My brother and I decided to take a 3-day trip in the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area.  We would be joined by my wife, my son, his daughter and her husband.  I drove to his house in New Jersey Friday for a Sunday-Tuesday trip.

On the drive up he called and gave the weather forecast: rain.  Given we had virtually no rain all summer, I thought he was kidding.  He was not.  The group gathered Saturday afternoon, looked at the forecast, and decided to "punt" on Sunday and just do a Mon-Tue trip. And the rains came Sunday.  New York City set a record for the most rain in a day for any day of the year.

The forecast called for continued rain through Tuesday, but not as heavy.  We arrived at the outfitter around 10am Monday under drizzly skies and got a lift to the put in point for the start of an 11-mile paddle (some in our group were novices, this was designed to be a short trip).  Through occasional light rain we made our way to our planned campsite (like a BWCA campsite).  The river was flowing fast, we made it in well under 3 hours. First we set up a large tarp and good we did.  It started to pour (with occasional upgrades to "teeming", as my brother termed it).  We sat under the tarp drinking beverages.

Around 6pm the raining paused so we setup tents and started dinner. We had a pleasant evening until the rains returned around 9pm.  Time to hit the tents for the night.  It rained all night and was drizzling as we got up in the morning.

We when got up, the river had risen significantly and had turned brown.  Although our canoes were safe because we had pulled them well up, the high-fast water gave us no good place to put our canoes in.  So we portaged our stuff 500 feet down the bank to a better put in point.  During this time, the rains returned but briefly.  Everything was soaked, so it was nice to know we did not have to worry about making camp that night.

Our paddle for the day was 9 miles which we did in around 2 hours.  Our average speed for the trip was 5.1MPH, hitting peak speeds between 9-10MPH (and we were not paddling hard).  I was initially concerned about the fast water but the delaware is not a technical river so we encountered no major issues.

The take-out point was a ramp whose fairly level section was under water leaving a steep slope (and moderately fast water).  One canoe flipped when they hit the ramp, the only dunking of the trip.

The next day (Wednesday) was a lovely sunny day.  Although the weather sucked, a good time was had by all.  The heaviest rains came while we were in tents or under a tarp and there was no rain (or very light rain) long enough to make meals and setup camp.