The hook
Two spring-fed rivers running clear and cold through the Missouri Ozarks, fed by some of the largest springs on the continent — one of which is over 300 feet deep and doesn't join a creek so much as become one.
01Why it's worth it
This was the first river system in the United States protected as a national river, in 1964, ahead of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act — 134 miles of the Current and the Jacks Fork, set aside before the dams reached them.
What makes it different from any other float is the plumbing underneath. This is karst country: rain sinks through limestone, travels underground, and comes back out as springs at a scale that is hard to picture. Big Spring discharges on the order of 280 million gallons a day. Blue Spring is over 300 feet deep and an unreasonable colour — a dense cobalt that does not photograph honestly. Alley Spring turns a restored red mill into the most photographed building in the state. Because the water arrives from underground it holds around 55°F all year, so the rivers stay clear and cold in an August that is otherwise brutal.
The float itself is gentle — this is canoe and kayak water, gravel bars for camping, bluffs, and caves in the walls. You can do a lazy afternoon or string together several days, camping on the bars.
The honest caveat is the crowd, and it is seasonal and specific. Summer weekends on the most accessible stretches of the Current draw a heavy party-float scene — coolers, rafts, volume. Midweek, shoulder season, or the Jacks Fork upstream, and you can have long stretches to yourself. Same river, completely different trip, entirely determined by when you put in.
02How to experience it
Base in Eminence, which sits between the two rivers. Rent from a local outfitter who will shuttle you. For quiet, run the upper Jacks Fork in spring when it has enough water, or the Current midweek. Hike the quarter mile in to Blue Spring, and stop at Alley Spring. Camp on gravel bars, and set up well back from the sycamores — they drop limbs.
From the locals
The affection here is unusually plain-spoken. "Eminence, Missouri. Current River, Jacks Fork and Black River are all beautiful floats," one commenter wrote. "Eminence is truly reminiscent of the garden of Eden. Absolutely gorgeous."
A resident replied in the same thread with the thing residents always say about places like this: "I live in Eminence, and sometimes it is easy to catch myself taking for granted the beautiful surroundings. Alley Spring is beautiful as well, along with floating down the Jacks Fork."
On Blue Spring specifically, the detail that makes it worth the walk in: "I love how this spring doesn't even empty into an existing creek. The spring creates the big creek that then flows for half a mile or so into the Current river. It's really amazing." And on the river generally, from a camper who got rained on by a hurricane's remnants and stayed cheerful about it: "the Current River is a mighty fine river to float."