When we were trying to think of places to go I remembered seeing a boat ramp at one point in my travels, so we headed there first. At the end of Knight St in Warwick there's a small parking lot that gives you access to the Pawtuxet River. It had the potential to be really nice and it probably was last summer. You could hear traffice buzzing by in nearly every direction, but it still had an isolated feel to it. The woods were thick on both sides and we even saw a deer coming down to the water. But thanks to the epic flooding that hit RI a couple of months ago, it was pretty bad.
There were old tires, bleech bottles, and other various bits of trash along the banks, some of it high up in the trees from when the water was ten feet higher. The stench was pretty bad because of the sewage overflow during the flood. We even saw a shed that had floated down the river and a Target carriage that came from the mall a mile away. Maybe by next summer it will be a little cleaner, but I think a pretty serious cleanup effort would be needed to turn the river back into something worth paddling down. The Narrow River, on the other hand, was great. We parked at the end of Boston Neck Rd in Narragansett and headed away from the ocean into the river. It was a busy place with motor boats zipping by and other kayakers all over the place, but it's big enough where all of the other people weren't really an issue.
There's a kayak rental place on Middlebridge Rd so it's a pretty popular spot. Between the main channel, lined with houses I wish I own, and all the little inlets to explore, there was plenty to do. The salty water was the perfect temperature and clean enough to get out for a swim or a walk on one of the sand bars. My only word of advice is to make sure you time it right with the tides. The current will go in or out depending on the tide so you don't want to be fighting it both ways like how we wound up doing.
