Boating on Lake Conroe

Yesterday, we went out to try out our new boat on Lake Conroe.  We were supposed to meet a friend who also has a boat up there and we could have both of the boats pulling kids on tubes.  Unfortunately, our friend's boat wouldn't start after they got it into the lake, so they ended up just riding around with us.  We thought it was great to have them with us on our boat. 

When we got to the lake- the marina boat ramp looked like this: 

 There were signs everywhere saying to boat at your own risk.  Once we got out of the boat ramp, the water was fine.  Lake Conroe has an island with sand beaches that you can park your boat at and swim, so we did that for a little while.

 The kids enjoyed playing in the sand.

Then we went out tubing. Here is what Joe looked like when we were driving.

 Nate was scared when we went really fast and when we turned sharply.  Honestly, I was a little scared too.

 Ellie and Michael on the tube.  Ellie kept wanting to slow down.

 Joe even took Nate out.  Nate was pretty terrified the whole time, and they ended up getting dumped in the water.

 After the boys got bored with tubing, we stopped in the middle of the lake and swam.  The water was cold, but not unbearably so.  It was perfect weather outside, probably about 84 degrees.

Pretty amazing that we can go boating in October!

Severe Texas Drought in Pictures

I mentioned earlier that we are in a severe drought in Texas.  It is a 50 year drought, meaning it is the worst drought in 50 years.  I thought I would share some pictures so you could appreciate how drastic the drought really is.  All of these are taken at our lake property.  This is from the main land towards the right.  The normal shore is just barely to the right of the picture.  The dock shown is usually under water up to a foot below the planks.  Our island is to the left.  Needless to say it isn't much of an island now.  That's the bad news, the good news is that we our piece of land is a lot bigger right now;)

Here is another picture without the zoom on.  The dock in the back is the same dock.  After the water receded, we have found many posts in the ground where someone previously had had a dock.

Here is the same area when it is not in a drought. There is a low area just past the tree, that is why you see weeds through the water.  If you look closely, you can see the dock in the background. The tree that is leaning over the water has died.  It had an interesting death, so I will add pictures of that at the end of this post.

This is standing on the edge of the shore looking at the island.  Not the best picture, but the green at the top is the normal shoreline of the island. 

This is a picture of the same area last November.  Note that you can see the lake on the other side of the island.

 This is looking toward the left, the other direction at the shore. The edge of the trees to the right is the normal edge of the island.  We have a mud puddle now instead of a lake.  You can also see there are two new islands past ours that are normally not there.  Joe drove a 4-wheeler through the non-water part last week and drove to the back of the island.

The same area last November.

 Closer view of the "new" islands.

 This next picture is the far side of the island.  The regular shoreline is out of the picture to the right.

 Another view looking back toward the island.  You can see the bigger brush is the regular shoreline.

 This is from the opposite side of the island.  I have walked past it toward the deeper part of the lake and turned back to get a picture of the island. I am standing past the dock shown in the first picture. The island is the stand of trees that you see on the left of the picture.

 Another view with the camera turned towards shore.  The dock shown is the same dock as in the first picture, I just have walked past it and am looking back.

 With the water down so low, there are interesting things found at the bottom of the lake.  Someone lost their boat:

 We also saw several golf balls.  (Thanks, Austin).

 I thought this tree stump was beautiful with the way that it had eroded/decayed.

This is that tree that was in the old photo above.  With the drought we saw that it was bending over, almost touching the ground. Upon closer look, the truck was cracked all the way up.

 And when you looked inside, you could see that it was hollow.  Sadly, it is no longer with us, Joe cut it down last week.

Lastly, this is what happens when you drive a 4-wheeler loaded down with three people through not-so-solid mud.  All three of you are launched over the handlebars when the 4-wheeler gets stuck. The only casualty was Ellie's Crocs, which are stuck somewhere down in the mud. 

I read somewhere that in order to get out of the drought, we would need 16 inches of rain in one month.  If you were to spread the rain out over 6 months we would need 24 inches of rain.  Because that number is so high, they are forecasting that we will be in the drought for a LONG time.  Anyone thinking of the seven years of famine yet?

Gator Hunting

A Coonass is the Louisiana term for a local redneck. Last week Joe spend the weekend playing Coonass all over Louisiana bowfishing for Redfish, Crabbing and hunting Alligators...yes Alligators.

He forgot his camera on the Redfish Bowhunting trip but it was comprised of 12 men, 100 bottles of beer, 4 handguns, 15 bows, 2 600 horsepower air boats, a salt swamp and a lot of fun.

