Splash Spread

YOU’VE GOT TWO CHOICES THIS SUMMER:

cower inside with your AC or cool off the way nature intended by swimming, wading, and diving into Texas’s restorative waterways. Whether your idea of the perfect aquatic adventure hews closer to tubing or scuba diving, we’ve mapped out nineteen ways to get wondrously wet.

GET THEE TO

by DAN OKO

housands have lived without love, not one without water,” wrote (“Play,” page 105), or a rugged, adrenaW. H. Auden of life’s essential element—and the only known line-infused adventure (“Explore,” page antidote to Texas’s searing summer days. Fortunately, there’s 110). In addition, I’ve assigned each trip no shortage of curative spots to baptize oneself in come June, a difficulty rating so that urbanites and whether you want to be fully immersed or just skim the surface. parents don’t have to guess at logistical ¶ In fact, thanks to the mid-century dam-building frenzy, Texas challenges. The somehas nearly two hundred reservoirs, a number large enough to what subjective color DIFFICULTY challenge Michigan’s claim as the Great Lakes State (Michigan’s scale takes into account SCALE are bigger, but we have more). Huge underground pools feed distance from amenities Child’s Play springs that bubble up across the Edwards Plateau (think Barton (i.e., food and restrooms Easy Springs) and the Trans-Pecos (Balmorhea). More than 80,000 and campsites), amount Moderate miles of rivers and streams crisscross the state, from the Rio of courage necessary, Challenging Grande to the Sabine, while the Gulf Coast shoreline stretches and likelihood of minor Grueling some 360 miles. ¶ Such an embarrassment of riches is prone to mishaps. Green means overwhelm would-be water-goers, so I spent the spring scouting you can pretty much new waterways and vetting old classics. I paddled rivers east and grab a towel and go. Red means west, splashed in desert springs, and swam in hidden lakes. I caught peril. But enough with the explanafish and combed beaches. I came away with nineteen watery tions. It’s time to unstick your legs prescriptions to cure what ails you—whether you’re in need of from your seat and get thee to water! some inner tube R&R (see “Relax,” page 101), a raucous romp Dan Oko is a Houston-based outdoors writer who last wrote for t e x a s m o n t h l y about Big Bend, in May 2015.

T

RELAX

1. Balmorhea State Park 2. I.B. Magee Beach Park 3. Boykin Springs Recreation Area 4. Barton Springs Pool 5. Matagorda Bay Nature Park 6. Hamilton Pool Preserve

16 13

P L AY 3

17 6 1

4 10

14 19

15

11

7 8 18 5 2

12

100 120

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7. Comal River 8. San Felipe Creek 9. Galveston Seawall 10. Blue Hole Regional Park 11. Lake Raven 12. Isla Blanca Park 13. Trinity River

EXPLORE

14. Lower Pecos River 15. Village Creek Paddling Trail 16. Possum Kingdom Lake 17. Inks Lake State Park 18. Lower Brazos River 19. Lake Amistad Recreation Area

L E T T E R I N G B Y A L I S O N C A R M I C H A E L ; M A P A N D I L LU S T R AT I O N S B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O ; P R E V I O U S S P R E A D P H O T O G R A P H B Y J E N N Y S AT H N G A M

Balmorhea State Park Toyahvale

PRO TIP

Good news! Later this year, Texas Parks and Wildlife will renovate the park’s rundown heritage motel, San Solomon Springs Courts.

BEST FOR: SWIMMING (THOUGH YOU CAN SNORKEL AND SCUBA TOO!)

The San Solomon Springs, in far West Texas, have been a pilgrimage site for generations of otherwise unlikely desert travelers—namely, scuba divers, who come to mine the clear waters of Balmorhea, the thirties-era Civilian Conservation Corps–built swimming hole into which the springs feed a seemingly impossible fifteen million gallons of water a day.

Still, you don’t have to dive deep to appreciate the refreshing waters, which stay between 72 and 76 degrees year-round. Indeed, a recent visit found most of the action along the edges of the 1.75-acre pool, where sunbathers on inflatables floated alongside splashing grommets. Meanwhile, below the surface, endangered species such as the Comanche Springs PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF WILSON

pupfish and Pecos gambusia swam about.

Sure, it can feel like an aquarium, but, as the scuba crowd insists, that’s part of the fun.

GETTING THERE: The park is located 4 miles southwest

of Balmorhea on Texas Highway 17 (open daily 8–7:30, or sunset; $7, under 13 free, camping from $11; tpwd.texas .gov/stateparks/balmorhea, 432-375-2370).

Boykin Springs Recreation Area Near Jasper BEST FOR: SWIMMING

THAT OLD FRIO RIVER Relinquishing oneself to these green waters is a tradition that runs deep in my family.

BY COURTNEY BOND

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PRO TIP

You can camp in the sand at Magee, but you don’t have to . . . resorts abound. The beachfront Mayan Princess is a fave.

