If someone tells you Irving doesn’t have a real trail system, they haven’t walked the Campion Trail on a cool October morning when the light comes in low off the water and the egrets are standing in the shallows like they own the place. You can find that stretch near the Lake Carolyn Loop Segment, running along the urban waterway corridor that cuts through Las Colinas — and once you’re on it, the city noise backs off faster than you’d expect.
So what do you actually get here? The Campion Trail system in Irving runs roughly 20 miles in total across several connected segments. The Lake Carolyn section is one of the more accessible entry points, and it rewards both walkers and cyclists differently. On foot, you notice things: the way the trail dips toward the water’s edge, the mix of paved and packed-gravel surfaces depending on where you are, the occasional wooden footbridge. On a bike, you can string together a genuinely satisfying multi-mile ride without fighting traffic lights every few minutes.
Parking is not a headache. You can access the trail from several points along the Las Colinas Boulevard corridor, or use the lot near the O’Connor Road area if you’re coming from farther north. Most people bring their own water — there are no vendors on the trail itself — and that’s worth knowing before you go. Early morning on a weekend is when the trail feels most like itself: runners in both directions, the occasional dog-walker, a few cyclists calling out before they pass. By midday in summer, the exposed stretches get hot enough that you’ll want to have finished by 9 a.m. or save it for evening.
What the trail does well is variety without demanding you drive across town for it. The water-adjacent sections have a different texture than the stretches that run behind commercial development, but neither feels like a compromise. The landscaping along parts of the route is deliberate — planted grasses, some native species mixed in — without feeling over-managed. It reads like a city that actually wanted a trail system, not one that bolted a path onto leftover land.
Cost is nothing. The trail is free and open during daylight hours, and that accessibility matters. You’ll see everyone here: older couples walking side by side, parents with jogging strollers, solo runners with headphones, kids on balance bikes. It doesn’t skew toward any one demographic, which is part of what makes it feel like a genuine community resource rather than an amenity pitched at one type of resident.
If you’re newer to Irving or just passing through for a few days, this is one of the more honest ways to get a read on the city’s texture. You move through real neighborhoods, pass genuine commercial activity, and cross the kind of infrastructure — canals, underpasses, small bridges — that makes you realize Las Colinas was built with outdoor movement at least partially in mind. That’s not always true in suburban DFW, and it’s worth noting when it is.
Bring earbuds or don’t. Bring a bike or don’t. Just bring water, and go before the sun gets high.
