Retro51

This thread is to allow you to rate your Kayak/Canoe adventure. Hopefully, this will help anyone trying to decide on a trip. For lack of a better method, I will list them alphabetically, and rate them 1-10. If I rate them top-to-bottom, then as I add adventures, the order would have to change. 1 is the best, 10 is the worst.

Feel free to rate your own adventures.

Benbrook = 5 - the first place I put my Kayak in the water. Large, lots of camping (I lived about 5 min away). Boring to paddle across, not much of interest along shore. Fairly windy that day. It is close to metro areas if that is a plus. Not a lot of boat traffic that day.

Cleburne State Park/Cedar Lake = 8 - I have a post about this trip on this forum. Nice small lake with 5 mph limit/no wake. Easily paddle across or around entire shoreline. Nice camping areas (didn't camp - it was full), and lots of bikes. I saw a hiking/nature trail. This would be an ideal first trip with a new boat or a beginner paddler. I will likely return here.

Colorado River (Columbus Texas) = 10 - There is a canoe livery owned by my friend Frank. You can put in there and he will come get you the next morning. This was BMOK (before my own Kayak). My son and I did an overnighter from there. It's about 6 miles and there was an island we camped on. We could swim there too, and we swam at the takeout waiting for Frank. You can do longer trips, or you can start higher up the river. Even though it's a large river, I was able to paddle upstream. I would like to do other river adventures like this. FYI most places along the Colorado are privately owned - there's only a few take-out spots.

Granbury = 8 - I live here so am more familar with this lake, at least part of it. WARNING - there are stumps and rocks - some right below the surface of this lake, since it was just a river that has been dammed up. This is not a State area and you can get on the lake for free, if you find one of the public ramps (probably one of the few lakes that you don't have to pay to enter the state area, I think Lake Pat Cleburne is free). Most ramps are home-owner-association owned, such as Comanche Harbor, Indian Harbor, etc. OK - this is a different paddling experience. The part of the lake I'm familar with is mostly bordered by residences, whcih doesn't sound like as much fun as touring a wild shoreline. However, there are many nice houses - some very nice - and even the docks and boat houses are interesting. There are some boathouses worth more than my house and property. Certainly would be a change for someone who only goes out for wilderness trips. There are places where you take a canal off of the lake, which goes into housing developments, giving the homeowners boat access right up to their back yards - how cool is that? In addition, there are many small bays/coves. This is my favorite part of the lake. Even on windy days, these coves seem to be protected, and are sometimes glass smooth. There are dozens of turtles, ducks, hawks, I even see a large blue heron that is my favorite. I've seen Canadian Geese fly so low over the water they would smack into me if they didn't veer off - what a sight to see. There are snow geese which are mean (on land). If you go far enough from where I live (around Ports O Call) there is some wilderness shoreline. You can go almost to the dam and there is a state park or recreation area.
On the other side of the highway, past downtown, you may be able to go up the Brazos toward Possum Kingdom. I've never paddled on that side of the lake. I've never gone under the bridge where the Groggy Dawg is located. If you want a unique experience, the Groggy Dawg restaurant has a built-in dock for boaters who are dining. I don't know if they've ever had anyone PADDLE up.
A good trip from a public ramp would be to put in at Rocky Creek (or Rock Creek) park, which is near Pier 144 Marina. Then go around the marina and paddle along the large houses on the other side. If you go away from the Highway, there are some large bays with large, interestng houses. If you go to the right (around the marina), you go under a low bridge (no sailboats) and there are a couple of intersting bays with houses, and you can follow up a creek for a ways. There is one of the private boat ramps in a very beautiful spot up one of the bays.
If you go back to the left from the boat ramp, you will approach the 377 bridge and the Groggy Dawg restaurant. It's fun to paddle by the restaurant and wave at the people eating outside. You can continue under the bridge and another part of the open lake. Or you can not turn toward the 377 bridge, and go the other way toward DeKordova dam and the state park there, but that would be close to 15 miles, I think. An alternate trip might be to start at the state recreation area, and paddle back toward town.
Get a map or check Google Satellite to choose your trip.
One advantage of trip to Granbury, is it is close to Glen Rose and Dinosaur Valley SP, Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, and not that far from Cleburne SP if you wanted to combine trips.

Trinity River (from trail head near Pecan Valley golf course, in Benbrook) = 2 I jogged and biked this trail regularly, and loved looking down at the river. So naturally I wanted to paddle it. It was very hard to get down to the water, there were too many places where I couldn't get through (even with a shallow draft Kayak), then I had to turn around and come back. Forget it. Hike or bike the trail instead.

Retro51

I don't see an "edit" feature - so I'll make my corrections here. The rating system should be 10 is the best, 1 is the worst.

The park in Granbury near the Pier 144 Marina is Rough Creek Park, not Rocky Creek Park.

toejam

I get on Lake Granbury at Stroud Ck boat ramp in Thorp Springs, since that's close to where I live. It's a little quieter and greener up there.

I love paddling & camping on the Brazos upstream of Granbury - but gotta be careful about river level fluctuations.

