Angelina River, Marion Ferry Park, Sam Rayburn
Kayak trail route map on the Angelina River launching from the Marion Ferry Park Boat Ramp at the north end of Sam Rayburn Reservoir. The reservoir was only 73% full, which is why there is grass at the launch, it’s normally supposed to be all water at full pool. Had to pull the boat to get across to the main Angelina channel. The map above is from the USGS National Water Dashboard site, it has a white line which is useful because it traces the route of the original Angelina. The red paddle trail line follows the white channel except for a (lucky) shortcut labeled ‘approx’. Water along the white line corridor is slightly deeper, otherwise the lake had 6 to 12 inches of water and was hard to paddle. The goal of the trip was to reach the Tram Boat Ramp, but it took quite a while at the start to figure out how to get out to the Angelina channel, and more time at several other places to stop, backtrack, check the map, revise, figure things out to be sure of getting back. Saw couple alligators. The Angelina River Hwy 59 gage was about 240 cfs. Variation in the sky is due to tropical storm Bertha moving through the Houston area.
Above: Marion Ferry boat ramp. A four lane ramp for Sam Rayburn Reservoir, but there’s almost no water, a big surprise when driving up, uh oh. The Angelina River channel is the water barely seen slightly above the grass on the left, way in the back. It was necessary to portage off to the right to get there, at this level the water at the ramp didn’t connect to the main river, at least not close by. Took a while paddling back and forth to figure things out.
Above: Pull-boat here in the ‘shortcut’ part of the route.
Above: A cage to catch something.
Above: Find the turtle.
Above: Algae mat, image search says maybe cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). The stuff was here before land plants, billions of years ago.
Above: Low water on the lake, and lots of stumps.