|
Registered Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 43
|
Rate Your Adventure
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.
|
Linear Mode
