Buffalo River – Brenna Abroad

Springtime in the Midwest… It’s the best and worst time of year here, with plenty of beautiful days with sunny skies and warm temps, but also an abundance of stormy days with severe weather. It’s the season for float trips when the water is up and the temperature is pleasant, but it’s also difficult to plan ahead for them due to a high likelihood of storms.

And thus, we had our weekend picked out this year, and constantly checked the weather for that day for 2 weeks in advance. Every day, the outlook changed, and it wasn’t until the day of that we knew for sure we’d be able to go.

Bright and early Friday morning, we packed our coolers and our dry bags with beer, water, sandwich stuff, chips, the works. We grabbed our tents and our sleeping mats and pillows. There were four of us and we hopped in two cars, and headed south to Buffalo River.

The state campgrounds are all first come, first serve. We knew we weren’t going to want to drive all over the place with limited cell service trying to find a campground after we were done floating, so we went straight to the Carver campground, a tiny campground but the closest one to where we would be pulling out on this float. We booked a site, and quickly set up a tent so that people would know it was claimed.

We then all hopped in one of the cars and drove off to the Buffalo River Canoes office in Ponca where we rented two canoes and shuttle service for our car. One more brief drive later, we were parking at Pruitt. We put our stuff in our canoes, and took off paddling.

For it being the middle of May, the water level was pretty low, but we only dragged once.

The Buffalo is always beautiful. While Steel Creek to Kyles Landing is my preferred float, Pruitt to Hasty was still quite pleasant, with clear water and the occasional bluff as your backdrop.

We were in no hurry, so we took our time, making lots of stops to swim and snack.

There were more people than we were expecting on a week day, but it never felt overcrowded.

After close to six hours, we arrived at Hasty, though we had to ask someone to be sure since there were no signs. We found our car, and headed off to our campground to finish setting up camp.

The Carver campground is very basic and there were ticks and mosquitos all over the place, but it was quiet and peaceful there. We had a pleasant campfire, had some dinner, and hung out and talked until bed time.

The next morning, we didn’t waste much time before tearing down camp and getting on the road.

We had around an hour drive to get to the starting point of the hike to Whitaker Point. Even though we had all grown up near northwest Arkansas, none of us had done this hike, the endpoint of which was the view that peppered any article about Arkansas tourism.

The way to the point was shaded and mostly downhill. Once we got to the edge of the cliff, there were endless views along the way.

Whitaker Point itself is a big beautiful rock that juts out over the valley below. Arkansas can be surprisingly picturesque.

We hung out and climbed around there for a while, taking too many pictures.

But eventually, we had to turn back and repeated the 1.5 mile trek back up to the parking lot, having a long afternoon of driving ahead of us.

Every year, Anthony and I go on a float trip. Sometimes multiple, back when we lived further south where floatable rivers were plentiful. Now our float trips require planning and much more driving.

So plan I did. We decided we’d do the Elk River since it was close to the in-laws’. It was an incredibly wet spring, so we decided to hold off until middle of July when water level was lower. But then it decided to pour down rain for a week before our trip and completely flood the whole area, meaning no floating or camping would be allowed. Figures.

We were determined,though, so I decided we should just go further south into Arkansas to float the Buffalo River. Buffalo River was the first designated National River in the US, and we had been wanting to float it for quite some time. It is such a journey from where we live now, though, that we had never found the time.

A tip for potential floaters- It is so much more pleasant if you do it on a day other than Saturday. On Saturdays, the rivers are so packed full of people that you can’t hardly move at your own pace, and a majority of them are quite obnoxiously drunk.

So, on Sunday morning, bright and early, we roadtripped through Arkansas, enjoying the beautiful countryside.

My little Ford Focus was packed completely full between coolers, dry buckets, camping gear, and four people. It struggled up the Ozark mountains under all that weight, but we arrived at the Buffalo River Canoes facility safe and sound and got checked in. From there we drove to our launch point, Steel Creek, and made sure we had our coolers and our dry buckets, handed the staff the keys to our car so that they could drive it over to our landing area for us, and got our canoes ready. If you own your own canoes/kayaks, Buffalo would be a really easy river to do without a company since there are public access points to put in and out.

Already, I was so happy we ended up there instead of Elk. We were out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but beautiful bluffs. I had lost cell service about 10 minutes before getting there, which was a-okay to me. The people were calmer and more polite. The water was crystal clear so that we could see the rock bottom. Perfect.

We put our canoes in and immediately had some rapids to navigate. It became obvious that it was going to be a slightly more active float than what we were used to, but it was really the perfect mix of excitement and tranquility.

The scenery was gorgeous. It was a hot, sunny day, and it felt amazing to hop in the water and swim for awhile or picnic on the banks. Or show off.

If we stopped somewhere with deep enough water, the boys would climb up the bluffs to jump off. I skipped out on this fun.

There was a point where people pulled their canoes up on the bank and went on a nature hike to Hemmed-in-Hollow falls. Unfortunately, we had not thought ahead to this and did not have shoes suitable for hiking. Instead we continued on and later, found a different little stream through the woods. We pulled up to check it out.

The stream was a pretty little waterfall, so I was happy we noticed it from the river.

After around six hours, we ended up at Kyles Landing. Our car was there waiting for us, so we picked out a campsite and drove our car over to it. The campground was pretty bare bones, but I loved it. The pay station was a wooden stand where you fill out an envelope and put $12 inside. It’s pretty far from civilization, nowhere to buy ice or wood anywhere close. This was a bit of a nuisance, but a couple of the guys drove on up the steep gravel road and arrived back over an hour later with what we needed. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the isolation and calm.

We set up our tents and got a fire going.

We spent the rest of the evening by the fire, cooking our dinner, drinking some beer, and chatting, our conversations getting wilder and wilder as the night wore on. Completely exhausted shortly after the sun went down, we headed off to our tents to sleep.

A very loud bird woke the rest of the woods up at around 5 the next morning. If it hadn’t had such a pretty singing voice, I would have been annoyed. We all got up and decided to walk down the trail right next to our site before we packed up. The trail led back to the river, so we enjoyed the view and the inactivity, skipping rocks and exploring.

Afterward, we loaded my little car back up, and started our journey back home.

See ya later, Buffalo.

Category: Buffalo River

Buffalo River and Whitaker Point

Buffalo River Trip Report