In my never ending pursuit of more pleasant places to paddle, I decided that the Trinity River from just below Lake Livingston dam had some good potential. Joel Venable, very knowledgeable of the Trinity, assured me the upper stretches were very pretty and had beautiful big sand bars (confirmed by images from Google earth). It didn't take much more than that, plus the ever willing-to-explore Marilyn, to get up a trip on Sunday, October 1. We also knew from the maps that it was about 10 miles downstream to the boat ramp at I-59 near Goodrich. Browder's Marina, right up at the base of the dam, owns two prime launching sites on both banks of the Trinity; for $3.50 each we got a pass for the car and water access, and by 10 a.m. were pushing back into the quiet waters of the Trinity. Marilyn paddled upstream from the putin to take a closer look at the dam, and to check out the white specks that indeed turned out to be the biggest congregation of white wading birds I've ever seen. There was quite a floating flock of fishers as well. The first huge sandbar on the river looked a lot more this day like an eroded sandbar with just the pebbles and gravel underpinnings left. My guess is the heavy flows from hurricane Rita a year ago scoured off the finer sediments; to my eyes, the trees looked a bit bare too, and I'm guessing that also was hurricane damage. None of the sandbars looked as pristine as apparently they did from the air some years ago, but still plenty of space for camping or frolicking about. Great blue herons, and spotted sandpipers were numerous; as were ducks of both the wood and blue-winged teal variety. Kingfishers were about too, and snowy and American egrets. This is a beautiful float - with a little extra effort in the sea kayaks we made the 10 miles in about 3 and a half hours. As Joel had warned me, there are numerous snags in the river. The most unusual hazard was at the end - can't imagine what kind of a structure perched on these iron pipes that stick up 20' into the air. Ever the curious one, I managed to get myself hung up on a branch that was between two of the poles - then almost topped that near-disaster with pinning myself not once, but twice on additional poles/pipes as I got too intrigued taking pictures of people wading the tributary opposite. It's the closest I've come to having to do a camera-assisted hands roll, as the paddle was riding on my lap. That would have been the cause of way too much merriment from Marilyn - thankfully my old whitewater reflexes still work. The other wonderful bird sighting was a bald eagle, right down at the edge of the water a half mile from the takeout. This is a lovely stretch of water - I'll paddle it again, but will also check out lower stretches until I get to the more familiar area around I-10 much farther downstream. Marilyn chronicled the trip quite nicely at her Webshots site: http://community.webshots.com/user/mkircus and request "most recent". Natalie Wiest Galveston, 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/ ***************************************************************************
On 10/3/06, Natalie Wiest <wiestn_at_tamug.edu> wrote: > > In my never ending pursuit of more pleasant places to paddle, I decided > that the Trinity River from just below Lake Livingston dam had some good > potential. > I love your trip reports and photos. Makes me want to paddle Texas one of these days. Especially as the days up here get shorter and colder but before cross-country skiing. <grin> What an incredible range for our larger birds. I scared a Blue Heron out of his hiding place on my Sunday paddle. Bald eagles are now everywhere. And egrets (what a lovely bird) spend a lot of time here in the spring but they seem to disappear by August. The Sandhill Cranes come through in spring and fall and they are just now showing up. I wouldn't be surprised if you got those down there. By the way, it was interesting to see what a dam in Texas looks like. This is what a dam up here looks like: http://users.owt.com/chubbard/gcdam/highres/dam01.jpg (Grand Coulee Dam... about 1.5 hrs north of me). You don't see many people hanging around below the spillways on this one. <grin> This is what it looks like when the spillways are open: http://users.owt.com/chubbard/gcdam/highres/dam09.jpg So much water.... so little time to paddle much more than a trickle of it! Thanks, Craig Jungers Royal City, WA *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
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