Kayak Camping Texas - 1 Hour from Dallas...

What if I told you there's a river just an hour from Dallas where you can paddle through rapids, camp under the stars, and step where dinosaurs once walked? That's the Paluxy River, a wild stream fueled by spring-fed creeks that's been on my radar for years now. Conditions were finally lighting up so the plan was to kayak 10 miles down a seldom-traveled section and camp deep in the Texas wilds. It's crazy. One hour baby. Damn. This isn't just a river trip, it's a time-traveling adventure and you really do get that childlike feeling in certain spots. Flows were just below the sweet spot and we thought it was perfect timing for our inaugural trip down the highly underrated Paluxy River. We assembled a small crew of veteran kayak campers. Parker and Charlie have been on many trips and they were perfect for this one too. We were trudging down an unknown river and that's why it's so key to have people that'll keep their head held high whenever things are getting tough. There's always that potential when you just don't know a place but the promise of crystal clear spring-fed creeks and swimming holes kept us driving so we were excited for that. Texas summer was in full swing and we'd be dealing with an aggressive heat index today. We arrived at the launch, loaded up our gear, and set off downriver. All right, we're out here on the Paluxy River and by far the biggest question mark of the day is going to be whether or not there's enough water to paddle through these rock shelves. It's super shallow and wide in some sections. This is kind of like a pool drop river and so while we're experiencing 100 cubic feet per second which is excellent for this river, I just am not sure if it's going to be enough. I've never been out here. This is my first time down a nine mile section of just a beautiful northern hill country river so we're gonna see what it's like. Hopefully there's plenty of water. A little waterfall to start off the day. Oh nope. This is kind of what I was talking about. Are we gonna be hiking or kayaking? And the bridge is right there and we're already doing a little bit of walking but it's pretty. Nice. All right, what's our water depth looking like? Right above the anchor. To prep for every trip I always zoom in on google maps and chart out the mileage. While I'm doing that I can get a pretty good idea of where their potential camp spots are but also what concerning sections there may be. Sometimes you can tell where you're gonna have to drag. However the Paluxy all kind of looked uniform. It all just kind of looked like rock slab. Now it's tough news if it was all like this. It's gonna be a long day if everything's like this. That's brutal. All right here we go. First decent rapide of the trip. Yeah. Oh this is sick. Heck yeah. Let's go. Cool. A little bit technical. Next to all those rocks we are gonna catch a beverage, do a little bit of fishing. We just had a pretty tough first section so I think we've already deserved ourselves a break even though we're about a half mile into the trip. This is potentially going to be like a top five river I've been to. I think because there is a little bit of a underrated factor. Look at this. Look at this all to ourselves. We're just docked up. Oh yeah that's a great cast. Gosh such good. You can just see I'm throwing a crawdad. You see that? Such good action. Back at it. Hey I'm proud of ourselves that wasn't too long a break. You can barely hear the guy walking along the bank but he told us to watch out for a gator. We of course thought he was joking because we might not look like we were from around there. Apparently he wasn't joking so that's concerning. Nice not bad. Oh heck yeah and a little rapid. There we go. Dude what is this? Is that a smallmouth bass? Dude what on earth? What kind of fish is that? Heck yeah look at that. Beautiful fish. Not bad. Heck yeah. Oh feisty guy. Not bad at all. This river is kind of blowing my mind. We have a sand shelf just like my home rivers in east Texas which is totally crazy man. Look at that. Amazing. We're on to another one guys. Oh no. Lost him at the boat. This must be a fishy place because I usually don't catch a fish that quick. That's a good sign for things to come today. Try to stay out of that. Oh yeah. This is good fun. Dude this river is kind of surprising. That's pretty sweet. All right we're coming up onto something that is making quite a bit of noise. Good line Chuck. That was good. As long as the fly rod didn't break we're good. Oh we're good. That's a lot of elevation change and you can kind of estimate that whenever you're doing some research on the river doing elevations at your launch point and elevations at your takeout point divided by the mileage. So this is