Fun Fountain Paddle

We did our hard labor on Project ReWard on Good Friday, leaving the rest of a long Easter weekend open.  We were more than happy to bring a trailer of canoes to Highland Road Park so a group could get in a beautiful day of paddling on the bayou.

A group of people called us up and asked if we could fit in a fun paddle, and we were delighted to say absolutely!  We may be deep into Project ReWard at the moment, but hosting paddlers on our favorite bayou is always on the table.  In this case, we ended up with six guests in our canoes and a paddler who came out and joined us in his own kayak.  We all paddled down to the Wall and back on a day with weather that could not have been more perfect.

We weren’t expecting many issues, since we just paddled Bayou Fountain, but we always keep our standard tool set with us.  It turned out to be useful, as we quickly cut a tree (more like just a trunk) that had fallen and somewhat obstructed the bayou.  A couple other trees were down but passable, so after we loaded up the rest of the boats back at the launch, I headed back out with our new kayaking friend and did a full paddle trail maintenance run.  Together, we dismantled the two other fallen trees (and some broken-off things — the wind earlier in the week was indeed quite strong, apparently).

With the bayou completely clear, we headed back to the launch.  The number of paddlers out on the bayou was amazing.  (I asked if we could keep the day’s weather for a few months, but apparently it doesn’t work like that, I was told.)  Now, all we need is the next BREC paddle launch so we can do park-to-park through-paddle trips.  We’re not quite there yet, but with luck and good weather, we’ll be there soon enough.