Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Places, spaces and traces of Kayak Paddling

Kayak paddling takes you places you would never imagine getting to.
I will give you an example from experience.
One day, a friend and I wanted to take the kayaks out. We live on the gulf of Mexico in South Texas and I had heard about a spot called the Lighthouse trails. If you looked at the Lighthouse trails on a map(made by locals for Kayakers) It looks something like a maze.
So, on this day, my friend and I, load up our kayaks and we head to what is locally referred to as the flats, unload the yaks into the water get all our gear ready, drinks, snacks etc. and we're now in the water. As we start paddling across the boat channel we see Dolphins no more then 5ft away from us, it was a crystal blue day with minimal wind, and seeing those Dolphins was by far the best way to start our Kayaking adventure.
So, a short cruise across the channel, and we are now in the trails. As we are paddling our way back through the trails, we are at times in water no deeper then 2 or 3ft. No boats have access to these areas so the fish are sleeping quietly, thinking they are all alone, so as we paddle back there it spooks them and they start jumping out of the water, I kid you not, it looked like the water was boiling from all the ruckus they were making, it was so cool. Also on our adventure back there, we saw birds I had never seen before, and the water was so clear you could see the sandy floor, I lean back in my Kayak and think, yes, this is the life.
Finally we make it through "The trails" and low and behold, there is an old lighthouse I had never noticed from the road before. It was BEAUTIFUL. There were three houses built on stilts around it, and a man came walking out on the enormous deck and asked if he could help us with anything.
After explaining we were just paddling around he told us that a major grocery store chain owned the property, and old lighthouse and he was just the caretaker. So we were on our way.
As I mentioned earlier, these trails were like a maze, so need I say we got a bit lost on our way back. We ended up in some very shallow water that was covered in Oyster Beds, now, something you should know is Oyster Beds are like kryptonite to Kayaks. So we back paddled our way right out of there. As we realize we have now been on the water for nearly 4 hours it was time to rest, we found a nice deep swimming hole, anchored our kayaks, secured our paddles and took some time to enjoy the cool water.
We at this point are now pushing 5 hours of being on the water and are exhausted, and decide to paddle back across the channel, and load up the kayaks into the truck and head home after a refreshing day on the water going to places we had never been, fitting in spaces we had never seen, and leaving our traces on that lovely day, Kayak Paddling through the Lighthouse trails of south Texas!

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