Kearney Water Trail

This stretch of water is a great local float!  The overall trail is scenic and makes you feel like you are not in the middle of a city.  The entire float takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours depending on your craft of choice, skill level, effort, and choice of takeout.  There is one put in and two takeouts for this all at the time of writing this description.  The public takeout, near Central Avenue, is the common choice amongst people but I would highly recommend reaching out to Kearney Paddle Sports to utilize their landing that adds an extra 45ish minutes to the float.  If you go to https://kearneypaddlesports.com/ and reach out to the owner of Kearney Paddle Sports, for a low price you can get a pass that often comes with a pretty sweet boat decal that is good for the season that allows you access to their private landing that adds a great parking area and access to what I believe to be the best stretch of this float.  If you do not own your own boat, Kearney Paddle Sports also does a shuttle service with kayaks and tubes for extremely reasonable prices. Along with the float if you are a more experienced boater or sup/prone enthusiast there are also two fun whitewater elements that spice things up a bit.  The first is a wave and the second is more of a hole. These elements were put in with their grand opening in the 2022 paddle season.  Check out the river features below for more detailed information on that. Lastly though it would be amazing if this was running all year long the flows are controlled by NPPD Nebraska Public Power District and only has water from mid-April through mid-October.  As far as daily trends, because this area is dependent on the hydraulic water plant near the university, water levels fluctuate through the day.  From my experience the water flow rates would rise around 6am, 11am, and sometimes 3pm but would typically drop around 7pm.  This is only important if you are looking to specifically utilize the whitewater park as you can easily get over the elements at the lower levels I am talking about. _KearneyWhitewater Facebook Page_ _visitkearney.org Article_ _ksnblocal4.com Official Opening Day Coverage 2022/05/20_