10 miles on the Housatonic

We thought we would try a little whitewater this week. Today we traveled up to Cornwall , CT where "Clarke Outdoors", a kayaking/canoing company, organizes trips down the Housatonic river. We opted for their longest trip of 10 miles and brought our own boats. We were joined on the shuttle bus by others who were there to canoe and raft the same distance. These are not guided trips so paddlers of all experience levels are sent out to make their own way down the river, which has flat flowing water and portions of class 1 & 2 rapids. Nothing very challenging but fun to paddle through. We rented helmets just in case one of those large rocks decided to tip our boats over. Five hours later we made it to the bottom in one piece, with a few new scratches on our boats and very little energy left in our arms. It was a good day and we'll definitely go back, hopefully when there's a little more water in the river.
We had planned to camp out tonight but we knew we would have problems finding somewhere on Memorial weekend. We visited two state parks and they were both full. It's probably a good thing because I don't think we would have been able to gather much firewood with our sore arms.