definitely not a whitewater river but it is still very exciting and although we're only at 100 cfs I bet at 200 you would absolutely be flying through here. This is pretty sick. We're coming back and we aren't even more than a mile under the trip. Can't wait to see what's next. About to go through state park. Heck yeah. This is beautiful. The plexi river contains the best preserved dinosaur tracks in the world and we're about to go through that state park. Made a state park out of it. And you can see there's some really weird rock going on. Parker just pointed out how green it is along there. So many fish in here. Crazy. I don't know if we're in the hill country or not but it sure does feel like it. Pretty cool. River like the plexi you can see all the different shelves that you have to navigate around. Looks so cool from up here. I feel like we're gonna cover decent mileage. Everything just depends on the shallow sections like that. If we waited one more week honestly we might be in trouble. I agree. Like last week would have been better. This is good though. Yeah. This is crazy. Look at from up here dude. Damn. Dude the color and rock. Yeah it's like green. Wild. It's like kind of matches your paddle. Yeah. This is crazy. I'm an hour from Dallas. Parker's from Dallas and he drove down here. Took him a whole one hour. So if you live in DFW there's zero excuses as to not coming here. And of course we have remote designs keeping all of our stuff dry. I made the 60 liter remote designs duffel specifically for trips like this. Out in the middle of nowhere. Multi-day with nothing but your gear and some buddies. Add in the submersibility of the t-zip and ease of access. You've got the best way to pack. Ever since I started using a duffel for kayak camping I never went back. So nice to put everything in one large compartment. Load it onto the boat and then whenever you reach camp pluck it right off and set it next to where you're going to set up a tent or a hammock. It really is the simplest way to pack for a sit-on-top kayak or canoe. Yeah I feel like I'm on the flats of like Cozumel or something. This is crazy. What? I think Parker has said about 10 times in the last hour how crazy it is that this is an hour from his house in Dallas. Plenty of water. You know you're gonna bump and grind anytime you're paddling in Texas. So I don't mind that at all. Look at this view. This is seriously crazy. An hour from DFW and you can tell we're starting to approach the state park because we're starting to see a lot more people. We're taking the back door in once again. Now that we're in the state park we are officially looking for dinosaur tracks and we should be able to visibly see them from our kayaks. So we're standing up and keeping a keen eye out. You can see there's a lot of people dinosaur tracks hunting and there's a lot of stuff that is tourism related around here that is associated with dinosaurs. So if you have kids that are super into dinosaurs this is the best place in Texas to bring them. You guys see some tracks? Really? I didn't do much research about the tracks and so my expectations were pretty low. Once we laid eyes on the first ones felt like I was live on scene at Jurassic Park and it felt great to be a kid again or at least have that mindset. They're everywhere. Holy cow look at that one right there. Dude those are huge. I don't think I'd want to run across one of those. What are you seeing Chuck? And what's so cool about this section of river is that you can totally walk it and so no need for kayaks at the state park. We're taking a peanut right now. So you just walk along the river and point them out. All right so we're coming up on the blue hole. That's pretty cool. Wow more green rock. Oh man. All right guys we found our little oasis away from the people on a feeder creek. Unreal. We're gonna go ahead and do our coffee break right now. No way there's a waterfall. What? Are you kidding me? Dude look at this. Look at the color of the water too. Oh my gosh there's even a merman. Dude this is crazy. This is it man. It doesn't get better than this. That's an oasis right there. I could sit here all day. This looks ridiculous. Oh my gosh. But what's huge is that this is the inaugural brew of the remote designs mocha pot and grinder combo which is massive because we believe in fresh beans on the river. It's what tastes the best. Here we go boys. Another round. Yeah we'll modulate a little bit. The inaugural cup man. It's a fresh espresso on the riverbed. All right we just brewed up everybody's coffee and now we're headed to the oasis. This just looks so ridiculous. Hey how far are we from DFW? One hour baby. Damn. Cheers lads. Life is good. All right. We're gonna hang out in the shade, enjoy this little oasis