While getting there is a long drive on twisty, hilly, nausea-inspiring roads, the Jack Fork River is a beautiful river in a beautiful area. Part of the National Scenic Riverways, the river and surrounding land is wondrously scenic with crystal clear water, deep blue pools, lots of great bluffs, beautiful forests, rolling hillsides, and lowland fields.

Highlights

  • Beautiful river that runs through a National Scenic Riverways
  • Lots of very fun Class I/II rapids with lots water flow
  • Many beautiful deep blue pools
  • Staff at Twin River Campground was very nice and helpful
  • River was not at all crowded
  • Easy to self-support the trip with a boat launch in Eminence and take out at Twin Rivers.

Lowlights

  • Long, nausea inspiring drive
  • The Twin River Campground where we stayed is rather mediocre

Getting There

Google says this is a 3 hour drive, it's not. It took us at least 3.5-4 hours and we tried two different routes. You can go either down 67 or down 44. Both end up with very twisty, hilly, nausea inspiring drives. I think I preferred the 44-based route.

Links

  • Two Rivers Canoe Rental – has a campground as well. The main campground is rather mediocre (though with a nice view). The backcountry sites are nice but beware getting your car stuck in gravel.
  • Google Directions

Tags

The floats near Steeleville (Huzzah, Courtouis, Upper Meremec) are great and a lot closer but I finally forced us to make the drive to Eminence. It is a lot of driving, 3.5-4 hours each way and lots of winding, beautiful but nausea-inspiring roads. Would be much better for a 3 day trip rather than the 2-day we did. The water is just a wee bit on the cool side and you have to kind of re-gird your loins to force yourself to get back in every time after you’ve dried off a bit but you adjust pretty quickly. We contemplated doing the 13 mile float from Alley Springs to Two Rivers but instead played it safe and did the 7.3 mile float from Eminence to Two Rivers. So glad we went with the shorter route. Several of the the kiddos were ready to be done about 4 miles in but I think everyone fell into a happy groove about 5 miles in and we finished the float with everyone in good spirits after 5 hours of floating on a warm, sunny, summer day.

There were some really fun Class I rapids along the way. Definitely bigger and with more flow than anything on the Huzzah. In a couple spots, a quite strong current flowed directly under fallen trees (known as a strainer). This managed to separate some members of our intrepid crew from their boats and give them a nice, unplanned, refreshing swim. I had a blast in my whitewater kayak for the couple miles that my middle-child allowed me to use it. Was even able to surf some decent size waves in a few spots though without my kayak skirt on, the waves were big enough to pour into my cockpit so I had to abandon that quickly for a couple times. My youngest finally got a taste of paddling good rapids in a kayak on his own. In the past he usually hopped in one of the other family rafts on the Huzzah or in a canoe with Jen or I but it seemed to me that paddling on his own through the rapids of this river penetrated his soul a bit and began the process of converting him to a life-long paddler.

Overall, a very fun trip. The effort to rewards ratio was a bit off due to all the driving, but very glad we went.