The next morning, he drove to Pecan Island, Louisiana, where local Gator Hunter, Billy Boudreaux (you may have seen him on the TV show Swamp People) took Joe and 8 others out to hunt Alligators.

The swamp consists of narrow canals and other open "ponds".

The night before they arrived, Billy baited long bamboo poles in the swamp with chunks of Cow Spleen on hooks as big as your hand.

The next day Billy took Joe's group out to check the hooks and this is what they found...

Joe was one of the first to kill a gator.

The process goes like this:


1. You pull up to a gator pole and if the spleen is missing, it means you have a gator on the hook. One guy (the puller) then grabs the rope connected to the hook (and gator) and slowly pulls the gator in. A small 4 foot gator still weighs 30 pounds, so when the gator decides to go away, there is nothing to do but let the rope slide back out.

2. Meanwhile, the hunter (shooter) stands on the boat next to the puller and waits until the head comes above the surface. When he sees the head, he is supposed to shoot the gator just behind the eyes in the middle of the head. This is how it looks:

 

 As you can see by the wave, the Gators are NOT happy to cooperate and often smash into the side of the boat as they struggle


The first round of trips on the South side of the swamp was very successful with 5 Gators, from 5 feet to 8 feet.

Then, they went North (Que Jaws Music Here) and things got Scaley fast. The group got a 8.5 foot Gator weighing about 250 lbs. It was really exciting for everybody. At the next spot, Joe was the Puller and as soon as he started pulling the Gator up, it swam to the shore of a small island and ran about 15 feet into the tall swamp grassNobody could tell how big it was, but Joe and the Guide got out of the boat to try and pull the gator in. It refused so they had to go into the grass after it. It was Huge - a full 9 feet plus, and impossible to move. At one point, Joe remembers thinking, "Why am I standing 8 feet from an Alligator trying to pull it TOWARD me?"


The poor woman who was the Shooter missed 2 times from 3 feet before finally hitting the gator in the eye. To get her closer for a killing shot, the guide actually had to stand on the gator's mouth so she would feel OK with coming right to the gator for the shot.

Everybody was exstatic with such a HUGE gator.

But then came GODZILLA.

There was one spot left and one hunter left, Joe's buddy, Brett. When they pulled up, Joe took over as puller to help his friend and the Gator felt HUGE. Brett stood next to Joe with a .22 magnum rifle at the ready. After about 5 minutes Joe had the gator just about up. As soon as the Gator's eyes hit the top of the water and it saw Joe, it smashed into the side of the boat and swam off at high speed, nearly pulling Joe into the water and nearly knocking Brett out of the boat. It was so big that it actually bent the hook straight and got off.

The Guide was Screaming....because it was the biggest Gator he'd seen in years! The Guide was able to track the Gator about 100 yards up the canal. Then he rigged up a grappeling hook and threw into the water to snag the Gator. On the third toss, it worked. For the next hour and a half, the entire crew of two boats heaved and worked to get the gator to the surface. Finally they got the Gator up and Brett made a perfect shot for the kill. The Guide asked him to shoot it again, just to make sure, ant the second shot actually lodged in the Gator's Skull.

It took another 45 minutes just to get the 600 pound 12 foot Gator into the boat and back to the dock.



Here are some pictures to show you how big it really was. It took 8 guys to lift it into the truck.

Joe and Brett took turns giving it an oral exam

It is even bigger than Joe!

 Joe got a little overconfident and decided to play circus.

 Until the Gator's reflexes made it jerk and Joe squealed and got the heck out of there!

It was a once in a lifetime experience and the group got 11 Gators in all. Joe and Brett and going to split the cost of having Godzilla made into some nice leather boots!



Lake House Bathroom Shower Before/ After Pictures

We finally finished redoing the bathroom at the lake house.  The shower was the last thing to be done.  It started looking like this:

 This was before I cleaned it, it was soooo dirty.  It took me several hours to scrub the previous owners grime off the walls.  The walls were covered with teal blue laminate and where that was too short, they added tan brown laminate on top. They caulked the edges with so much caulk that the beading was sticking out in jagged edges. 

First he had to rip out the old walls.  He decided to tile all the way to the ceiling so he ripped the walls out to the ceiling.

 The kids enjoyed helping him to do that.

 Then he moved the shower spigot up higher and put in new sheet rock over the walls. He also changed out the plumbing fixtures in the walls.

Then he did the tiling himself and the grout.  Last thing he did was redo the trim on the top. I think it turned out really nice, what do you think?  It works well too, its nice to have the shower head up higher and you don't feel like you might get dirty when you take a shower anymore ;)

Just a couple of more projects and we will be done.  It feels pretty close to done when we go now and I love it.