Before the freeze

It's turned really cold here, and really quickly!

Saturday we had a pleasant upper-60's-lower-70's paddle on the San Marcos River. (And Joline came with us! That's her in the front of Henry's canoe amid lovely autumn leaves in the photo above.)

Then Sunday morning it plunged to freezing and didn't get much warmer all day. [Note to northern readers: this is cold for us.]

So we were doubly glad that we were able to enjoy the warmth on Saturday. And we weren't the only ones taking advantage: there were lots of turtles trying to catch a little passive solar...

this is just one of the turtle "families" we saw

...even though with the cloudy skies, there wasn't a whole lot of solar on offer.

The flow of the river was quite brisk and so we didn't have a lot of work to do until we got to the slow water behind Staples Dam, which is where the photo at the top of the post was taken, as well as this one:

The leaves and the reflections on the still water were so pretty I couldn't resist taking several photos, and didn't even mind the extra paddling required...at least not too much.

Of course the San Marcos has seen [what seems like] more than its share of big floods in the last couple of years (the link is to a story about their latest). And all that high water can't help but carve out changes in the riverbed; several of my paddling companions have better river memories than I do and could point to where such changes are most noticeable.

But it's clear even to someone like myself, who can never remember which stretch of which river has which rapids, that some recent changes in topography have occurred. Like these new cliff-faces:

pretty high!

exposed roots and a tree that was too close to the edge

Our trip was nice and calm, though, with only these (among other) pieces of visual evidence hinting at past violence.

We even got a little sunshine just before taking out! Nothing like diamonds on the river!