Caddo Lake - Uncertain, Texas

I convinced my friend Becky to try out kayaking while I still had Don and Susie's kayaks. I knew that she would like it if she got out there and tried it. So Saturday afternoon off to Caddo Lake State Park in Texas we went. We have made many trips to that part of Caddo Lake before. We went on a photograhy tour of the lake by a wonderful photographer from that area and we were eager to see if we could negotiate the backwaters of the lake ourselves.

There is a great State Park there and I thought we could put in at their dock and it's only about 45 miles from the house. We drove to the dock, but it looked really closed in by water hyacinths and duckweed. I drove back to the ranger's station to ask if that was the best place for us to put in and he said that it would probably be better to go a few miles down the road to Uncertain and put in at a private dock which is on more open water. We decided that would be best. It is very easy to get lost on this part of the Caddo Lake system, and since I don't have a GPS, it could easily happen.



We got to the private dock and paid our fee and got into the water. The channel there is about 100 feet wide, and we were constantly having to watch out for speeding fishermen. Some of them would slow down as they went by us, others could care less if they swamped us...typical red necks.

But even worrying about that did not stop us from enjoying the short ride on the channel. We saw a small channel marked MM and decided to take a chance and see where that went since it was too small for the motor boats to go through.



It wound around for a while and it had a few birds around too, so I enjoyed taking pictures of them flying away from me as usual.





We decided that we had gone far enough for Becky's first time, and it was going to be dark soon, so we headed back to the main channel. I liked the way the wanning sunlight highlighted the cypress trees at the channel end.



When we got back into the channel I saw a few more birds, two egrets and one blue. You can go to my webshots album if you want to see them.

We made our way back to the dock and I got one last picture of Becky. It looks like she was enjoying the ride.



We got loaded up and we made the trip into Marshall and went to the Jalapeño Tree, one of our favorite Mexican food places. After that we made the trip back to Shreveport. It was great to get out in the water and to introduce Becky to kayaking. Now she just has to buy a kayak... :-)

Well, until next time... Happy Kayaking! Cathy