It doesn’t start getting scary until you’re past the Nickel Bridge, though. Especially when the flow is low.
Alas, the big gators are gone from Buffalo Bayou. (Out in certain 'burbs, they do show up from time to time.)
I’m more of a walker, but there are Canoe & Kayak trails on Buffalo Bayou, which winds through downtown. More links at that link.
Even as a walker, I’d advise you to check the weather before exerting yourself outside here. It’s been a mildish summer for Houston, thanks to afternoon showers; but our famous humidity is in full force. Lots of nice days in the fall & spring. And even in the winter–if we don’t get a Norther…
So, you could start upstream and paddle down to the city? That would be a nice day.
Has the river quality improved greatly? I was very familiar with the river there at Peace Cross 20 years ago. All kinds of trash. Getting rid of the boat dealership probably helped, so I imagine yes. Back the you’d have shopping carts, tires, and god knows what else in the water.
It’s improved. I don’t know if I’d go so far as “greatly,” but it’s improved. It doesn’t look like the Ganges anymore, if that’s what you’re asking. There’s definitely been a concerted effort during the last decade or so to clean it up. I wouldn’t go swimming in it (in fact I’m pretty sure that’s illegal), but it’s perfectly nice for kayaking.
You can paddle the Missouri in Kansas City (and the Kansas in Kansas City, KS). Go all the way to St. Louis, if you’re a bit touched in the head (both for the length and why would you want to go to St Louis?).
The Providence area has a few urban rivers that would make good paddling. The big one is the Blackstone. You could start in Woonsocket below the falls and make your way to Providence where it turns into Narragansett Bay which is also good paddling. Between those points you’ll spend a lot of time on the border between Cumberland and Lincoln where it’s much less urban. There are old mill dams left but there’s passages around them. You may have to port around the falls in Pawtucket.
There also the Providence River, really the outflow of several smaller rivers like the Woonasquatucket and the Pawtuxet. The Pawcatuck is somewhat larger and starts in Connecticut. There are seveal dams on it, don’t know if there is passage around any of them.
Once in the bay you can find the channel that runs through downtown Providence where Waterfire is held, although you can’t get in there when it’s going on. Until you get below Providence the bay is nothing like open ocean, very calm water most of the time, with plenty of small rivers, streams, and channels to explore.
In Thunder Bay, Ontario, we have a number of rivers, but not much flat water and not much urban area. For flat and urban, the most interesting is the last few kilometers the Kaministiquia River, its estuary at Lake Superior, and the Thunder Bay Harbour that extends from the mouth of the Kam, past the mouth of the McIntyre, up to the mouth of the Current.
Canada developed out of the fur trade, with the Kam being a primay nexus for over three-hundred years. Trade networks ran along rivers out to the Rockies, with wintering-over places at Grand Portage on north-western Lake Superior, Fort William on north-western Lake Superior just a short way north of Grand Portage, and York Factory on western Hudson’s Bay. With regard to the first two, Voyageur’s would paddle and portage 36’ Montreal Canoes loaded with supplies from Montréal up the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, over the La Vase Portage, across Lake Nippissing, down the French River, across the North Channel of Lake Huron, up the St. Mary’s River, and across the north shore of Lake Superior (which is a massive lake – an inland freshwater sea) to forts at Grand Portage and Ft. William. Meanwhile, voyageurs in 25’ north canoes would paddle from across the northwest loaded with furs, down to Grand Portage, Ft. William and York Factory. These three remote depots where where the goods and furs where exchanged, following which the Montreal canoes would head back to Montreal, and the north canoes would either winter-over, or head back out to the furthest reaches of the north-west.
The fort at Ft. William was huge as far as wooden trade forts go, for following the wee dispute with our southern colonies, the Northwest Company shifted its route from Grand Portage (in what today is Minnesota) to Fort William (in what today is Ontario). A replica of the fort has been constructed on the flat section Kam River a few kilometers above the mouth. It is a living history site, fix on the year 1815, staffed by people in period costumed playing out roles of the time. (At various times, “Best Developed Outdoor Site," “one of Canada’s Top Ten Heritage Sites,” “Cultural Capital of Canada,” yadda, yadda, yadda.) The thing it, IT’S ALL ABOUT PADDLING! There’s a freakin’ fur trade research library! There’s an operating birch bark voyageur canoe factory! The Great Rendezvous is still celebrated (most notably, a few years ago brigade of north canoes made its way from the Rockies to attend the Great Rendezvous – lots of cheering and artillery firing off when they landed at the dock, escorted by every paddler in the region)!
