Kayaking, Almost

Looking at the weather forecast for the next few days, today seemed like the best day to do some kayaking.  Tomorrow and the next day call for windy conditions.  So after our walk this morning we drove to the day use area on the Intercostal Waterway side of the island to launch the kayaks.  This is a large, shallow area called ​Laguna Madre​, or, loosely translated, ​The Mother of all Lagoons.  The water here is extremely salty, and this is one of only six hypersaline lagoons in the world.  I supposed if I fell out of my kayak, I would be more likely to float here.

This area is also popular for windsurfing (remember that craze, from about 35 years ago?).  No windsurfers here today, but someone was out kiteboarding for a little while.  The wind here is steady and fairly strong, making it ideal for nearly anything with a sail.

It would have been nice to have a sail on the kayak.

We put in the very shallow water, having to pole the kayaks at least 20 yards, and then made for South Bird Island.  Always nice to have a destination in mind.  South Bird Island happened to be down wind of where we put in.  So it was very easy paddling.  In fact, we moved at nearly three miles per hour without even paddling at all.  Which made us question the return trip.

And the wind only appeared to be strengthening.  We’re supposed to have thunderstorms overnight, so this may be the leading edge of that system.  We decided to turn around before we even got close to South Bird Island.

It was rather tough slogging back towards shore, and we made for a spot south of where we had put in to shorten the distance.  This wasn’t the hair-raising experience we had a bunch of years ago when kayaking in Grand Traverse Bay, but it had the potential to be if we would have kept going.  After reaching the shore, I had a bit of a hike back to the RV, and we gathered up the kayaks and  decided to do something over land.

Immediately across the main road from the turn-off to the day-use area is a small turn-out with a sign stating that there was once ranching going on here as well as oil and gas exploration, and that the remains of some of this could still be seen at the end of a short boardwalk on this trail.  So we took the trail.  We walked past some obvious former fences and corrals, but never did find any oil/gas exploration evidence, and didn’t find any evidence of a boardwalk, either.  The National Park Service is getting a little behind on updates to their signage.

We drove back to the beach, found a wide-open space and parked for the night.  Since this is a Friday, there are several other campers of various sizes coming in.  After a while, two campers came in and one parked 30 feet behind us and the other parked 15 feet in front of us.  C’mon, people!  There is five miles of beach here.  Can I have a little more than 15 feet?  I started up the RV, drove down the beach for a ways, and found another spot.  I had to jockey it around a bit.  Cell signal here ranges here from abysmal to non-existent.  I was able to get it to the abysmal range by moving about 20 feet.  With a cell-phone signal booster, I was able to get some usable signal.  So even out here, in the middle of nowhere, we are connected and on-line.  Not always sure that’s a good thing, but it does allow us to monitor the weather conditions and keep connected with our kids.

Yours truly, testing the rocking chairs at the visitor center.

Hiking the grasslands.