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HomeNL-2011-06 Sims Bayou
Sims Bayou with the Sierra Club
March 26, 2011
by John Berlinghoff

On March 26, a half dozen boats took a leisurely trip down an inner city bayou near Hobby Airport.  We put in at Stuart Park near Telephone Road and went down-stream to Milby Park near 225. Sims was a bayou scheduled for destruction by the Corps in the name of Flood Control.  Twenty years ago the unimaginable happened  -  A project that was decades old, where $60 million dollars had already been spent, was stopped and a redesign was performed.  The new bayou, though not natural, was oodles better than the concrete ditch that was originally proposed.  Through the neighborhoods it is a grassy channel with a minimum amount of concrete.  The sad thing is that the citizen based plan was not only more esthetically pleasing and natural than the one by the Corps – It was cheaper!!

  
 Sims meander
    Glendale golf course

For the canoeist and nature lover, there were some big surprises on the 2½ hour, 6-7 mile trip.  We paddled down two of the “unimproved” sections of the bayou and found ourselves in a close-in wilderness.  There is an immense amount of habitat right in one of the older sections of town.  Getting in and out is tricky because there are no ramps or docks with rocks at Milby, but once you are in the old meanders, you have entered another world.  We even met a 6-8 foot alligator on the way.  It was amazing how fast those folks with sit-on-top kayaks got their toes out of the water.  We graciously gave him all of the bayou and crept by as far away as we could get.  The complete photos are listed in the link below.  A few wilderness shots are included in this story, plus a 300 pounder on his first kayak trip.

 
 
 

Complete photos are here: Picasa web album.  After clicking this link, select the "Slideshow" option.  If the automatic scrolling proceeds too fast for you, click the pause symbol ("||") to stop the autoscrolling.  You can then scroll manually by clicking the arrow button on the screen, or by pressing the arrow button on your keyboard.