High Water...

I guess it's as good a weekend as any to have to work. High water on Lake Sam Rayburn, with possibilities of soon being the highest ever has many boat ramps closed. Here are a few shots I took around our little area of the lake this afternoon. 

This is the road into the Little Han's Creek campground. The park is totally closed and quiet as a ghost town. Certainly not usable due to flooding and there were none of the live in park attendants anywhere in sight so they might be sitting at home during the no pay vacation that is ongoing. Cathy has sites 23 and 24 reserved for a spring break campout. I'm taking bets of the government reopening or the water going down, take your pick, by then.  

Check out the middle right of this photo. You may remember we had Camp Catfish with Bill and Geneva's travel trailer parked there back about the first of October. 

Even the camping shelters are in danger of flooding. 

This is the entrance to the Monterey Park boat ramp. Can't even get close. Thanks to Mary and Miguel for the birthday present of a wheeled canoe hauler. I might get to put it to use here. I can recall many summer bass fishing trips with my dad in the early 1980s when the lake would be low and we would launch here and tightly hug the curves of a creek channel leaving the boat ramp to make deeper water and still occasionally drag bottom.    

The park sign, flooded. 

This is a road to the right as your enter the park. From the main entrance you can spot a mail box about half way down the road but I have never driven there, always respecting the resident's privilege to enjoy the low traffic area of a dead end. I would expect there is some lake access down there right now. 

Just up the road from Monterey Park is Popher's Creek. When it's in the banks I sometimes launch my canoe here. If you stand on the hill at Cassel's Boykin Park you will get an idea of the valley that this creel and several others drained through on their way to join the waters of the Angelina and Attoyac Rivers before the reservoir was built. I think I read somewhere that from where this creek begins it is now about three miles to the lake. With the recent rains I think this creek is three miles wide.