I.B. Magee Beach Park Port Aransas

pany Body Glove. Anglers congregate at the 1,240-foot Horace Caldwell Pier to catch sea trout, drum, shark, and tarpon. All of the Nueces County beaches are in the midst of a $5 million sprucing-up that will also enhance storm protection.

BEST FOR: FISHING

To experience the soft sands and laid-back allure of the so-called Texas Riviera, many head for Mustang Island State Park. But I gravitate toward Port Aransas’s I. B. Magee Beach, a smaller Nueces County park at the island’s north end.

Like Mustang Island, I. B. Magee—named for a local sportsman—has primitive camping right on its sugary shores and developed RV spots nearby.

In summer, the park, protected by a long rock jetty, hosts Texas Surf Camps, organized by local pro Morgan Faulkner and sponsored by the apparel comI . B . M A G E E P H O T O G R A P H S B Y K E N N Y B R AU N ; B OY K I N S P R I N G S P H O T O G R A P H B Y J E N N Y S AT H N G A M

B A RTO N S P R I N G S : W I L L VA N OV E R B E E K

➞ Anyone who knows me knows I’m happiest when I’m in the water. Or better yet, on the water, preferably borne by an inflatable inner tube. I’ll float anything from a glassy lake to a Jacuzzi tub (really, if it’s big enough). But nothing in the world compares to being whisked down the rock-riven channels of a beautiful Texas river. And nowhere do memories of tubing loom larger than Concan, where my extended family would converge at Neal’s Lodges when I was a kid.

Not particularly remote, and a virgin wilderness by no means, the oddly named hamlet has nonetheless been my favorite little pocket of the state ever since. To me, this southernmost portion of the Edwards Plateau embodies what poet David Whyte calls a “conversation of elements that makes a place incarnate, fully itself.” Bisected by the meandering, crystalclear Frio River, it’s a juxtaposition of green-carpeted hills, scrubby trees and yellow-flowered prickly pear, and everywhere rocks and limestone ledges and stony canyon walls. “Nowadays it seems there are so many more-exciting places to go,” my aunt Merle says, “but that’s just where we went. We went to the coast and to Concan.” That’s what we did, that’s where we went, and therefore, in the way that a cer- | C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 0 8

GETTING THERE: From North

Alister Street, turn onto Beach Street and continue for a half mile to the seashore (beach camping is $12; pier access is $2; each fishing pole is $2; nuecesbeachparks .com/ibmageebeachpark­. html, 361-749-6117).

We can thank settler Sterling Boykin, who died in 1871, for discovering these springs behind the Pine Curtain. We also owe him for damming a nearby creek and creating a nine-acre swimming hole that’s so hidden in the Angelina National Forest that and explore. There’s I’m almost reluctant to say also a wending, twoPRO TIP much more. and-a-half-mile trail If even modest crowds get you “Places like Boykin are a that follows the creek down or you time capsule,” a spokesman to an old sawmill. Afstrike out on for the U.S. Forest Service terward, soak your campsites, there told me. In the thirties, the feet—and maybe the is free primitive camping and Civilian Conservation Corps rest of your body—in swimming close built the campground at the the cool spring water. by at Bouton Boykin homestead, and a Lake. decade later, the Texas state GETTING THERE: From militia used these woods for Jasper, take Texas Highway training. Hurricanes Rita and Ike 63 west 18 miles to Forest Service Road 313. prompted the Forest Service to Follow 313 for 2.5 miles. Note: there is not a clear some older trees, but the area ranger station at this site (camping $6 per retains a primitive allure. vehicle; fs.usda.gov/texas/, 936-897-1068).

Boykin Lake pours over a stone spillway, a sloping boulder-and-concrete channel where kids can splash

URBAN OASIS

BARTON SPRINGS POOL

doubtless would have broken my promise to my eightyear-old daughter, Ursula, to Austin BEST FOR: PEOPLE-WATCHING join them at Texas’s favorite swimming hole.

Last year, more than half a million Always a brisk 68 to 70 swimmers dived into Barton degrees, the enormous Springs, and on the scorching concrete-surrounded pool is an afternoon of my last visit, seem- astonishing engineering feat, ingly all of them were lined up capturing water bubbling up outside the chain-link fence, from the Edwards Aquifer, which waiting to clear the cashier. Indischarges between 10 million deed, if a backside parking spot and 80 million gallons a day. hadn’t miraculously opened, I Ursula squealed when she hit the water and swam into my arms. As the waters washed PRO TIP Make time to hike the dapover us, I was delighted pled trails of the Barton Creek Greenbelt, one of the wildest urban treks in America. that for all the changes the

state capital has seen, Barton Springs—brimming with tattooed hipsters and old-school hippies—still reflects the soul of Austin.

Parking available at Zilker Park or off Robert E. Lee Road (open daily 5 a.m.–10 p.m., except Thur, when it’s closed for cleaning 9–7; admission charged 8–9, resident adults $3, non-resident adults $8, discounts for children and seniors; austintexas.gov/depart ment/barton-springs-pool, 512-867-3080).

