Paddling from Goose Island State Park
Jan. 16-18, 2015
by Natalie Wiest
Several of us from the Houston area set up camp at Goose Island State Park for a weekend of paddling, birding, and visiting. Our friend Winnie Shrum from Corpus Christi made the general arrangements. Several of us arrived Thursday evening to paddle on Friday and Saturday, others arrived later to join paddle trips and some of us took advantage of the opportunity to ride the bird watching boat The Skimmer from Rockport on Sunday. All of us were paddling sea kayaks for the anticipated open water exposure.
Many days of rain and overcast preceded the campout. As I backed out of my driveway in Galveston Thursday, the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun started peeking through – a good omen for what turned out to be a great trip. I was glad, however, I’d packed my extra warm sleeping bag– it was quite cool at night but entirely pleasant for paddling during the day.
Our Friday trip followed a fairly short out and back path, putting in from the park itself and paddling west to survey the new bridge construction for Hwy 35 across Copano Bay.
The blue skies were welcoming and warm, and the water glass-like with little or no wind. Water seemed to be blended in with the sky at the horizon line with interesting cloud patterns. It was very relaxing and beautiful.
We finished our trip just as the sun set.
Saturday had equally nice conditions and a larger group of us put our boats in the water at the shoreline just down from the Big Tree (Texas Champion live oak). Side benefit of that location was watching whooping cranes. The past year was not entirely good for the big birds so some of them have switched to eating corn in a large pasture there. We saw six or seven of them both days of paddling.
This time our route took us north along St. Charles Bay, hugging the west bank and paddling past quite a string of duck blinds. Little surprise we saw few ducks in this area; we were awakened every morning to the sound of airboats motoring out pre-dawn, loaded with hunters in pursuit of the hapless birds. For some distance it seemed there were duck blinds every quarter mile. Loud booms in the distance let us know there were active hunters around, but thankfully none of the close blinds were active at the time we were paddling. Some of the hunters left their decoys behind. Winnie paddled right through them to take pictures of the roseate spoonbills on the shore just beyond.
We found nice solid footing to get out of our boats for a pleasant lunch, then split the group, some returning along the shore, and the rest of us heading across the bay to the Aransas NWR side in the hopes of seeing whooping cranes. We didn’t see any, but all in all it was a gorgeous day to be on the water.
The next morning Marilyn, Tracy, Dutch, and I were up bright and early to get to the Rockport harbor to board The Skimmer for a day of birding.
Our good luck continued for us; we had many sightings of whooping cranes and several of them quite close to shore. There are reportedly 300 of them in the area this winter. The surprise view was a pair of coyotes too intent on eating their turtle breakfast to show much concern for us, shooting them repeatedly with our cameras from only 100’ away.
Another wonderful paddling trip, wish you could have been along too!
Natalie Wiest
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| The author, Natalie Wiest |