Eight paddlers set out to paddle Turtle Bayou on Sunday, January 15, 2017. Waiting at the put-in at White’s Park, I soon started receiving distress calls from most everyone – the road closure on I-10 eastbound caught everyone off-guard, so we were a bit delayed on our start time, but never fear, the bayou was beckoning and a fun paddle, and hike, was had by all.
It wasn’t long until we were under way.
I had never been to the Turtle Bayou Nature Preserve so we decided on that as an exploratory hike. Luckily, John and Cindy Bartos had been there before, so they showed us the access point from the water. This is actually a very nice alternate put-in or take-out with a paved ramp access to the bayou and plenty of parking. It is accessed from FM 563. Here is Cindy leading the way, and a better look at the map of the preserve.
Here we are entering the preserve through the cattle-excluding device:
A nice relaxing paddle was had by all after the initial hassle of Houston traffic jam. 5.5 miles of bayou paddling had us back to the White Park ramp in mid-afternoon. Always fun to paddle our area in the “dead of winter”.
Natalie Wiest