As the fur trade died out, it was replaced in the region by forestry. Downstream of the old Fort is a paper mill, and at the mouth is a lumber mill. As the west opened up, the Canadian Pacific railroad was pushed through, and was key to bringing the west coast into Canada. The railroad made it possible for prairies to be farmed for grain. These days, about six million metric tons of grain is shipped through the Port of Thunder Bay, so the railroad and its extensive yards runs along the mouth of the Kam and along the port, where there are many grain elevators, quite a few of which were built by C.D. Howe, who went on to coordinate Canadian industry in WWII and bring us into the nuclear age in the 50s. The densest part of the Harbour is on the Port Arthur end, where you will paddle past a large shipping dock, the Canadian Coast Guard (yes, both Canadian and American Coast Guard ice breakers work the lake each break-up), abandoned grain elevators, operating grain elevators, a marina and park (with Friday night paddle-up movies – yesterday it was Ant Boy) where you can crew on the Wednesday sailing races simply by showing up at the Group W bench after work on Wednesdays, a couple of sea-plane bases, and a shipyard. I spent years paddling in an OC-6 in the harbour, and never once was bored. Railroad, elevators and docks, paddlers, sail and power boats, tugs, barges, lakers, salties, sea planes – it’s a busy harbour.
All this pales in comparison to what lies on the other side of the break wall, the bay that forms Thunder Bay. Once you get out there, the water is cold – so cold that it is barely above freezing even in the summer, so clean that you can dip your mug in it, and so clear that you can look down thirty to sixty or more feet before it gets too blurred south of town in the island chain there is an underwater cliff which scares the hell out of you if you look down while you paddle over it). The bay is formed by an escarpment (Thunder Bay is Ontario’s only mesa complex), with the majestic Sleeping Giant formation to the north, 870 ft. Pie Island at the entrance to the east, Thompson Island (with its delightful sauna) at the head of the Thompson – Victoria Island chain to the south, and Michigan’s Isle Royal in the distance.
In short, Thunder Bay is a terrific place for the urban paddler, but it is smack dab in the middle of truly remarkable open water paddling (not to mention the plethora of challenging spring wild water runs and near limitless inland wilderness paddling), so if you ever happen by this way, forget the urban stuff and get back to fundamentals on the Great Gitchee Gumee.
Might as well mention what goes on on the other two TBay rivers that I mentioned above.
The Current is a kicker of a ww run in the spring, but for flat water paddlers, a short section (Boulevard Lake) has been ponded with a dam, around which is a lovely urban park. The Lakehead Canoe Club is on the southern shore. The pond is ideal for sprint paddling (or just gunkholing and swimming in its shallow bays), but the selection of sprint boats is poor, so bring your own if you’re passing through, or you might have to do with one of the club’s recreational canoes. The big thing on Boulevard is dragon boating. Basically, there are two types of people in TBay: those who are into dragon boating and those who are not into dragon boating yet.
The McIntyre is a pleasant WW run in the spring, taking you through hospital lands, university lands, and a golf course, but aside from near its mouth it is too dry during the summer.
The Schuykill River, and the famous Boathouse Row, a Philadelphia landmark. I don’t recall kayakers, but lots of skullers.
And Kurt Whipper’s legacy to paddlers: The Canadian Canoe Museum. That’s what happens when a hoarder happens to be a canoehead with a barn. He was a phys ed prof at the University of Toronto who owned a canoe based kids camp (Kandalore) and who collected canoes with a passion. He was the driving force behind creating the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, and donated many of its exhibits. It is a mecca for Canadian canoeists. If you are into the history of canoeing in Ontario (or Canada, for that matter), you will have the opportunity to see the boats you had only previously seen photos or drawings of. If you have been paddling since the dawn of time, you’ll see that old Chestnut you grew up in. If you are into design and speed, you’ll see the frame of that Caribou Eskimo Kayak you dreamed of. Whipper’s legacy is a true treasure.
For folks who are into hunting and fishing, the head office of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters is in Peterborough. Now offices usually are not that interesting, but the OFAH has a unique problem that makes a quick visit inside their office worth while: people keep giving them fish.
