Bikerafting through the Trinity River Standing Wave Whitewater Upper Canoe Bypass in Dallas, Texas Our specially crafted boats, by design, should have been somewhere north cutting a wake on the Arctic Sea Ice or carrying a field dressed moose across an Alaskan fjord. The weather was cold enough. The whitewater rapids strong. A pair of …

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Somewhere beyond the remains of an old brick factory and the town that carries the same name lies a unique corner of Dallas County where the Trinity River and tributaries engage in wholesale misanthropy against a population hellbent on controlling it. The give and take struggle, man vs nature, has yielded an out of sorts …

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Cold and austere, the post Christmas early morning light cast shadows on frozen ground so stiff it resembled old concrete. The previous evening’s snow has muffled the urban noise of the city that has grown up around these bottoms. The primate populous of that same city that calls it home has retreated indoors to loaf, …

Continue reading “Texas Winter — Predators of the Dallas Woods”

There was a time when the barbed wire hung here enclosed the finest Swiss milking cows in all of Texas. The native wild rye grasses produced perennial champions of best tasting milk contests twenty years in a row at the State Fair. The Bois d’Arc fenceposts are the only addition to the Great Trinity Forest …

Continue reading “The Great Trinity Forest’s White Rock Creek — The Bois d’Arc Trail in William Blair Park”

If you blinked, you might have missed it. A brief moment in time before a morning dawn when the hangers on of summer meet old man winter for the first and last time. Here the late season wildflowers in the pocket meadows dotting the Great Trinity Forest have eluded the brief frosts of November. Dodging …

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Polished like a ripe apple of autumn the Piedmont Ridge, Oak Creek and Devon Anderson Red Oaks ooze a palette of red, yellow and orange unique to this part of Dallas. The frost red thickets perched fifty to one hundred feet above the Great Trinity Forest offers one of the better fall foliage viewing areas …

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Quietly meandering from the heart of a downtown metropolis to the edge of the rural Texas countryside, the Trinity River Paddling Trail offers a unique look at a slice of Dallas few people will ever see. A float through The Great Trinity Forest. The misinformed myths of the Trinity told by modern yarn weavers serve …

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Newly Paved Trinity River Bike Path, November 1st, 2012 A planned multi-use path between the Trinity River Levees near Downtown Dallas took a step closer towards reality in the first week of November 2012. This first segment runs from I-35 to the Santa Fe Trestle Trail on the south side of the Trinity River in …

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The lengthening shadows of autumn and the cold crisp of the morning dawns are slowly ushering in the birds of the Canadian wilderness into the Trinity River Wetland Cells. The muted squawk calls of tropical storks and spoonbills are replaced by the cacophony alarm calls of ducks and cormorants. Mallard Ducks Overflying Trinity River Wetlands …

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Unpretentious. Gritty. Genuine. A backward neck of the woods turned wet six months of the year rarely visited and rarely explored. A place where the pavement ends. These are The Bottoms. A mix of prairie, wetlands, woods, forest and an old ghost of a place called Roosevelt Heights. High watermark stained trees near the swamp …

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Wealthy is he who finds the silver lining in life’s unexpected vistas. That’s the beauty of the contrary nature found along the Trinity River. Photogenic places that belong in a calendar spread for a Texas Hill Country state park. There are a few on the river. Scattered here and there. Pocket places that you can …

Continue reading “McCommas Bluff Is Finished”

It would be hard to find a better way on the autumnal equinox to conclude the last hours of summer than a hike along the Trinity River. A great way to spend some time with some old friends and meet some new ones. Exploring the homestead trails of Lower White Rock Creek and an historic …

Continue reading “Hiking The Great Trinity Forest In The Footsteps Of Sam Houston and Billy Ray”