Napa River
River Review
To add the “surf” component of our surf and turf adventure day, we jumped into the inflatable raft and paddled ourselves to Downtown Napa from John F Kennedy Memorial Park.
The park and Downtown Napa both had docks, which was great. The dock at the park was a bit harder to use because it was low tide and there was a fair bit of mud. Still, the water just came out to the tip of the dock and we were able to avoid getting stuck in the mud. The dock near downtown was easy to use with the ability to park the watercraft for up to 3 hours at a time. Had I known that, I would have brought my kayak!
There was a kayak rental service in the downtown area, but even with that, there were only a few people out in the water. It was probably because it was too windy. Surprisingly, there were no power boats that we came across. All were human-powered.
The water was muddy, but cleaner than it looked from the shore.
The views were okay with some wildlife here and there (the highlight for us being a coyote), but the traffic noise from the bridge was distracting and overwhelmed my senses while we were near it.
The pack raft was easy to inflate and deflate and it was awesome how well it fit into the backpack that I had brought. Even the guy who ran the gondola rides at the downtown dock was impressed.
What I Learned
That the Napa River flows too slowly for the rafting to be fun. I had heard that the river changes direction with the wind, but even though we were moving with the tidal flow and wind, it was a drag having to row ourselves downtown on a raft.
It was quite windy by the time we got in the water. Given that it was at our backs, it was quite welcome, but we dreaded having to row ourselves against the wind. Because of this, we ended up not rafting back—instead, we just walked back in the Napa heat.
What Happened?
After our bike ride to Yountville and back, we got into our pack raft and paddled ourselves to Downtown Napa. When I had originally thought of this idea, I had wanted to paddle there for ice cream, but given the timing, we thought lunch would be better.
As we made our way to the downtown area, we had a good enough time, but the paddling was slow on this draggy pack raft. It took a while to get to the downtown area and I wasn’t sure if the dock was available to the public (we had a contingency plan to use a public park to get ourselves out of the water, but we would have been knee-deep in mud). The dock was open and available, so we could get out of the water easily.
With our pack raft, oars, and PFDs safely stored in the backpacking pack, we made our way to the Oxbow Public Market for lunch. We ended up eating Moroccan food, which was yummy (though the serving size was small). Given the wind conditions, we walked back to the park—after a little more than an hour, we were back at the park and we headed home for some well-earned relaxation.