Paddleboarding Down the Brazos

This upper section of the Brazos River below Possum Kingdom Lake now bears Graves’ name.

In 1957, Graves spent three weeks on the upper Brazos River, paddling 170 miles from the Highway 16 bridge to just outside Glen Rose. He wanted to experience the river of his youth before a series of proposed dams changed it forever. He chronicled the journey in his book Goodbye to a River, released in 1960. It became an instant classic. In 2005, to protect the Brazos from encroaching rock quarries, the Texas Legislature designated 113 miles of the upper Brazos River the John Graves Scenic Riverway.   

This is my first proper river camping trip, and I’m a little nervous. Luckily, I’ve recruited some good friends and first-time river campers Jerod Foster and Madison Walker Martin to join me. We prep our gear beneath the old stone bridge on the banks of the Brazos River where, 68 years ago, Graves launched his canvas canoe with his little hound dog. In Graves’ book, he simply refers to Watty as “Passenger.” My passengers don’t ride with me. We all have our own boats. Madi and I air up our inflatable stand-up paddleboards while Jerod loads his camera equipment and a cooler onto his kayak. We are embarking on an overnighter along the first 19.5 miles of the John Graves Riverway.

Jerod’s hard-shelled vessel has exterior and interior storage. Madi and I are limited to a bungee web at the front of our boards, or bow if you prefer nautical terms. Madi’s camping setup is a drybag packed with a sleeping bag and a bug bivy (a lightweight shelter not much bigger than her sleeping bag). Her minimalist approach ensures room for a waterproof Pelican case packed with microphones, her drone and a cinema camera. Madi is a former producer for the Texas Parks and Wildlife PBS show and currently a freelance adventure filmmaker. Madi plans to make a short documentary about our journey.   

We launch our boats and paddle into one of the ornate stone arches of the bridge. As we pass beneath the elaborate stacked stone, it feels like an open-air cathedral. Highly skilled stone masons in the Works Project Administration (part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to provide jobs during the Great Depression) constructed the bridge from 1940 to 1942. Its 18 arches span 433 feet across the Brazos River, making it the largest stone arch bridge in Texas.

We head downriver and paddle as schools of carp dart beneath our boats. They gather along the banks in a frenzy, churning the water into boiling whirlpools. I paddle closer to investigate. The carp rocket away like torpedoes with their stegosaur-like dorsal fins cutting through the surface of the water. “You think this is some sort of mating ritual?” I ask Jerod.

“I don’t know,” he says as his boat drifts sideways.

I pass over a long and slender shadow. “Gar,” I announce. The little gar with its serpent body and pronounced snout looks prehistoric.

Jerod sizes up the aquatic life
beneath us. “The dinosaur fish survive,” he exclaims.

We are surrounded by vivid flora as the waterway cuts through an emerald green valley. Thickets of post oak, pecan, elm and cedar trees grow from the riverbank up to the horizon above us. We turn our backs to the modern world and enter the wilds of the John Graves Riverway. 

From an eagle eye’s view, the river serpentines like a piece of spaghetti thrown against the wall. It takes its sweet time moving eastward by flowing in every direction of the compass. The wind is blowing briskly at 15 miles per hour out of the southeast. As the river’s trajectory changes, the wind alternates between friend and foe. We float with ease and speed as the Brazos meanders north. When it curves back to the east, the wind thumps Madi and me in the chest and halts our progress. Jerod fares better, sitting low in his kayak. On the SUPs, our bodies act like sails, except in the wrong direction. I struggle to move forward. After fighting the wind for two hours and barely covering three miles, we stop for lunch on a gravel beach.

Back on the river, we try to negate our headwind by staying close to the overhanging trees on the shore. Somewhere along the way, I drop my sunglasses in the water. Note to self: Always bring a backup pair of sunglasses. The sun reflects off the water, and I pull my hat low to shield my eyes. The glare is intense, and I worry my eyes will never be the same.

Along navigable rivers in Texas, the public can boat, fish, swim and camp below the gradient boundary. That is the cutline along the river’s edge. It’s hard to decipher what’s private and public along the river’s edge, but all the sandbars in the middle of the river are public land and open to camping. Before the trip, I mapped out our route with GPS software and made pin drops for sandbar camps at mile eight, nine and 10.

It’s 7 p.m. when we approach our first sandbar camp. The water is shallow, and we beach on the submerged rocks. “Is this your eight-mile sandbar?”
Jerod asks.

I pull out my phone and check the map. “Yep, this tip is the beginning,”
I say.

I look ahead. “There’s another little island just ahead.”

