The best entertainment venue in Grants Pass, Oregon, is the Rogue River. We had a great dinner on the patio of a nice restaurant perched on the bank of the river. I think it was called the River's Edge. The setting is beautiful for a nice meal on a warm summer evening.
On our previous trip, we "dirt bagged" down the river on basically large bean bag chairs that floated leisurely along while we ate fried chicken, drank sodas and enjoyed the scenery. When we returned in 2005, the dirt bags were no longer available, so we rented an inflatable boat which included drop off and pick-up by truck to allow for a lengthy float. While there are some decent rapids further down the river, in the area we rafted, we found ourselves paddling most of the time. It's a lazy river, but we enjoyed it.
On another day, we went on a Hellgate Jetboat Excursion up the river. These jetboats have enough speed to skim through shallow parts of the river and mobility enough to avoid the jagged rocks along the edges of the narrower passages. The most fun is actually in the wider sections when other jetboats rendezvous to splash each other by powering full speed and then cutting the wheel sharply to send a tidal wave onto another boats. It was fun being the splashers or the splashees.