that we found, drink some coffee, then we're gonna get back after because we have not made any time at all. Literally no time. We got a long way to go. Try this spot out. All right. Dude the tandem looks hilarious and great. So funny. It looks Australian for some reason. I don't know why. There it is. All right we have made abysmal time today so it's time to get after it. We're gonna cover some miles. We are only halfway through the state park. It's about 3 30 pm which is not good. So it's time to hightail it. Even though we are way behind on our progress it was kind of around the summer solstice so we were enjoying those long summer days. However a late sunset is never something to rely on because who knows you could have miles of these rock shelves. Now I was hoping that the river would channelize and the rapids would get super fun hopefully that came to fruition. When I was charting out the mileage I noticed the gradient became more and more steep. Typically that means you have a channelization or you just have a bunch of waterfalls. So one of those two things was going to happen. Maybe even a combination of Wow this is so cool. I can't believe we're close to Dallas. This is crazy. Oh it's a waterfall. Holy cow. Okay here we go. Heck yeah dude. Downstream. Dude y'all are taking some good lines through there. This is a tricky river where you really have to be selecting the right route because it's pretty skinny. Dude if it was any lower we'd be in... I think so. Oh yeah we walking. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come because as y'all know rivers can change so rapidly. Now I'm really hoping we aren't reaching a very shallow section. Parker keeps finding good lines though. Oh dude there's literally like a tube. See that's what's so crazy. You walk that little section and you have a tube that's good to go. Whereas my line was just shallow water. So if you guys are curious as to why I have a koozie on my camera it's to keep it from overheating because GoPros and summertime are not a great mixture. And so you just always have to be weary of that. Wow this is a great little section. Sweet. Nice. Man this river has some excellent little jaunts. Look at those rocks dude. This is pretty cool. Heck yeah. Oh yeah. Oh dude that's decent. This river is low-key rad. Oh yeah. All right guys this means we have completed one more section. Whenever you pass a bridge it's a good benchmark for where you are at and for us we are nowhere near where we need to be. So we still have miles to cover and what's interesting about the Paluxy is that the further down river you go the steeper it gets. Which also means the more interesting it gets. So now that we have been through the state park we're trudging forward and honestly we're in uncharted territory right now because I was able to do a lot of research in the state park that showed me a bunch of 360 orbs and photos and so you kind of get an idea of what the river's going to look like. But from that bridge forward until the end of our trip I have no clue what to expect. So I'm just hoping for the best. We're going to fight it. See what happens. Look at that. Spring Fed Creek pumping right into the river. You can see the line where it goes from. Paluxy. Spring Fed Creek. That's incredible. Evening dude. It's like golden hour time. It's brilliant. All right we're about to push off from this Spring Creek. Camp's about half mile down river so we're gonna make an effort. We're gonna fish our way down. Got some really good bites man. I tell you what this river is phenomenal for fishing. There's a cliff somewhere. Oh there it is. Yeah this river's sneaky. It gets deep real quick. A little fresh fruit too. Nothing quite like an afternoon orange. A little citrus. Oh this is so cool. Oh my gosh it's like a speed shoot. Oh here we go. All right y'all welcome home. How's this creek? Is it decent? Oh yeah it's clear water. It's not quite as prolific as the other one but it's still a clear water creek that's flowing. Heck yeah. This is the island I found on Google Maps and that's what we were targeting all day for camp. The boys then started to take a look at it and I could kind of tell by their long faces that it might not be the one. I hadn't really thought about going further down river but gosh maybe we'd have to. All right let me catch you up on what just transpired. We thought we were going to camp right here. Plenty of time to do everything we need to do. Cook, relax, fish, take it easy essentially. We thought that island was good. A little feeder creek for fresh water. Turns out no dice. So now we're headed away from where I was planning on camping based on Google Maps. The river's getting shallow so on to the next one. We're gonna see if we can find camp or if