Madi looks down river. The water disappears behind the sandbar. “What’s that sound?” she asks. It’s rushing water — like either rapids or a waterfall.

“Maybe this is where the river drops into the abyss,” I joke. We pass Ioni Creek and enter a narrow channel where the river descends and creates some Class I rapids. It’s the rowdiest water we’ve seen. I try to float the rapids while standing. My board’s fins snag on a field of softball-sized boulders. I’m knocked off balance and do my best to fall toward the bags on my bow. I do not want to fall in the shallow water on top of those rocks. My bags catch me, and I decide to finish the rest of the rapids on my knees. I stand back up and paddle to a little island with a gravel beach. This is home for the night.

River trips demand a level of cuisine beyond your traditional backpacking freeze-dried meal. The cooler Jerod packed on his luxury liner this morning is full of real food. I pan-fry potatoes and sear steaks in a skillet and pair them with a kale salad. We sit on our little beach and reminisce about the day. Water rushes over the rapids on one side and frogs chirp in a wetland on the other as we chat. Madi grew up on the shores of Possum Kingdom Lake. “I can’t believe in the 20 years my parents have lived out here, I’ve never floated this river,” she says. Jerod and I are just as awestruck. We saw no other people today, the water is pristine, the land is wild, and the shores are void of human structures. The smattering of houses we did see were encased in tree cover or high atop bluffs, far from the shore.   

The next morning, I wake to geese honking as they fly over camp. I unzip my tent and see Madi sitting on her board, shrouded in her damp sleeping bag. She gazes at an orange horizon as the sun rises along a mesa next to the river. I make breakfast tacos with venison sausage and real eggs. (I stored the cracked eggs in a Nalgene bottle in the cooler.) We sip hot coffee in the crisp morning air as the sun’s rays light up the little mesa on the horizon.  

We start our final day, and I float away from camp with all my necessities strapped to my board’s bow. I feel intimately connected to my surroundings. This place is feral, and after 22 hours on the river, we are feral. The stand-up paddleboards are perfect for this kind of water, mild rapids with a gentle current. I like being high on my vessel and vulnerable to the whims of the water. The wind is calm, and the paddling is easy today. We see blue herons, more carp and a bald eagle.

The river wraps around Chick Bend, and we navigate a chute of Class I rapids. The water simmers down to a lazy drift. We paddle toward the shore and float in and out of three massive boulders docked in the water. They look like petrified ships frozen in time. Jerod labels one a freighter, and I identify the other two as a tugboat and luxury yacht.   

The Brazos straightens, giving us a long sightline down the river. After 30 hours on the river, we have our first encounter with humans. Cody Benton and JD Roberts are fly-fishing guides. They stand atop a sleek raft with oars, gracefully casting as they hunt for bass. They watch us paddle closer and wonder what our mood might be. JD’s seen lots of folks come off this section of the river. They are usually sunburned, riddled with bug bites and done with the river. The most common question he hears is, “How much further to Rochelle’s?” (Located at the FM 4 bridge, Rochelle’s Canoe and Kayak Rental is today’s takeout point.) As we approach, JD sees our smiles and efficiently packed boats. “That’s river people,” he thinks to himself. “They know what they’re doing.”

Cody and JD jump out of their raft and wade through the water to greet us. It is the friendliest exchange I’ve ever had in the outdoors. Their hospitality is instant as they share their love of this river. Cody brags about his section of the Brazos near Waco and instantly invites us to come down and paddle from his property. JD lives in nearby Graford and routinely guides clients right where we float. “I’ve traveled all over Texas looking for different water, for different places I might want fish camps,” he tells me. “But I think the bass fishing on the Brazos is the best in Texas.”

JD leaves us with this sentiment: “We just want to share the outdoors with everybody,” he says. “Wild places bring cool people together.”

On our final miles before Rochelle’s, we paddle past sheer limestone cliffs and down a corridor along a high bluff to the north. We drag our boats up the rocky beach in the shadow of the towering FM 4 bridge.

I’ve shared a lot of adventures with Madi and Jerod, but this one feels special. The Brazos River has been a constant thread in our lives. Jerod and I have bike-packed from Portales, New Mexico, to Lubbock along Yellow House Draw, the watershed for the Brazos. We know where this river comes from. Madi grew up on these waters. She exchanged marriage vows with her husband on the shoreline of Possum Kingdom Lake. It’s where she comes from.

I’ll never take the Brazos River for granted again. It is a true public natural resource — a rarity in Texas. I can vouch for only the first 19.5 miles, but the John Graves Riverway is an adventure I highly recommend. Give me a few months and I’ll let you how the other 93.5 miles pan out.