Going Canoeing On Elkhorn Creek With Canoe Kentucky

Canoeing in a beautiful spot + great beer = a great birthday present.

Shae and I had originally intended to only spend a week in Lexington, Kentucky on our 50 state road trip, but we extended that by a week seeing as there was so much fun stuff to do in the area. We then added another few days to the end of that as my birthday present from Shae was a canoeing and beer experience in nearby Frankfort.

The afternoon began at West Sixth Farm taproom.

The instructions from Canoe Kentucky had recommended arriving 30 minutes early, so that gave us time to have a quick drink beforehand. West Sixth Farm serves beers from West Sixth Brewing.

…so I got a bourbon barrel-aged cocoa porter, while Shae ordered a glass of red wine.

The canoe launch point was a few miles away, so they gave us a ride there on a yellow school bus.

I have to admit – I was a little excited about this. Why? It was my first ever ride on a yellow school bus. I’m from the UK and didn’t move to the US until I was 29, so I hadn’t ever gotten to have this experience as we didn’t have these iconic buses.

After a few minutes, we arrived at the launch point on to Elkhorn Creek. Canoe Kentucky offers the option to use either solo kayaks or a twin canoe on the West Sixth Farm & Elkhorn Paddle Tour. Kayaking would’ve worked out to be more expensive, so Shae picked the canoeing option to help with our budget which I appreciated.

Elkhorn Creek has two main forks – North Elkhorn Creek which is ~75.5 miles long and South Elkhorn Creek which is ~53 miles long. Our tour guide Chris shared that Elkhorn Creek is techinically a river, but the name was changed from river to creek to encourage fishermen as it’s home to a good amount of smallmouth bass.

We got lucky with when we visited as the depth of Elkhorn Creek was 3 feet when we visited. 3-5 feet is the sweet spot; if the water level rises above 5 feet, they can’t run the canoeing/kayaking trips, so they switch to whitewater trips instead.

As it is, the water flow was reasonably fast, so we didn’t have to paddle too hard to propel ourselves along. The trip lasted just under two hours and we traveled six miles along Elkhorn Creek.

After about 45 minutes, we stopped off for a quick drink and snack break.

Despite Elkhorn Creek only being 3 feet deep the day we visited, there were still a few mild sections of rapids which made the canoeing trip even more fun. I was too focused on paddling and steering to take photos at those points though, so here’s a photo of a calmer stretch of water.

After a beautiful couple of hours canoeing on Elkhorn Creek, the trip sadly came to an end when we arrived back at the main Canoe Kentucky location.

That wasn’t the end of the experience though, as the yellow school bus took us back to West Sixth Farm where we’d started out.

The West Sixth Farm & Elkhorn Paddle Tour includes a free beer at the end, so I ordered a Pay It Forward cocoa porter. Seeing as Shae doesn’t like beer, she donated her free beer to me and got herself a cider.

We’d brought our lunch with us, but the farm also had Forage Food Truck on site.

Their menu looked pretty tasty, so it’s a shame our budget is so tight as we’d love to have let our packed lunches go to waste and gotten lunch from Forage instead.

The farm also has four miles of trails that you can hike or mountain bike on. We’d left our dog Truffles back at our hotel and had been gone several hours by that point, so we decided to head back there rather than explore some more.

Final Thoughts

Shae and I had a wonderful time canoeing on Elkhorn Creek with Canoe Kentucky. Our tour guide Chris was great, the creek was beautiful and the beers were excellent.

At just under $50 per person, it wasn’t the cheapest experience, but I was glad we got to do it and it was the perfect end to our six weeks in Kentucky.

(n.b. This post wasn’t sponsored by Canoe Kentucky as we don’t write sponsored posts – here’s why. We paid for our tickets and wanted to write about it as we enjoyed the West Sixth Farm & Elkhorn Paddle Tour.)