Paddling from Mustang Hollow on Lake Corpus Christi

What do we do on our way from Galveston Beach to our date with The Eclipse in Uvalde, Texas?  Well, we look for a place along the way with stuff we like to do.  We got lucky here in Mathis, Texas, halfway between those two spots.  After exploring Padre Island National Seashore yesterday, we took advantage of a warm, relatively windless day to paddle out onto Lake Corpus Christi, where our campground at Mustang Hollow is located.  Take a look at the map below; we are where the blue circle is; Lake Corpus Christi stretches out to our southwest.  It is so huge that we had no chance to paddle out to the main part of the lake.  We could only explore the estuary of the lake near our campsite.

Our campground has seen better days.  It looks like it had once been a KOA, but now it is a very rustic spot out in the middle of nowhere.  Luckily, the Mustang Hollow Boat Ramp (as it is denoted on Google Maps) still exists.  The lake clearly has fallen in level at least 10-12 feet over the years, but our campground boat ramp still served our purpose:

Once out on the lake, on this nearly windless late morning, we thought we had stumbled on the perfect paddling day:

As we paddled south along the Eastern shore of our branch of the lake, we witnessed an uniformly sad story:  every lakeshore property had a dock that stretches out toward our neck of the lake, but doesn't reach it anymore.  At least this property can boast a waterslide-to-nowhere in addition to the dry dock:

We realized that we didn't see any boats in the water.  Most likely it was because none of the lakeshore properties had deep enough water access to float a boat.  We think that, perhaps, we are seeing the annual low level of the lake, and that Spring rains will raise the level to where many of these homeowners can put a boat in the water.  But we are pessimistic that this is the case.

For example, out in the middle of our little "arm" of the lake, we spotted this old dead tree, stretching out of the water, with white and red poles mounted on it to warn boaters.  We realized that the lake must have had a much higher level at one time, for this construction to make sense.

We thought we would follow our arm of the lake out to where it joins the main body of Lake Corpus Christi (see the first photo above).  We were mistaken.  The lake level has been low for so long, that our "arm" of the lake is no longer connected to the lake at all!  We paddled south as far as we could, hoping to find the channel to the main body of the lake.

Never found it.

We gave up when we realized we were landlocked, and pulled ashore on the stretch of land between our "lakelet" and the main lake.  The shoreline was beautiful, with fresh, tall grass on the high sections of sand, and innumerable freshwater clamshells gracing the shore below the grass:

Here was the view we had at lunch:

We spotted tracks of multiple beings, including humans, deer and coyotes.  We also saw shells testifying to the rich freshwater clam history of this body of water:

We had paddled 2 miles and decided to have lunch while we were ashore.  After eating, we started back, hoping we could find access to the main part of the lake north of our campground.  We paddled along the shore of the "island" (now isthmus) separating us from the main body of the lake, and noted many lacunae, including this old pail, rusty and at rest in the shallows along the beach:

 

 

We hoped that the paddle back to our campground would bring us past more birds, and we were right.  It wasn't long before we spotted this suspicious anhinga --

-- who didn't take long to escape our gaze:

At the four mile mark (two miles out and two back), we returned to the section of the backwater near our campground, and paddled into a ghostly, dead mestquite forest that may have grown next to the stream that had flowed here before the dam that formed Lake Corpus Christi flooded this area.  It was spooky to paddle among the dead bodies of mesquite trees:

Some unfortunate boater got too close to the water hazards and lost his (her?) boat to the Lake Gods:

This tree reminded us of a flying raptor.  We approached it with respect --

-- and Kathy dared to paddle behind it to show herself in its dramatic opening:

We continued on and found another friendly anhinga to memorialize.  For some reason, the anhina are more tolerant of our presence than, say, great blue heron, who are very intolerant and fly away when we approach within 100 yards, or even white egrets, who don't let us get as close as 50 yards.  So...here's to you, friendly anhinga!

We paddled north, past our campground, hoping to find the Northwest Passage into the main part of Lake Corpus Christi.  It looked like we may have found it, when we saw this green marker on a series of pilings:

It turned out that the pilings were the base for a bridge that had apparently run from the shore on our side of the lake, out to that appears to have been an island in the lake:

Past the pilings, we found what probably was the channel to the main part of the lake.  But all we could see was grass, and we were getting tired and pessimistic about paddling along grassy islands, looking for passages, and not finding any.  So we concluded that our section of the lake is, in fact, now separate from the main body of Lake Corpus Christi.  Our little lake is its own ecosystem.

We turned back to paddle to our put-in spot.  We passed a mooring for several small boats presumably owned by campers at our campground:

 

Some egrets were enjoying the sun and fishing along a point near our campground, and we caught one who was not as skittish as the others, giving us some memory of his flock:

 

By now, it was into the afternoon, and the winds had picked up.  We had an energetic paddle, into the wind, back south to our boat ramp from the north end of our estuarine branch of Lake Corpus Christi.  We had paddled nearly 5 miles in about 2.5 hours and felt that we had enjoyed a rather unusual and unexpected environment.

Here's to the next paddle.  May it be as joyous!