Kayak Round-Up

Down the Memory Card

Over the last several months, I've taken a handful of trips and not had the gumption to post pictures or summaries. With summer long gone, I think it's fitting to reminisce on some of the trips I took, and remember some scorching hot days on the water as I freeze my ass off now.

In August and September I took some time to paddle around Dauphin Island, specifically after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Gustav barely caused any local damage, save for accelerated erosion on Dauphin Island; it severed Sand Island from the mainland (for the first time in a year) and made it possible to pass from one side of the fishing pier to the other without a 7-mile circumnavigation of Sand Island. Ike was a different story.

Although Ike bored in on Galveston, its effects were felt all along the Gulf coast. Waves churned up by a storm 300 miles offshore still succeeded in washing out and closing the road to Dauphin Island for a day or two, and churned up massive amounts of sand. This effectively filled in the 6-foot-deep moat around Fort Gaines and undid years of beach restoration:

This picture was taken on a spot where 5 acres of sand eight feet above the high-tide mark once sat:

Also, I have finally taken some pictures of dolphins at the surface. For the last two years the little buggers have had a knack for submerging just as I set off the shutter on the camera:
Click on the picture to zoom in and look in the upper left corner.



Fin shot in the middle left. You didn't think the bastards were going to strike poses, did you?

Later I'll catch up on a bevy of trips I've taken to Chickasaw Creek. Since drought conditions here have effectively ended, the water levels there have risen to a point where I can paddle over logjams that stopped me short earlier, opening up miles of water previously inaccessible to me.