A canoe ride down the Rio Grande is about as peaceful as you can get. The flow is slow and the water is not deep. We went on a guided tour before we left Big Bend, National Park. The tour was in a state park by the same name, which is just an extension of the park itself.

We were not very familiar with canoeing and we were given some basic instructions, which were good enough.

You would have to really mess up to turn over, but it could happen. There were some “rapids” that were a little tricky, but our guides helped us through.

Steering a canoe is not as easy as you would think, and we went down one rapid backward. We got to a point where it was going to be too hard to turn around, so we just went back and it worked out fine.

Tall brown grass on both sides of the river creates a different world. A person could forget they are in a desert for at l