Last month I explained how I became interested in Mill Creek in Austin County, west of the Brazos River, and I did a reconnoiter of the possible access points. You can read that predecessor report, HERE. Now it was time to carry out a plan and go paddle Mill Creek.
But first, a little background.
Texas Parks and Wildlife describes Mill Creek thusly:
"The creek’s channel is narrow and shallow with a sandy substrate and numerous sandbars. The creek follows a meandering path through interspersed pasture land and hardwood forest floodplain and provides habitat for a diverse fish community including spotted gars, minnows, common carp, river carpsuckers, channel catfish, and several sunfish species. The surrounding area is known as the Katy Prairie and is one of the country’s premier wintering waterfowl regions, that attract migrant shorebirds. The bottomland forest that surrounds much of the creek provides habitat for numerous woodland birds. It has high biodiversity that displays significant overall habitat value. The creek is identified as an Ecoregion Reference Stream due to high dissolved oxygen and biodiversity."
From the Texas State Historical Association:
"A number of creeks, the largest of which include Mill, Piney, and Allens, flow southeastward athwart the timber belt to the Brazos; the bottoms of many of these streams are mantled by thick stands of water oak, pecan, and cottonwood. Mill Creek, with its picturesque, broad, wooded valley, was called palmetto by the Spanish, in commemoration of a species of dwarf palm that once grew on its lower course. Bears, alligators, and buffalo that once roamed the area disappeared in the nineteenth century."
And then there's a little history. Prehistoric Indians occupied the area from about 7,400 BC. The Spanish and French contested for the land in the 1600's and 1700's. And in the 1800's Anglo settlers moved in from the east settling the San Felipe area in the 1820's, pushing out the resident Tonkawa Indians, who vanished a few decades later.
Today, Mill Creek is still very much in a natural state, with very few cabins visible alongside the water, and surrounded by ranches and farms on the open prairie. It's about as good as it gets in the Houston area. I encountered no other boaters or people on my six-hour paddle.
Now let's get on with the paddle report.
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| Location Map |
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Access Points |
Here's the online map where you can check out the creek for yourself: MAP
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USGS Water Gauge |
An online check of the USGS Water Gauge for Mill Creek at FM-331 showed a recent spike in water level and flow rate from the preceding few days of rain. But the level and discharge rates were almost back down to normal. Since I was planning to paddle down and back upstream, I couldn't have the flow rate overpower my ability to paddle against it. At normal low water levels, there is almost no current, which is what I needed. From the chart, it looked pretty good. And if that tiny little difference was going to kill my plans, I'd find out when I got there and looked at it first hand. All you have to do is throw a leaf in the water and see how fast it moves. I did this at my put-in location, and the leaf hardly moved at all. It was like a flat-water lake. Great! I would paddle downstream staying aware of the current and mindful that if the flow got faster, I would be conservative and ready to turn around if necessary, in order to avoid being trapped downstream and unable to return. I used my single-blade paddle, but as backup had my double-blade paddle in case I needed more speed.
Monday morning broke with clear skies, light wind, and temperatures promising 55 to 75 degrees. You can't get more beautiful than that.
My put-in location was at the Grubbs Road crossing of Mill Creek, which has a narrow fisherman's trail with a gentle slope down to the water. The only hitch is an eroded gully alongside the trail, and the trail leans sideways toward the gully. Can I make it down that slope without falling into the gully? Nope. A buddy system is handy here, with one person controlling each end of the boat, so it doesn't slide around.
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Grubbs Road put-in
trail |
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The trail & gully -
can I make it? |
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Nope |
Overview: The paddle plan for the day was this: Put-in at Grubbs Road and paddle 2 miles downstream to the mouth at the Brazos River. Then back upstream, past the Grubbs put-in, continuing upstream 1.4 miles to FM-331, and beyond, as far as I can get or until I wear out. Then back downstream to Grubbs again for the take-out. I made it about 3.5 miles past FM-331 going upstream before turning around. That's the point at which the increasing water speed and my increasing weariness matched each other and called it a draw. So, the total distance was about 14 miles, paddled at a pleasant leisurely pace.
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| Paddle Route |
The first paddling goal for the day was to go downstream to the mouth of the creek where it flows into the Brazos River. That distance is about 2.0 miles so it doesn't take long to get there. I was going to need to paddle back upstream again, so I was ever mindful of the speed of the current, as it could not exceed my ability to paddle against it. Fortunately, the creek was almost like a lake on this stretch, with no noticeable current. The first thing you notice upon reaching the mouth is that the Brazos is flowing past at a rapid rate, compared to the still Mill Creek. And then you notice the differences in water color and clarity. At the boundary of the two waters, the Brazos was very noticeably muddy. And because of the differences in speed, the muddy Brazos would split off and try and eddy-out into Mill Creek, creating muddy swirls. After being entertained with that mesmerizing show for a while, I headed back upstream.
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| Aerial view |
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Brazos ahead! |
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Muddy water |
A few sights along the way. One landowner has an old railroad caboose for a waterfront cabin.
