver and Salt Lake City a few times each day. The River’s Path highly recommends you plan to arrive at least one day before the trip begins and fly home at least one day after the trip ends with a stay in Moab before and after the trip.
You will receive a detailed email once you book your trip with The River’s Path.
The deposit and cost of The River’s Path Canoe Adventures are non-refundable. We strongly recommend purchasing travel insurance which can cover non-refundable travel costs in case you fall ill, have severe travel delays or problems, if the airlines lose your luggage, and other problems that can arise. Some travel insurance policies even allow you to cancel for any reason, or if you are forced to cancel due to work requirements.
The River’s Path will provide all of your river gear (canoe, canoe seat, life jacket, & paddle). We also provide dry bags for your belongings as well as food and drinks for the trip, kitchen gear for food preparation, and coolers to keep everything cold.
We ask that participants bring personal items that you can reference in this Personal Packing List.
Hopefully you have arranged travel to the hotel. Please be sure to contact our travel partner, Outward Travel, to make these arrangements for you: 720-828-7665 or go@outward.travel. We will have sent out a group text so that all the participants can reach each other and coordinate carpooling, meeting up for lunch or dinner near the hotel, or just arranging brief introductions. We have found that some of our participants like to get to know each other prior to embarking on the river.
On the Journey
Meet Up: On the first day, the meet up is at Moab Giants Dinosaur Museum, usually at 1:30pm. On the first night, we will camp at the put-in, which is at Ruby Ranch.
Canoe Pairing: We will pair up each morning of the journey, and switching throughout the trip is encouraged.
Loading the Canoe: We will make packing assignments for the trip, with 2 people in charge of a canoe regardless of which canoe they travel in.
Each paddling day will consist of 3-5 hours of paddling, covering 7-15 miles per day. The entire trip will consist of 4 or 5 days of canoeing with layover days in between.
We will take breaks during each paddling day for rest. Bio breaks are at your discretion, and will consist of pulling off to the bank and taking a “nature break.” There will be no formal facilities along the way.
You can pack your lunch in the morning and eat & snack at your leisure. We will have a snack barrel available anytime.
We will take breaks to swim, stretch, and eat on paddling days. It’s hard to get back into the canoe in deeper water so your guide will let you know the good spots to swim. We also will not paddle at all while swimmers are in the water so no one will be left behind!
Camping: We will arrive at each camp site in the afternoon. It is a community effort to unload the canoes and set up camp, which includes the kitchen and personal gear (tents, sleeping bags, etc).
Layover days: We will spend multiple nights at certain locations, allowing for time to explore, meditate, write, swim, participate in group activities, and more.
Meals: Volunteers for dinner prep will begin setting up around 5:30p.m., and we will eat as a group when dinner is ready. Additional volunteers will clean up after each meal.
Evening: Evenings will generally consist of a campfire, conversation, and program activities at the facilitator’s discretion with input from the group. Activities will be done by 9p.m., so bedtime can be any time after that.
Morning: Wakeup is generally between 6:00a.m. and 7:00a.m. Once again, volunteers will prep for breakfast making coffee and hot water for tea, and preparing breakfast/lunch for the group.
On layover days, the day is relaxed, and participants can swim, hike, meditate, chat, write, or do whatever else they may choose to do to connect with their purpose.
On canoe days, we will collectively pack up camp, prepare lunches, load the canoes, and head out after breakfast.
We will arrive at Mineral Bottom, our take out point, between 12:30 and 1:30pm. We will pack the trailer and head back to our cars, arriving to Moab Giants by 4:30p.m. We generally advise our participants that the earliest they can get to the airport is 5:30p.m., so we ask that you plan your travel accordingly. The best option is to stay in Moab and leave the day after the trip ends!
After the Journey
We will set up a Facebook Group or WhatsApp group for each trip so that our participants can keep in touch with each other.
We also invite you to follow the Facilitators on Social Media to stay in touch with future developments, works, and trips that you might be interested in.