N5NTG | 
06 12th, 2011| 
I was invited to help out during the Texas Water Safari http://texaswatersafari.org at the Luling Texas (Zedler Mill) Dam location, where the San Marcos river flows (key word “flows”) over the dam and under the bridge. I brought my son, David KD5MTJ along to help as well. When we arrived shortly after 1pm by following MaryAnne’s excellent directions, we found the group already on the air behind the Zedler Mill, on the north side of the river bank. Stan KA5IID, Alfred KG5QW and MaryAnne N5MYN were already set up and raring to go, assuming any canoes showed up.
The first canoe team showed up around 3:30pm, and the last one just after 10:30pm. There were 103 canoes at 8am, but only 94 made it past our point, which was 46 miles down stream from the starting point.
The three of them had been doing this particular location for many years, so they knew what to expect, and didn’t snicker too much when David or I asked questions or made suggestions. The food was great, thanks mostly to MaryAnne & Alfred I suspect, and we had lots of scenery to watch while waiting for the canoes. Mosquitos weren’t as bad as I had expected, the flies were worse, especially when Alfred & I returned back with several pounds of great BBQ brisket for dinner.
As the night wound down, waiting for those last few canoes, we started to pack up. I went to retrieve my van which had been parked outside the gate all day to make it easier to run errands, only to find out that the park ranger had locked the gates early! Using my trusty Android phone to Google up the phone # for the Luling Police Department, we called for help! The very professional and police police officer arrived promptly, and found out his master key wouldn’t work, because the parks guy hadn’t locked it in a manner that would allow the city’s lock to open the gate. Several calls thru the police dispatcher resulted in someone eventually showing up with the proper key. The officer left the gate unlocked, and we called him back when we had gotten all of our vehicles and equipment out of the Zedler Mill park. (Nice park by the way, worth the trip out from San Antonio to see it.)
I took some videos and some pics to share below. The videos are posted both on Youtube.com under “2011 Texas Water Safari” using my account of “lbesing”, and on my Facebook page (marked to be shared with anyone, not just my friends).
Photos & videos to follow……
