In an effort to beat the heat and go paddling, I posted a trip on Turtle Bayou for August 19. Six like-minded folks signed up. We met at the put in in White’s Park at 8 a.m.
Photo by Joe Coker. From Left: Alice Nissen, Christy Long, Natalie Wiest, Ann Andrisek (HASK member, guest), Ellen Shipman, and Bob Scaldino
My original intent was to bypass White’s Bayou, expecting it to be too shallow because of the ongoing severe drought for Chamber’s County. However, the lure of the beautiful bayou and apparent floatability at the put in had us starting off in that direction. I was pleasantly surprised to find the reports of depth of bayous were completely accurate – no bottom-scraping and our progress was only halted by the “usual” for here – a log jam about a mile and a half upstream.
Here is Christy taking in the sights and sounds, notice how high the usual water level marks are on the cypress trees behind her.
No problem, we paddled back to the park and then upstream into Turtle Bayou itself. We had a lovely slow-paced trip, perfect for a hot day. The water level was no problem there either. An impressive green algae bloom well upstream may have been from fertilizer, crawfish or catfish farm, or just plain old sewage (although did not smell like it).
We turned around in time to make it back to the starting point by noon. The temperature range for our trip was about 83 degrees at the start and 93 as we loaded boats at the end.
The end of the boat ramp at White's Park was actually out of the water - anyone foolish enough to back a trailer off the end of it would have been into the deep water of the bayou, a very poor plan. That very thing happened to an absent-minded young man washing his truck on the ramp some time ago. He backed it a little too far and into the bayou it went, sinking completely out of sight. The bayou is indeed quite deep.
To continue the camaraderie of the paddle, we repaired to The Crawfish Place in Anahuac, a short distance down the road. Loved the air conditioning and the good food, an excellent day overall.
Joe Coker and Christy Long have both posted additional photos of the trip on the HCC website. Here is photographer Joe, missing from the group photo but enjoying his day on the water:
Miles paddled (estimated): 6
Photo Albums
Turtle Bayou, Aug 19, 2023, by Christy Long
Turtle/Whites 8/19/23, by Joe Coker