By Tom Douglas
On Saturday April 16, five of us met up at Hugo Point County Park, which is located near Interstate 10 East, about a mile south of Cove, TX. The trip was organized by Natalie Wiest and Joe Coker, on behalf of the Houston Canoe Club.
Our destination for the day was a very large, several-foot high shell midden on the north shore of Trinity Bay. It is a truly impressive aggregate of rangia clam shells that stretches some 600 feet along the bayshore and nearly half that far up into Cross Bayou.
Paddling off from the park’s boat launch, we headed southeast along Cotton Bayou, then through a couple of artificial cuts into Cross Bayou, where we made a right turn past a concrete tower that was originally intended to be part of a control structure for the never-completed Wallisville Dam. Nowadays it seems to serve mostly as a home for owls.
Then, it was a little over three and a half more miles down Cross Bayou to the shell midden. Part of the way, we could see that the former Delhomme hunting lodge is being refurbished, following the serious damage that it suffered during Hurricane Ike.
Lots of plants, like huisache and white prickly poppy, were in bloom along the bayous.
Even though several of the paddlers had visited the midden on previous outings, it was still an impressive sight. The layering of clam shells and the presence of broken up sheets of sandstone containing dense accumulations of those shells bear witness to the intensity of past storms. But, fortunately, the wind today was a moderate 10-15 miles per hour from the south.
After lunch, we paddled a little ways across the open bay and turned up into Double Bayou
There, we could see how the soil on the banks is often mixed in with countless rangia shells, and how the vegetation frequently grows in bands, with each species finding its own favored conditions.
Passing by the “Grand Intersection” where several of the bayous converge, we continued north up High Tree Bayou and then on back to the put-in. After paddling nearly ten miles, sometimes into a headwind or an adverse current, the boat launch at Hugo Point County Park was a welcome sight.
To see an account written by trip organizer Joe Coker and a link to more photos that he took during the day, be sure to check out his story in the newsletter of the Houston Canoe Club HERE.
Satellite imagery from Google Earth. Photos by Tom Douglas. Map by Tom Douglas, with base map from Garmin BaseCamp TOPO U.S. 24K South Central v3.