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| Creek view |
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Old cabin falling in |
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Railroad caboose cabin |
According to Texas history, one of the first settlers here was James Cummins, who received a land grant along Mill Creek, and built what is likely the first water-powered saw and grist mill in Texas, near the junction of Mill Creek with the Brazos River. So, I was on the lookout for any signs of such ruins along the creek banks, like grindstones, a water wheel, logs, or stone foundations. I saw nothing. It turns out, that story location is a decoy. The real location is reported by locals to be much further upstream.
What about wildlife? There were plenty of bird species, but not a lot of each type. Since I'm not good at bird identification, I'll be using my own personal terms. The avian scene included small brown birds that flit amongst the bushes, water skimmers, sand pipers, ducks, hawks, a magnificent eagle, cawing crows, a great blue heron and a kingfisher.
The heron played the usual escape tactic of flying away from me in the direction I'm traveling, so that I just came upon him again, and he has to repeat the escape, over and over. The kingfishers, on the other hand, have this problem figured out. They fly away by circling around behind you, so that they never have to worry about you again. The eagle was sitting atop a tree, and I didn't see him until he took flight, spreading those large brown wings, with his white tail fanned out for slow speed air control. The ducks were often seen flying away from the circling hawks, and I wondered if hawks attack ducks. These were black ducks, not whistlers, not coots, I don't know the type.
The only mammals spotted were a pair of nutria, which are like giant rats for those of you who are unfamiliar with that name. They kind of look like beavers, except for a rat-like tail instead of a wide flat tail. There were tracks in the mud of raccoon and deer. Also present were turtles who are very shy and dive into the water before you get close to them. They are amazingly adept at climbing sticks poking vertically out of the water, and I wondered how they climb those with their short stubby legs. Alongside the sand bars were plenty of squiqqly lines where mussels have crawled along the bottom leaving trails behind them.
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Mussel
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Mussel trails |
There are very few cabins in sight along the banks, so things appear very natural. And because of the scarcity of development, there's also almost no trash. I saw one refrigerator in the water, and that was about it. No paper, cans, bottles, plastic, nothing. Woohoo!
There are no real obstacles to paddling. A few trees were down, having fallen in from the banks, but the trees were less tall than the creek was wide, so there was always room to go around them. I never had to portage or get out of the boat against my will. In the upper stretches the water starts to get shallow, and I bumped bottom on submerged bars several times. You have to watch for the channels and follow them. I tested the water depth in the lower sections by dipping my 5-foot long paddle to try and touch bottom, and could not. In the upper stretches above FM-331 it was only two to three feet deep.
An eddy spot on the side of the creek had a bunch of floating balls in it, which got my curiosity and I just had to investigate. It turns out they were some kind of gourd which grows on a vine that had been climbing up a tree. The tree died and fell over into the water, killing the vine, and all the gourds fell off the vine. I cut one open hoping for something tasty like watermelon, but instead there was just some white fuzzy pulp, and a bunch of seeds that looked like pumpkin seeds. I scraped out some of the pulp and tasted it, and oh boy was it bitter! Yech. Does anyone know what this is?
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| Floating gourds |
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Close-up |
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Inside |
Update: Frank Ohrt has identified this as a member of the cucumber family, called a buffalo gourd, Missouri gourd, stink gourd or wild gourd. And, um, it's poisonous! Good thing I only tasted a pinch of it.
At the pipeline crossing there was an unusual sight to be seen. There are often signs at such spots warning boaters not to dredge or drop anchor in those areas, but this location actually had the pipeline covered up with protective fabric concrete bags. Upon first approach the bags looked like the pattern of gar scales, as if there was a gigantic gar partially exposed at the waterline. Closer inspection revealed the concrete bags. They look to me like a pack of warthogs, or maybe hippos. Notice how each bag has four arms interconnecting it to all other bags around it, making one continuous sheet. This will prevent individual pieces from being dislodged as you often see when ordinary blocks are laid down. But I can't figure out how they would fill these with concrete and lay them all down so neatly as one giant sheet.
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| Gigantic gar? |
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Warthogs? |
The creek width narrows as you go upstream, so Bernoulli's principle is in effect here: the same amount of water flowing through a narrower opening will move at a higher velocity. I started seeing this higher speed above FM-331, with V-shaped wakes behind sticks, and leaves floating past. It only amounted to maybe 1 mph, and I could still paddle upstream, only slightly impeded.
There were several spots of bank slump, where the ground got so saturated that it turned into a mud slide, collapsing into the creek, carrying trees and brush with it. One spot even had vertical striations where the tree roots had scraped against the remaining bank on their way down.
There is also some interesting stratigraphy of the various layers and colors of earth exposed, and I always wish I had a geologist with me who could tell me what epochs they represent.
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| Creek view |
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FM-331 bridge
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Stratigraphy |
And that's it. I'm not one to keep paddling the same spots over and over again, but Mill Creek is worthy of a few more return visits for me.