10-28-00 Trip to the Lake Conroe Tiny Beach

Article By Shorty


My daughter and I were off to go on another great adventure, we were heading for a place we call the "Lake Conroe Tiny Beach". This is a small beach just East of the damn on the southern border of Lake Conroe.

We arrived at Inland Marina and I setup my boat. Parked next to all the other trailers and judging from their size, it kinda looks like we really do have a small boat. Keep in mind - it isn't the size of the boat that counts, it is the size of the fun you have!

I have heard many ramp disaster stories, and I am happy to say that this day we did not add to that list. Launched just fine, parked the car, we got in DaisyKit, fired up the egg beater and headed out to the wild blue yonder (well, rather green-brown yonder). While leaving the inlet I called my wife to let her know we were safe and sound on our way. Just passing a restaurant on the shore I saw a flash - sure enough someone took our picture. If I wasn't on the phone I could have taken a picture of him taking a picture of us.

Eggs fully whipped by now, we turned off the outboard and hoisted the main. It was a little gusty so I decided to just sail on the main alone. Besides, I like the simplicity of sailing on one sail. It was really late in the season so there were hardly any other boats on the water.

We started late, and so we arrived at the beach pretty late. Anchored in 1.5 foot deep water and waded ashore. We played on the beach for a while and I buried a geocache conatainer. This cache was later washed away, I didn't realize the lake was so low and the beach dissapears. Kind of a bummer, it was the very first geocache placed in the Houston area.

The sun was going down quickly so it was time to go back to the boat for the night. Having anchored so close to shore the mosquitos quickly flew out to greet us for the night. I closed up the hatch and we hid below away from all the nightly bugs. The wind died down to almost nothing - I would guess 1 knot or less. We gently swayed back and forth on our anchor rode, silly me - I attached the rode from a cleat down thru a snap hook attached to the bow eye. Every time the wind would slack, the boat would ride forward on the rode. Then when the wind would push us back I would hear the snap hook make a little click. It didn't seem like much, but when I tried to sleep it woke me many times throughout the night. Fearing the mosquitos was the only thing that kept me from fixing the problem. I shouldn't say it kept me up all night, it just woke me a few times, then I was able to ignore it.

GOOD MORNING CONROE TINY BEACH !!!!!!! Uh, Hello? Moogie? Did I mention how much my family likes to sleep?

Also, looking at that stuff - do you get the feeling I like to overpack?

There is our little beach.

And our first neighbors of the day, a couple of guys fishing from a bass boat.

We had a bite to eat and then had to go back to the beach to play some more.

The one good thing about trash, is that it comes in handy when you are trying to make an assault on a sand castle. The stick is a left over bottle rocket stick, there is a piece of hose from an outboard that we designated as the bad guy compound. The fishing lure (I removed the hooks) was our land shark, he was the "good guy". The white bottle cap was the princess, who was saved by the land shark.

Time to go home, getting ready to set sail.

I look so cool in these glasses!

Just as we got back the sky opened up and started to rain everything it had!

Moogie is calling Mom to let her know we are on the way home, you can't see it but she is on a cute little cell phone that I had (it fell in the water a few months later).