we're screwed. I don't know. Oh oh tricky. That's pretty sick. What's nice is that even during these pools we're still moving. Yeah it's not just still water. Right. Oh dude the colors are just wild. The river is so green. With the uh sky being blue. How uh deep do we think we are? Oh that's way shallower than I was thinking. Yeah same. Because it's so the color's so dark I figured it was at least six foot deep. I guess it's just picking up a lot of sediment from all the people swimming around in the state park. Oh man perfect. Shooting the flute. How's it going y'all? That's pretty sick. Yeah dude that's pretty sick. I feel like the river's flowing pretty good down here. All right since we abandoned that last camp we are officially on the lookout for another camp. We're probably gonna stop for the next suitable camp but what's really cool is there seem to be just a ton of these like waterfalls leading right into the uh river. And then we had high wave springs gushing into the river. Toss in some evening light and you have one of the most spectacular things I've seen on a river. You can tell the river was flowing more aggressively now and I'd assumed it was the feeder creeks because those are more visual. This section made me realize there was tons of groundwater contribution coming straight from the hills. This actually looks pretty spicy. Oh whoa holy smokes. Yeah. Dude this is so crazy looking. Look at that shelf dude. Wow. Oh huge drop off. Dang. All right I can see where they get all this steep gradient from. There's a whole lot of rock slides out here which is pretty sick. Just a little dragging to cap off the day. All right this is some weird looking rock. We are doing a lot of dragging right now. And of course the sun is setting. We thought this was going to be a chill evening, chill way to end the night. Here we are slogging again. Lots of walking. How do we always do this to ourselves? Unreal. It's a little defeating. We're doing it. All right we're thinking we're thinking something crazy. So we're officially out of camping spots because we're at the takeout. And there just happens to be a little gravel bar right where Parker is. There's a tavern, some restaurants, some live music. The tricky thing is our cars are parked right there. So we're like we're out of places to camp and that's like the most perfect looking gravel bar. What do y'all think? I'm down. Should we go scout out that island real quick? That island right there? Yeah. Or like that river bank on the right? No that island. Let's go scout it out. We eat dinner and we pitch our tents over there. Fine with me. We set up our tents right now. Stake our claim. That sounds fun. Let's go. Let's go check it out real quick guys. Let's uh make sure there would be space. Dude this is actually a sick town too. Yeah. All these restaurants and like hotels on the river like. So that bridge behind me is the finish line. Hey we got an island right here that looks to be perfectly sized for three tents. I think there's plenty of room here guys. Literally the restaurant is on the other side of the bridge. What do you think? Yep. Is this what we're doing? That's what we're gonna do. We're so exhausted too. Come on P. Is this what we're doing? This is what we're doing. Downtown living. Yeah we got a sick downtown loft. That big? Yeah. Yeah. Big old birds. Swimming hole. This is hilarious but awesome. Yeah. Just never know. Camping in downtown. Nearly at our takeout point. We've camped close to the takeout point before but never in such an obviously public area. Even though you know where we're camping is completely legal. It's an island. Unequivocally. We're literally surrounded by water. The most well-defined island of all time. Great dam. Great swimming hole. Live music. Yep. Hopefully good food. And then we're walking over to the restaurant. We're gonna have just most food. The absolute most because we are beat. Ended up doing all nine miles today and the end was a slog as usual. There we go leaving our island. Not always completely out in the middle of nowhere when you do these kayak camping trips. Yeah. Can't get better than this. Great barbecue. Fish. Chicken. Grill marks. All the sides. And there we were eating dinner at a restaurant 100 yards away from our island. How ridiculous. Definitely a first time. All right good morning. Welcome to day two. Camped out here on our island. Surrounded by water. It's kind of ridiculous. All right we're officially done here. What an epic camp spot. Just the perfect little island right next to the takeout point. Definitely wasn't planned to be like that but this was an amazing trip. Full of surprises. Biloxi River and Glen Rose is absolutely a shock. We're definitely coming back. Catch y'all in the next one. See ya.