Camping in Texas is only possible at certain times of the year. Trying to sleep in a tent when the overnight low temperature doesn't dip below 80 is NOT a desirable experience.
Fortunately our mild spring hung on a bit longer than usual and our paddling/camping excursion of a few weeks ago was blessed with perfect weather (except for some rain, which actually worked to our advantage, as I'll tell you later when I talk about our "bonus river").
For three nights of not-exactly-roughing-it on the river, you need a lot of gear. Here's a shot of our canoe at the put-in. That's my seat up at the front, complete with a fabulous backrest made by rolling up my fabulous sleeping pad. Behind it is our new ice chest, bought specifically to fit in this canoe, surrounded and covered by bags of food and clothes, and campsite essentials like our chairs. You can't even see Henry's seat in the rear of the boat for all the stuff.
Our first campsite was on a large island a few miles downstream from our put-in at the highway 190 bridge.
That's Henry working on unloading gear from the boat. Who wouldn't be "all set" for a pleasant evening in such surroundings? You can see some of the beautiful flowers that were all over the island in this picture. The flowers were so wonderful on the whole trip that I plan to devote an entire future post to pictures of them.
Michael and Marilyn were even able to decorate their camp table with a floral centerpiece (in a bottle also found on the island)...That's their super-cool tent behind it.
And flowers weren't the only natural lovelies on the scene. There were lots of shells, and parts of shells, from freshwater clams, that were just gorgeous. And huge! Here are two I brought home for souvenirs, with a coin in the frame for scale. Hard to imagine the size of the critters that made these! But what beautiful workmanship!
Of course, we ate well on the island. Dinner was steaks and salad that we brought, plus potatoes and some of Mike's famous cobbler, cooked to perfection in the Dutch oven over the fire. What an artiste!
After a scrumptious breakfast of bacon and eggs, we started off on what we knew was going to be a long day of paddling. Our goal was
Barefoot Campground, estimated to be about 15 miles downriver. We'd left a car there and reserved a campsite with a sheltered table (which, it turned out, we really needed).
Some navigational issues made us think, however, that we had much farther to go than we actually did. Fortunately, the error was made in overestimating, not underestimating, the distance before us.
Which made our surprise arrival at the little town of Bend, Texas, all the sweeter. We had thought it was several hours ahead! We celebrated our good fortune at
Bad Bob's in Bend—just a short, steep climb up the bank—with ice cream treats from Bob's freezer. While also admiring the establishment's rustic humor and decor. (click on the photo at the left to see a larger image and be able to read the jokes)
Three miles down the river from Bend was Barefoot, and our ice cream break meant we made it
just in time...no sooner had we beached the canoes and ferried our gear up to the shelter, when the heavens opened up! Quite a downpour. It made gathering good wood for our fire a challenge but Marilyn was up to it. While the guys went back to the put-in to pick up the other cars, she was able to construct a very nice campfire, structured perfectly to dry out the subsequent damp stuff needed to keep it going.
As it turned out, we weren't able to use it for cooking since the rain wasn't finished with us. (On the right is a shot up at the top of our tent from the inside, the next morning. It must have rained almost all night!)
I don't have a photo of the wonderful chili we had for dinner that night, but we cooked it on our Coleman stove (a wedding present still going strong!) under the shelter. Which arrangement we also used for the next morning's breakfast of egg casserole. Here's Michael demonstrating the proper technique for keeping eggs from sticking to the Dutch oven. The wall behind is that of the very welcome shelter. Note the phone number! If you need a great place to camp on the Colorado, you can't do better than Barefoot. Even the showers were first-rate!
We had to wait quite a while after breakfast before we could take off on the last leg of our Colorado excursion. It rained, pretty hard off and on, for a couple of hours that morning while we enjoyed our egg casserole. But it eventually cleared. All that remained then was for us to break camp, and load the boats.
After emptying all that rainwater! (red line points to the outflow)
A small price to pay for a great campsite. With amenities and scenery that are all top-notch. (Thanks to Michael for taking this picture of me at sunset the next day, when we went back to Barefoot to get his car.)
The last day on the Colorado involved a lot of paddling, too, but we were somewhat more aware of where we were and how much further we had to go. Our campsite goal was
Colorado Bend State Park, another 10+ miles downstream.
But it was worth it! Just look at this absolutely gorgeous campsite! That's our tent on the left. I don't think I've ever camped under a more fabulous set of trees.
And, of course, the cuisine matched the surroundings. Mike treated us to a pot of the most delicious
Jambalaya I've ever had...
(If just looking at this makes the Hank Williams song start up in your head, here's a
short audio sample from the always useful Wikipedia.)
I'll have more to show and tell you about this lightly developed jewel of a park in my next post. But here's just a sample of the scenery from the campsite area, with morning mist still on the hills:
Still to come in the series: more about Colorado Bend and its amazing Gorman Falls, examples of our great wildflower season, and, of course, the bonus river.
We knew that the river was running well because the weekend before we'd been up there to watch the first day of the Texas Water Safari. Two of the boats in the field contained friends of ours, but it's really a fun thing to watch even if you don't know anyone. This was my first time to see it and I was quite impressed. (Although I think the crowds probably scared all the turtles away. However, we saw lots of them on our excursion over some of the same ground the next week.)