Lake Worth is a great place to paddle a kayak.

The best lake around here for kayaking & camping IMO is Lake Texoma, if the other folks there don't ruin it for you.


The best paddling adventures I've had were on rivers in the Ozarks, and the places around here don't measure up very well. I wouldn't rate anything around here higher the maybe 6-7. It doesn't suck though. There are a lot more places around here to paddle than to hike.

Retro51

Two new adventures to add, although neither one was a full trip. Three counting a short one to Lake Worth. They were more of the "scouting" usage, on trips I want to go back and do later. Nevertheless, here they are.

Lake Bridgeport - at least a 9 out of 10, probably a 10 when I go back and do it up right. I already wrote a post about it, and I quote:
" I started at Wise County Park, near the boat ramp. Headed W/NW to where I thought the river would come in. Took a couple of false turns, and wound up exploring some bays. Was looking for a large island (called a hump on the map). Found an island and thout that was it, but it wasn't. The hump is actually huge, once I found it. Kept going to where the river was supposed to be. Found a marshland and a couple of bays- no river. Began to think it had dried up, until a motor boat passed me going all out and disappeared - up the river. So I then headed up river, for maybe 2 miles. I had found it, knew how to get there, and it's plenty big enough to explore, with mostly natural/wilderness shoreline. The writer said there was lots of wildlife, but I only saw birds. There are some houses going up along the river, so maybe this intrusion of man has cut down on the deer and so on, since the writer wrote the book." The book I refer to is [u]Personal Watercraft Adventures[u] by Thom Bell.

This was a great adventure, and being able to go up the river is a plus. I can't say much for the rest of the lake, since I only did a tiny portion of it, but this is what I got a kayak for. I do think there is at least one other trip, lower on the lake leading to the Trinity River (another river to follow), but that would be another day.

Lake Worth - 6/10 Started at Casino Park off the Jacksboro Hwy, paddled a long way looking for two islands. They were hard to find (or distinguish) because they are connected to land by a walkway of dirt and weeds. I think they are part of the nature preserve. I also didn't see any good landing spots. I won't do this again, although there is a big island lower on the lake that might be interesting, but it doesn't look too good on Google Maps.


Lake Whitney - at least a 9 (another scouting trip). I started at Plowman Creek Part and went up the Brazos. It's a long way to paddle before you get to the Brazos (and I bucked a headwind and waves on the way back - I was beat), and it's hard to tell where the river starts. But I enjoyed the whole trip - very interesting shorelines with huge white boulders and cliffs, in some spots. Saw lots of birds, fish jumping, and even a deer along the Brazos. This was a scouting trip to see if I could go up the Brazos. The river is huge at this point. I went to the RR bridge, and could see the bridge for Hwy 174.

I found out there are at least 2 spots I could have started from that would have put me on the river from the get-go, but I wanted to know how to get to the river from the lake, so I needed to do this trip at least once. Past the Hwy 174 bridge is Kimball Bend Park, and then Chisolm Trail Park is even further along, and probably the furthest up river you could start would be Ham Creek Park (and nature area). Just so you get an idea, from the book I use as a reference, he went 14 miles further up the river from Kimball Bend Park, and I was at least a couple of miles short of that park when I turned around. So I could have gone something like 15 miles further up river than I did (depending on river flow). At some point it does dry up and get smaller, but that would be way further than a day trip would let me go.

I will definitely go back and start further up river for more exploration, and could even make separate trips from each starting point (that would be 3 different trips without repeating the one I did Friday).

Retro51

Went back to the Brazos on Sunday. Here is the report and rating:

Brazos River - Ham Creek Park entry, up river 9.5 The only thing keeping it from being a 10, is that this part of the river is very popular with water skiers. I would prefer my kayaking without the 120 Watt rap music and power boats going by all the time. I spent 7 hours on the water (not paddling all the time) and made it to the sand bar before turning around. I was probably 1-2 miles from the Sand Island, which I would consider the ultimate goal. Great scenery and a very wide, easy to paddle river. Some beaches to stop and swim or have lunch - including the sand bar and Sand Island, if you make it to either of them.

toejam

A few years ago, I think 4, I put in at Chisholm Park one afternoon near the 4th of July. I paddled up and found a camping spot in one of the sloughs across from Ham Creek. From my tent I could hear the ski boats going by, people coming and going at Ham Creek, and what sounded like a war going on down near Kimball Bend Park. The next day I paddled up the river to where there were rapids. It was soul-crushingly hot and I sat in a tiny spot of shade on one bank and watched a very tired-looking coyote come for a drink on the other side. I camped about a mile upstream of Sand Island and heard lots of fireworks and hollaring coming from there. I enjoyed cooling off in the clear, flowing water as the sunn dropped behind the trees.

It was a great trip, but you have to find a way to get away from the power boats. The river above Whitney is real busy just like the river above Granbury.


On Lake Bridgeport, did you stay on the northern arm by Wise County Park, or did you paddle out the long western arm up the Trinity River?