There are a few things I wish I'd have known before this trip. The parking lot is pretty small, once you drop your kayak/canoe/small boat, you have to drive up a steep little dirt incline to park your car near the restrooms. You can also follow along a rough trail along the ridge with steep drop offs and go down to the dam where the road ends, if you want to explore some. The road from 87 to the water is pretty rough and rattled a rip into our jeep soft top. You will be shaken all the way down.
Go early, the few camp spots along the river fill up quickly. There are a lot of canoe and kayak campers who make their camp early in the day and then set out to fish, so by the time we head downs stream to find a spot on a Saturday round 6 or so it was very full. We found about the very last camp spot along the river, 4 miles down from the boat dock. Some parts of the river are just craggy rock jutting straight down in the river and then high up into the sky, making for great views but little room for camp spots. The camp spots that are around are secluded, grassy and gorgeous. If it hadn't been raining on the one random day it decided to rain this month, we'd have had more fun that evening, taking in the sights, sounds and hanging out by the waterside.
There are a a few maintained campgrounds around, Rock Crossing seemed to be the popular one but it is not ON the water. I think you may be able to hike down to the water from the campsite, however. There are dogs everywhere! Does in canoes, dogs in kayaks, dogs on the shore, it was a puppy party! There are also plenty of fish. Where we camped at the water's end there were little baby fish that we caught, but all the bigger fish were splashing along the deeper areas. There are also places to jump from the rocks and swim. There is zero cell service down in the water. In fact, I didn't get any service until getting up near the one gas station kinda by Happy Jack on 87. If you're down on the water there is quite a ways before you reach a gas station with any kind of anything you may need, but for a gas station they're pretty stocked with fishing and camping gear. So much fun to be had!
