Bird and Beyond and Beyond

It was a relaxing Saturday when we took a break from Project: ReWard to drop in on BREC Conservation and BREC Outdoor Adventure for their Birds and Beyond paddle and then head to University Lake to hang out at The Backpacker’s demo day to help get the word out about paddling our great local waterways.

With the Bayou Fountain paddle trail maintenance run two weeks earlier, and knowing the part of the bayou BREC was going to be paddling during their first Birds and Beyond paddle on Bayou Fountain, we figured they wouldn’t have any issues at all.  Of course, we wouldn’t want to leave things to chance, so we headed out to the park in the twilight of the dawn and made a quick exploratory run along the planned route.  There were no issues of note, although we did take care of a few slight optimizations that seemed worthy.  Then we hung out at the launch and helped everyone into their kayaks before we headed off to University Lake to continue the day.

It’s always fun to hang out with The Backpacker crew on their demo days.  It’s a great opportunity for people to get exposed to paddling, and it gives us the chance to get the word out about PaddleBR and about our wonderfully scenic local waterways (especially Bayou Fountain and BREC’s first paddle launch).  This time around, it was a beautiful day and we talked to quite a few people who seemed interested in trying out Bayou Fountain.  Definitely a good time.

Of course, we also did our customary litter sweep along the edge of the lake, netting the usual small haul of bottles, cups, and so on.  It’s much less litter than, say, the Litter Banks of Ward Creek, but it’s always fun to leave the water in better shape than you found it.  All in all, it was a nice vacation from Project: ReWard, but Expedition Five is calling our names already.  Pecue, here we come!