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Ken Anderson posted a trip to Lake Charlotte on the HCC web
site and listbot. I told him I was coming and followed the directions to the
put in found on the HCC places to go site. They were perfect.
I arrived
early and waited down
by the beach. It was a beautiful morning; a cloudless sky,
with a cool fresh
breeze. There was only a slight ripple on the surface of
the lake and I watched
various flying birds: herons, egrets, ibis, and osprey.
Ken arrived and, as it was just us, we set off about 9:15 am.
We decided to take Mac Bayou which was
a little ways down the right shoreline. We passed under the
pipe and came out into a small lake. We turned right then a quick left and
followed that bayou northward paddling easy for about 45 minutes until it
deadended.
We retraced
our strokes back to the small lake and went the other way,
quickly coming to
the Trinity River. We got out on a muddy sandbar to
stretch; a small deer
bounced away through the woods. It took us about an hour to
paddle downriver to Lake
Pass. We had a tail wind but not much detectable current.
We saw a very big alligator right in the middle channel of the Trinity. Lake
Pass was clear up to the cut to Miller Lake, where we startled another big
'gator. He hit the water and just looked at us. Then he submerged and his air
bubbles went right under Ken's small kayak.
We ventured into and across
shallow Miller Lake, each
stroke churning up some mud, but we made it across ok. The
numerous cypress knees
made it hard to find a lunch spot, but we found one with a
good sized
alligator sunning himself on a log. We ate lunch, got back
in the boats and left and
the 'gator never moved. Back in the Miller cut we ran into
the big 'gator
again and again he dived, but you could follow his air
bubbles. We paddled right
over him and back to Lake Pass.
The going got tougher but
with some pulling and
pushing we made Lake Charlotte. The north wind had picked
up so we got ready,
sucked it up and headed straight across to the put in. We
made it in about
forty-five minutes beaching about 3:45pm.
It was a great
day. We got plenty of
good exercise, did some exploring, and saw lots of
wildlife. Best of all was
we got to spend a day in this wonderful place. A pat on the
back to Ken for
thinking of it.
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