Our initial plan was to only stay in Van Buren one night. But after seeing that our RV park was right on the Current River (and it looked perfect for kayaking or tubing), we ended up staying for three nights.
Here's the pavilion which was our special place for happy hours and for working (WIFI was unreliable at our camp site) - not a bad office, though!
We were practically within the Ozark National Scenic Waterways NPS boundaries. Down the street was Big Spring - the largest single source spring in the world. I'm not used to seeing springs that create rapids.
The water was a beautiful, crystal-clear blue green. But a bit chillier than our springs in Florida. It was 55 degrees.
We were able to squeeze in a multi-sport adventure one day. We had thunderstorms one day, and threats of them the second day, but a window in the weather allowed us time to play.
Our multi-sport adventure was so we could self-shuttle for a one-way kayak down the Current River. We drove our car to the boat launch in Big Spring Park. Then rode our mountain bikes the 4-miles back to camp. We used our mountain bikes because the road surface isn't the smoothest. The area is within the Mark Twain National Forest. This ride has ranked 'tops' as the hardest 4-mile bike ride of our lives. Killer hills. Worse than we expected - even after driving the road twice.
After arriving back at camp on our bikes, we dragged our kayaks to the river's edge and dropped in. I can't really say this was a "paddle", though. It was more of a "float". There was a good current on the Current and we reached the boat launch a little over an hour later (about 4-miles on the river, too, I'm guessing). We saw one power boat our entire voyage. Perfect!
Funny. In our rush to get out and play we forgot about some of the basics of safety. No maps, no idea what the boat launch looked like from the river, no real knowledge of distance or expected time on the river, and so on. So when an hour passed and we weren't sure if we missed the launch or not, we started to discuss survival tips if we had to sleep on the shore - thunderstorms, chilly nights, huge horse flies, etc. But we're here to laugh about it, so no worries now!
When we were driving out of the park after our kayak-float, we stopped to admire the mist that was settling on the stream near Big Spring...
Normally you could see straight through the water and see the grasses below the surface.
We only did a tiny, tiny part of this national park. If we explored more, we could've found other springs, waterfalls, caves, hiking trails, and so on. Worth a re-visit...
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