Fred catches a world record fish, mounts it on his wall, and eventually dies, leaving Wilma wondering what to do with Fred’s beloved fish. She would feel guilty if she threw it out, but the damn thing is ugly, hard to dust, and keeps giving her the fish eye. What to do, what to do? Why here’s a solution: give it to the OFAH!
Over the years, a lot of orphaned trophy fish have ended up at the OFAH head office. I think they should change their name from Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters to Orphaned Fish Abandonment Home.
I’m not sure if anyone paddles the Petitcodiac River where it cuts through Moncton but people surf it so I’m sure padding would work. I’m not sure why anyone would want to. Moncton doesn’t have the prettiest sights.
And from there you can duck across the border and paddle the Rideau Canal right through the middle of Ottawa. We tried to skate the river when my daughter was in college up there, but a mid-February thaw made it impossible.
One of the TBay paddlers was there earlier this week, and mighty pissed that her schedule while she was there got changed and prevented her from paddling the bore. The best she could do was post a Facebook vid of it passing by.
I happened to mention to a friend that a section of an urban creek took us under the downtown of Sudbury. The next thing you know, he wrote a satire about urban paddling and published it in a major canoeing publication: a detailed (but entirely fictional) trip report about a tour of some of Toronto’s sewers by canoe. Well, the thing is, he had quite a following in the paddling world (he’s a naval architect who has designed racing yachts, sprint kayaks for the Olympics, and what I consider to be the top tripping canoe designs, and has an impressive paddling resume that includes the first rounding by canoe of the Torngats), so it wasn’t surprising when some of the readership didn’t realize that it was a satire, and of those, quite a few tried to book a place on his next sewer tour.
Well the shit from the sewer hit the fan when the outfit that published the trip report was served with a very official looking letter ostensibly from the City of Toronto, telling us to cease and desist immediately, asking who our lawyer was for service of their pending civil trespass claim against us, and stating that they were also referring the matter to the police for trespass at night (a criminal offence here). I sent a copy of this off to the head of litigation of one of Canada’s larger law firms, and he reviewed it for us, at which time SHIT LA MERDE! PANIC SET IN!
A week or so later (a very nervous week or so later), a fellow admitted to hoaxing us over the trip report hoax by creating a fake letter on some purloined city stationary. Here we had been laughing about folks not being able to tell satire from reality, when we too could not differentiate between the two. I learned a couple of good lessons: first, that it was one hell of a good hoax against us, and second, never trust an urban paddler, no matter how friendly he or she might seem. They’re feral creatures of the night, floating zombies with the castor teeth, who carry sticks shaped like paddles.
I had no idea I might be joining such an…interesting…bunch of people!
Some fascinating descriptions so far–keep them coming. Too bad I have neither sufficient time nor money to pursue them all–
Urban commute: I lived near the Sudbury Canoe Club (the centre of paddling in the centre of town since 1902), and studied and later taught at the university on the other side of the lake. Best commute ever – by canoe in the summer and by ski in the winter.
The far end of one of the other lakes on campus had a Tim Horton’s with a dock, so you can guess where I had my students paddle for their intro sessions.
If your ever in Boulder Colorado they have a stream running right thru the middle of town. When you need a break you can just stop and go to a McDonalds.
I have only paddled the Fort Worth parts, but have hiked several portions and I think you will find the West Fork of the Trinity River navigable from Fort Worth all the way to Dallas. I know they are working on making it even more paddle friendly by making cuts in low water dams for paddlers to go through instead of having to portage them. But even without the cuts, the dams I am aware of are fairly easy to get around.
I wouldn’t exactly call it a pretty trip although you can get a feeling of remoteness despite being in a major metropolitan area. The river is steep banked and muddy but parts of it go through fairly untouched landscape. You can get a feel of what Texas looked like when it was first settled.
It is also a great river if you are particularly fond of alligators, snakes, and quicksand. Other than those, it’s a great trip. Well, there are some 200lb alligator gar but I don’t think I’ve heard of one of those being a man-eater since I was about 10. So other than the alligators, snakes, quicksand and alligator gar it’s a great river to paddle. Oh, and the mosquitoes with West Nile Virus. 
A friend is afraid of water, but we took her kayaking through our town (Apollo, PA) on the Kiskiminetas River by promising that she would never be in water over her head. There are some deep pools, but we hugged shore in those areas.