GETTING THERE:

Matagorda BEST FOR: BEACHCOMBING

I didn’t find high-rises, much less a single thatch-roofed palapa, at the coastal mouth of theColoradoRivermidwaybetweenGalveston and Port Aransas (well, maybe one—the Poco Playa restaurant and shops six miles inland).

What I did find was a surprisingly peaceful hideaway, where the Lower Colorado River Authority maintains a 1,600-acre park and nature preserve popular with anglers, birders, and beachcombers.

After camping among the sea oats near the dunes along a two-mile stretch of beachfront

Hamilton Pool Preserve Near Austin BEST FOR: GAZING

Of all of Texas’s cinematic beauties, few rival Hamilton Pool, just a short distance from the Pedernales River.

Here, waters from twisty Hamilton Creek plunge fifty feet from a semicircular cliff into a natural sinkhole that was formed by subterranean currents thousands of years ago. The falls sometimes

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From Matagorda, take FM 2031 for 6.5 miles south to the Gulf. Beach access is available directly from the LCRA. Park near the jetty, or double back to Beach Road to reach the sand by vehicle (camping from $10, camping with hookups starts at $25; primitive beach camping is free; lcra .org, 979-863-2603).

GETTING THERE:

shrink to a slight were thick. The new PRO TIP dribble but never rules should keep the Explore the cease, riffling a cool pool from being loved lakes, hills, and celestial pool of to death. rivers at nearby Reimers aquamarine that has Ranch. drawn swimmers for GETTING THERE: From centuries.

Austin, take Texas Highway 71 Such stardom comes at a west 12 miles to Hamilton Pool Road (open price, however. This spring, to daily 9–6, $15 per vehicle). Reservations control visitation and help pro- required from May 15 through September tect endangered species like ($26 per vehicle per morning or afternoon the golden-cheeked warbler, slot). Check parks.traviscountytx.gov or Travis County announced a call 512-264-2740 for updates on pool new online reservation system. closures and water quality.

And even though swimming was closed the day I went—as it sometimes can be due to weather and, disconcertingly, bacteria—the crowds

Waterfalls These giants cry even in the heat of summer.

1.

Covering an expanse equivalent to ten football fields, the limestone stairs that form Pedernales Falls descend just fifty feet, but the twisted rock chasms and bright blue pools of water are plenty photogenic. Beware of the earthshaking violence that rages when the falls flood.

2.

Nestled on the banks of the Colorado River west of Lampasas, sixty-foot-tall Gorman Falls trickles steadily all summer, recalling a Pacific Rim rainforest, complete with phantasmagorical faces in the green-lit mist.

3.

If showers in the Chihuahuan Desert seem auspicious, make your own luck by taking a short hike into Big Bend’s backcountry to see Ojito Adentro, where ferns dangle from the underside of a boulder like icicles.

4.

On the Devils River, daunting Dolan Falls, with its ten-foot drop, strikes fear into the hearts of many paddlers. But the beefy rapid is a riparian sanctuary.

PRO TIP

Avoid the crowded public exit by renting from Rockin R, which has a private access point with shuttle service.

H A M I LTO N P O O L : W I L L VA N OV E R B E E K / T X D OT

Matagorda Bay Nature Park

adjacent to the park (the PRO TIP beach continues 21 miles If beach campto the east, most of which ing isn’t your can be enjoyed by savvy speed, check off-road drivers), I joined out the Lodge at Karankawa a free guided morning naVillage. ture walk along the beach, sorting whelks, sand dollars, and angel wings left by the receding tide.

Fortified by a picnic, I scoped the makeshift kayak trails along FM 2031—for now, the only way to reach the tidal estuaries. The LCRA plans to increase access to these fishy marshes, but it was the park’s wild charm that won me over.

Comal River New Braunfels

BEST FOR: TUBING

Confession: I’m not crazy about tubing— the crowds, the vinyl rash, the suspicion that I’m soaking in a stranger’s urine.

Then I cruised the Comal, the shortest navigable river in Texas. Its two-and-a-halfmile length is within the New Braunfels city limits, and though coolers are allowed, it’s generally not the floating frat party found on other area waterways.

The City Tube Chute section hooked me first: the concrete slide lasts some twenty seconds and concludes with a row of foothigh waves that upend ice chests and swipe sunglasses. Below this spillway follow two

M ATA G O R D A A N D C O M A L P H O T O G R A P H S B Y J E N N Y S A T H N G A M

quick rapids, and then it’s all about chilling in the crystal current. That was definitely a skill I could stand to master.

GETTING THERE: Prince Solms Park, at 100 Liebscher Drive, is a convenient entry point near the chute (from June to mid-August, open daily 10–7; $5 wristband to enter the park, tube rentals $7, $10 parking from Memorial Day to Labor Day; nbtexas.org). Or make reservations through Rockin R, at 193 South Liberty ($20 day pass including shuttles; rockinr.com, 800-620-6262).