For those of you who have only solid water in your area, here's a vicarious paddling trip for you in Texas: I found two takers for my exploratory trip last Saturday, and am pleased to report none of us got hit by lightning or other natural hazard, and had a wonderful trip along this long natural shoreline. We met at Job Beason Park on Double Bayou (at Oak Island) at 9 a.m. We shuttled equipment and left a car there for takeout - drove south about 20 miles to the Smith Point putin and were on the water and underway by 10:30. Clouds built along the horizon as we paddled, with very little wind and beautiful clear water. After we crossed to Frankland Point we left houses behind and had miles of coastal grasslands. A few spoil islands remained beside the Old Trinity River channel, and plenty of white and brown pelicans and snowy egrets were our usual accompaniment. Under threatening skies, we found a nice little shell beach and had a dry, although face-gnat annoying, lunch overlooking the bay. We took a nice little side paddle up Third Bayou. Hadn't paddled much farther than the bottom fell out, and we were pelted with a considerable rainstorm - to our chagrin accompanied by increasing levels of thunder and lightning. Luckily the lightning never got real close, but it did give us several anxious moments as we literally had no place to go to seek shelter. During the peak of the storm activity we became the lead boats - for a herd of cattle onshore, I suppose desperate for a place to be safe from the wind and weather. First I've ever led a trip with 10-20 crossbred Brahma cattle! Lone Oak Bayou appeared on the maps as a very tempting side-trip, but with the storm over us and not sure how long it would continue we opted to keep paddling for the take-out, whence we arrived and had loaded the boats by 3:30. No rain there, but an oil slick at the ramp. As we lifted the boats out of the water, we had ugly oil-brown lines on our boats. Temps. for the day were in the 60s. Tide was with us but freshwater inflow at Double Bayou and other spots along the way created somewhat of an upstream current for us to paddle against. Total distance travelled was about 10.5 miles - Gordon had his GPS track our route and is putting up the map and particulars at his Web site: http://people.txucom.net/gniessen/Photos/Kayak/TrinityBay/index.htm As you'll see in his pictures, his digital camera takes great photos to record the day. Still in the film-era of camera activities, I'm waiting for my photos to be developed and digitized so I can show you that I wasn't hallucinating - there really is a wild animal farm along the road with reindeer, fallow deer, gazelles, and zebras! Yes, indeed there were. Natalie Wiest League City, Texas *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jan 20 2004 - 12:24:02 PST
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