Monday, July 16, 2007 Caddo Lake - Friday the 13th weekend - July '07

Craig & I went ot Caddo Lake this Friday the 13th weekend. We rented out Big Cypress Cottage again, which is so much fun. We stayed there once last winter & couldn't wait to come back in the summer. Usually we take our camper & stay at Caddo Lake State Park, but every once in a while we like to rent a cabin. The cottage is right on the water, which made for easy access for our kayaks. We got there about 6:00 pm on Friday after our 3 hour drive from Dallas. As you can see here, I had to bring some F13 paraphernalia to celebrate Jason's birthday....



We got up early Saturday morning & headed over to Crip's Camp for breakfast & a boat rental. Breakfast there is eggs, bacon, toast, & hashbrowns (your choice of eggs & NO substitutions, but it's cheap & good.) The temperature never broke 80 degrees all weekend, which is really odd for Texas in July, but I'm not complaining. We headed out into the swamp about 10:30 am & started our 5 hour exploration of the sloughs & bayous. It was overcast & drizzly most of the day, but it never rained too hard while we were on the boat. The water level was higher than I had ever seen it, so navigating through narrower areas was much easier this time. The high water level did make it impossible to do any geocaching though, since most of the caches looked to be underwater at this point.











I have no idea what this expression is all about...
Here's a lake house that I would love to have...

Waterfowl.....


We came across this steamboat taking visitors on a swamp tour...
It's Captain Craig!

Us in our glamourous ponchos...

Craig snapping a pic of me peeing...
After the swamp exploration, we headed back to the cottage & took our kayaks out for a while. The current was pretty strong in the open channel, so we stayed in the bald cypress canopy. That was a lot of fun, but it was also creepy. There were HUGE swamp spiders crawling all over the trees & jumping across the water. I didn't get any spider pics, but you can see some here: SWAMP SPIDER


Here's a few videos I took while out on our swamp expedition: (PS- Youtube's video conversion sucks!)
We had a terrific time, but as usual, the weekend went by way too fast. I wasn't ready to come home yet, but I'll be heading back to Caddo Lake at least once more this year... Hopefully soon!

3 comments:

Lord Bling said...

Damn, those pics looked like you were in Louisiana or Florida ... swampy much?

CampBlood said...

It's on the Texas\Louisiana border. It's VERY SWAMPY! Although, in all the times I've been there, I have yet to see an alligator or a snake...

warm_machine said...

Girl, you couldn't pay me enough to kayak through the swamp! You had me heading back with the mention of "HUGE" spiders. No thank you!!! Steel, glass, and concrete for me and if I have to be outside... aspens, mountains, and clear water! ;)