Armand & Horsepen Bayous
May 2, 2020
by Kent Walters
We started our informal "Out and Back" at the Bay Area Park parking lot /boat ramp at 10:00 AM. We unloaded and prepped our boats, took the mandatory group selfie, and were on the water by 10:20. We paddled down to Horsepen Bayou. It appeared that all of the wildlife that was missing from Champion Lake last week had somehow found its way here in Horsepen Bayou. We saw most of the local varieties of heron (yellow-crested night heron, great blue heron, little blue heron, green heron, great egret, snowy egret), an anhinga, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, turkey vultures and ibis. Conspicuously missing were the raptors. Is there a clue here?
In the water we saw alligator gar, ciclids and some kind of mackerel jumping. On land and in the water we saw turtles and alligators – lots of alligators.
We paddled out Horsepen Bayou past the University of Houston and down a fork around Clear Lake High School because Natalie wanted to see something about a Bike & Hike trail that runs to her house. On the way back, after getting into the peaceful “wild” area in alligator alley, we confirmed again that it was still deserving of its name. There seemed to be an alligator on every point that stuck out into the bayou. It was in this area we saw one fairly large gator acting like a part of the shore that had a serious problem with the area above its right eye, kind of an autumn-colored cauliflower eye.
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| Alli 4 in position |
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Alli 4 from
good eye side |
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Alli 4's horribly
disfigured eye
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We found some overhanging trees that provided the shade we needed for our lunch break. While we were eating lunch, another alligator swam over to check us out and then turned around and headed out toward Armand Bayou.
After lunch, we caught up with our visiting alligator, paddled over to the Armand Bayou Nature Center Boat House and tried out their interesting floating dock system. They have an “EZ Kayak Launch”. Natalie and Ellen snuck up on it from the shore side and tentatively tested it with a light nudge. Looked like it could work. Then we all goaded Amy into doing a Portz-ram from the water side, where she could get up some steam. She beached her boat about halfway up the ramp where there were “teeth” designed into the top surface that you could put your paddle in and pull yourself up all the way. Pretty slick. I wish I had had the presence of mind to take my own photos of this, but I just watched. Here is what it looked like . . .
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| EZ Dock |
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EZ Kayak Launch |
From there it was a relatively short paddle back up to the take-out, with only one more medium-sized alligator in the reeds of one of the islands.
Out = Blue Dots, Back = Yellow Dots
Photo album links: Kent Walters
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The author, Kent Walters |