Disclaimer: This document is for entertainment only and is not intended to instruct or educate anyone about anything. If you choose to emulate the stupid things I do you are on your own, and I take no responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

Trip Report: My flatmate Andrew (that's right, we are the house of Andrews) is moving to Europe at the end of April, and he had expressed a desire to do some Texas style paddling before leaving. I suggested that we set up a two car shuttle and paddle the San Marcos River from Luling to Palmetto State Park on April 2, 2006. This was not my first choice, but it was the only nearby stretch of river with enough flow for enjoyable paddling.

The first order of business was to drop off one of the vehicles at the takeout at lovely Palmetto State Park. Here we can see a massive gazebo type picnic facility built from local sandstone back in the 1930s.

Next we drove the other vehicle up to the put in at Old City Park in Luling. We put in just below the dam in the picture. The river was easily accessed by scrambling down these huge fenced rock steps.

We quickly noticed that the main feature of this stretch of river is the countless log jams that can sometimes be negotiated in the boat, but must often be portaged at low water like we had. Sorry, no pictures of the log jams as we were too busy scrambling through them.

A couple of hours down river we found a small vegetated island where we stopped for a peaceful lunch without the worry of tresspasing in private land on either side of the river. This was also a good spot for posing with a paddle.

After fueling up it was time to get back on the water and start motoring. We had many miles left to cover and daylight was going to be a little tight.

A good ways down the river we encountered this dead tree populated by vultures. We also got a close up look at a pair of bald eagles but they were in flight and moving too fast for me to snap a picture of them. There were also large night herons and many other water fowl to be seen.

The total mileage for this trip is 13.5 miles, but the first really reliable mileage indicator was Ottine dam at the 12.5 mile mark. It seemed like it took a long time to get there, but finally in the glow of the late afternoon sun we arrived.

Ottine Dam has killed at least one paddler over the years and is pretty much a mandatory portage at any flow volume. One of the perks of the portage is that you get to scramble around in the green elfin forest on the banks and check out some old dead dam machinery.

If we hadn't been so pressed for time I might have tried to convince Andrew to paddle the boat around under the dam for kicks, but instead we stopped long enough for some "on the water" shots below the dam.

After Ottine Damn it was only a mile to the takeout in Palmetto State Park. Fortunately the takeout can't be missed since it is at a low water bridge that pretty much always has to be portaged. On this occasion there was a log jam just before the low water bridge. We tried to thread through the jam and find a safe spot to step out on to the bridge, but I soon realized the current going under the bridge was too strong so we furiously back paddled, took out on the bank and portaged over the log jam to the bridge.

After loading up the boat it was back up to Luling for a big catfish dinner to refuel our paddling muscles and then a relatively short drive home.