That sounds like a good idea. My wife bought a Sea Eagle tandem several years ago but we have not used it too many times. We have some regular plastic fishing kayaks we mainly use in flat water situations. We have used the inflatable to do like you said, going upstream in otherwise impassable portions of small rivers. We had to get out and drag it up riffles but that was ok. We got into some neat spots that way. My problem was that it was really uncomfortable especially when I was in the back and it was hard to get out of. One other problem we found was that if you are out on a lake or bay and the wind comes up, it is much harder to paddle than our other kayaks. Still, for what you said you wanted to do, an inflatable sounds practical.