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| Brazos River Gclub 5-25-2008 |
Every great trip starts with a good disaster , our
Brazos river trip was a complete success thanks to my disastrous Friday. I
had to work 3rd shift and stayed late to meet a customer, thus I started
my weekend with no sleep. After leaving the customer site around 9am , I
headed home and found that my van which I planned to pull the kayak
trailer 2.5 hours west this weekend wouldn’t go over about 50 MPH on the
highway, stalled at all stops and had no power. Hmm, looks like the
beginning of a great camping weekend. I remembered getting a coupon for
City Garage and headed to the one at Jupiter and Campbell. Fortunately,
they were open and not busy. They took the van in, diagnosed the
problem-which had already been “worked” on by my last mechanic, then let
me go home to get a few hours sleep while they worked on the problem.
Having already drunk way too much coffee too late in the night, I could
not sleep. Finally, fell asleep for about two hours before David and I
went back picked up the van around 5pm. With new cables, new spark-plugs
and full system flush-Transmission, Radiator, Oil Change it worked better
than it has in 3 years.
Poor David, my husband put’s up with
my workaholic tendencies then tolerates me taking my first weekend off in
45 days and leave him home while I go camping, yet still smiles and allows
me in the house. We headed to Cindi’s for dinner before I packed up the
van with my backpacking gear and headed out at 8:00pm. Last time I headed
to Rochelle’s , it took me 4 hours with all the delays, fortunately, this
time I made the trip in 2.5 hours, considering my lack of sleep this was
great. Got to the parking lot and started walking down the dirt road
toward our camping site and out of the dark I hear grrrrr, grrrrrr, GREAT!
I am going to be bitten by some redneck mutt who’s owner brings non-social
dogs to an overcrowded campground! I start hollering and yelling, HEY, I
am walking on the road and hear dogs growling, AM I Going to be bitten? Do
you have your dogs on a leash? Yes, fortunately they had the dogs
tied up. I found our group and set up my “Cocoon” Bevy sack, dropped down
by the fire and was greeted by John, Linda, Deanna, Maylene and Shane. Lee
and Trouble had already retired. After 24 hours with only 2 hours sleep, I
was not far behind.
Saturday morning I got up early and
headed to the office, Rochelle’s normally has a very busy morning rush of
canoe registrants checking in and getting their shuttle service
scheduled and I wanted to head off the rush and find out how much
the fee’s were going to be for the shuttle service. We bring our own
Kayaks-much easier than canoe travel and pay Rochelle’s to drive my van
and kayak trailer back to the campground, which is our take out point.
They run a great no frills campground and shuttle service; easy going,
great service and perfect location for weekend on the Brazos. We were all
ready to go and started driving to the drop off by 9am. Everyone made it
into the water by 10am. All weekend we had “scattered” showers, mostly
while kayaking with one final downpour after dinner in Camp Saturday
night.
The Brazos river runs through an escarpment that is
mostly undeveloped, the scenery is great, the bluff’s provide great
habitat for Hawks, Falcons and many types of birds. The river has some
great fishing, my pole is still defective,
It doesn’t catch any
fish! We had 7 people on the trip and it turned out we had a great
group. Our group was the best, easy going fun loving gang with great
conversations among both old and new friends. John and Maylene were new
the group and we look forward to many more trips with them. Shane,
Linda, Deanna and Michael have been in the group for many years and over
quite a few trips, Maylene and Lee have been on many activities with both
the Gclub and all the ladies outdoor camping activities, so Poor John had
to put up with our constant banter among old friends. Linda, did I miss
the scoop on John or did you drop the ball on drilling him on his
background story!