Floating the river in San Marcos is one of my favorite pastimes! In my opinion it's better than floating in New Braunfels. The San Marcos River is spring fed, stays pretty constant level and mostly stays flowing year round.

Our Owl Hollow property is popular for staying at and going tubing.

There are two great places to put in and take out your tubes.

The Lions Club (You can rent tubes or you can just pay about $1 per tube to air up your tubes there if you need either of those two things). You can also park there (big parking lot but it does fill up) and buy an all day shuttle pass that will bring you from the waterfall chutes at Rio Vista Park back to the Lions Club.

What I personally like to do, though, is park at Rio Vista Park and walk about 10 minutes or less up the big sidewalk and over the bridge to the Lions Club. Then we put in at the Lions Club and float all the way back down to Rio Vista Park and ride down the three waterfalls. We get out there and do it again. I can do that usually two times, sometimes 3 and it will take up a good chunk of the day!

So you can park at either place for free and get in at Lions Club and Rip Vista Park for free.

This is Lions Club information and where you can see about buying the free shuttle that will take you from Rio Vista back to Lions Club.

And here is Rio Vista Park.

If you are going on the weekend or a holiday, you would want to be at Rio Vista pretty darn early though to get a good spot. Like 8am at the latest. The parking is very limited and fills up fast.

Some other tips:

Styrofoam is not allowed on the river. Put your beverages in regular tumblers and bring a trash bag or two to tie onto a tube.

Police will give you tickets for using styrofoam or for drinking open containers in the park (but not the river).

If you don't want to rent tubes, you can buy them at HEB on Thorpe Lane for about $18. HEB lets you use their air pump for free for your tubes, or you can take them to the Lions Club and pay a small fee.

I have a car-compatible air pump that I bought from Amazon pretty cheap, so I can just fill it at my car when I get there.

I hope all this helps!

Tubing in Texas