DOWAGIAC — Red, yellow and orange are all fall colors viewable on the Dowagiac Creek during the fall season.

These bright colors also happen to be the same colors of the rental kayaks stored at Doe-Wah-Jack’s Canoe Rental in Dowagiac. The full-service livery rents canoes, single and double kayaks to be used on the Dowagiac River.

The business, which has been around for close to 50 years, opens in April for the weekends only. After Memorial Day, Doe-Wah-Jack’s stays open full-time, seven days a week until Labor Day. During the months of September and October, as the temperatures start to drop, Doe-Wah-Jack’s returns to a weekend-only schedule but offers a fall color tour as the leaves start to change. The two-hour trip is four miles long and costs $55 for a two-person canoe or kayak. To rent a solo kayak, it costs $45 for a two-hour trip. 

“It’s pretty wooded out there,” said manager Neil Keller. “It’s forested. Once the leaves start to change it’s a real nice tour. You can go out there and see all the colors of fall.”

Keller said Doe-Wah-Jack’s has been offering the fall color tour for the past 10 to 15 years and works every fall to promote it. Because the Dowagiac river is canopied with hardwoods like oaks, maples and beeches, leaves are plentiful in the fall, Keller said.

“Our trips are unguided,” he said. “You are out there just to enjoy it.”

Keller, who started working at the canoe rental company 15 years ago, found the job through a friend he worked with at Sears.

“Now, I call it my passion job,” Keller said.

He spends his summer and fall working for the rental canoe company and then works as a carpenter the rest of the year.

As Doe-Wah-Jack prepares for its fall season, Keller reflected on challenges that took place over the summer.

While the business normally offers two-, four- and six-hour trips down the Dowagiac River, this year, only a two-hour trip was offered because of bridge rebuilding at Sink Road. Sink Road was the location where the business used to take the canoes out of the water.

“Now there will be a new takeout for us at Peavine Street,” Keller said.

The Department of Natural Resources will complete the new takeout at the Peavine location in September or October, Keller said.

In addition to bridge repairs, high water levels also proved to be challenging for canoe trips, as Keller routinely had to make a safe path for voyagers so they would not run into log jams.

“It slowed the season down until about the Fourth of July,” Keller said. “Then everything kind of dried out and made it easier to get around everything out there.”

Keller is looking forward to the fall season and meeting new people who rent canoes from all over the area. Sometimes, locals, who have lived in Dowagiac have been driving past Doe-Wah-Jack’s for 25, 30 or even 40 years, and finally they decide to come down and take a trip, Keller said. Other renters come from out of town and are maybe camping or driving through the area.

No matter the area people hail from, the experience is always what Keller describes as “a nature trail but right on the water.”