Lake Whitney, Texas

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Report from Ken
2/10/07

I was down in the hill country, the prettiest part of Texas, and I had a few hours to kill on a Saturday afternoon. I was staying with friends just outside the little town of Whitney, right near the lake, and I decided to take part of the afternoon and get out on the water. My choices for boat rental were severely limited, but I went ahead and got a sit-on-top from one of the lakefront resorts and got going.

Lake Whitney is one of the larger lakes on the Brazos River, the result of a dam erected and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control. With 225 miles of shoreline and an area of over 37 square miles, this is a big lake. In addition to the river, dozens of creeks drain into the lake and I decided, rather than going out on the lake itself, I'd stay at the fringes and explore Little Rocky Creek at the lake's southern end.

I paddled through the meandering passageways of the inlet that led to the creek, feeling the warmth of the rare February sun on my skin. It had been pretty cold the previous few days and the sun's heat was a welcome change. The limestone walls of the creek were undercut just above the water's surface, and it was easy to paddle deep under the cliff faces until it almost felt as if I were paddling inside a long, well-lit cave. The brown, sediment-filled water parted under the bow of the boat as I pushed my way further in.

In previous visits I had collected fossils at various places along the lake's shore, but there were no great samples in this section, probably because it is located in an area more frequently visited by tourists and locals alike. At one bend in the creek, a rusty ladder hung from the cliff wall, ending at a point about four feet up from the surface. The water level was lower than normal, owing to the long drought there in central Texas. At one point, I stopped to photograph a cactus that was growing on the wall, seemingly sprouting from solid rock.

I reached a point where I could go no further and turned around. The sun had dipped behind a growing bank of dark clouds and the warmth that had favored me earlier in the paddle started to disappear. I worked my way back to the put-in in and tied the boat to the dock, climbed the hill and drove back to town before the rain began to fall in earnest.