And then there were three...

While it was disappointing that more of the usual suspects couldn't be at Carole's River House this year, the three of us who were there still just enjoyed being there.  We talked, laughed, ate, bobbed in the deeper spot down from Carole's house, shopped, ate some more, watched the absolutely awesome sunsets, stared at the stars (and the bats), teared up a few times and ate some more.  And we drank a "little" wine.  It was perfect. 

And to add to that perfection, a large, loud thunderstorm moved through on Tuesday night, dropping a little more than an inch of rain.  Except not at Leakey, which would have helped the Frio a bit.  The river is low and slow.  More so than I've ever seen it.  There wasn't a single tuber that came by Carole's house.  There might have been a few short runs possible in wider areas, but not where we were.

Since they couldn't float down the river for hours, visitors spent their days building dams, thereby drastically impeding the already minimal flow.  Carole takes every opportunity to tear down the dams near her house, at least parts of them to let the water move.  In the deeper spot, downstream from her house, where many of us have bobbed for hours in the later afternoon shade, dams created by the next door visitors were fairly tight and we noticed that bugs and other small floaters just moved in circles around us.  The dam builders were sitting in chairs in the river, admiring their achievement at basically creating a large stagnant pond by blocking off the river on both ends of that area.  Their design diverted most of the water to the other side of a gravel bar.  For some reason they seemed to think that blocking it off on both ends made it get deeper.  That doesn't even make sense. As soon as they gathered up their things and left, we moved to the upstream dam and removed rocks in a couple of places and watched the "stagnant" area clear out. 

Upstream from Carole's house other builders had created what resembled a hot tub.  In the photo it might look like no water is moving...but, it was.  We walked just a little further upstream and that's where I took the last photo below.

Bobbing on our Neo-Noodles in the deeper spot downstream

Carole said they call this type of sunset a "fire sky".  We saw this on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

The "hot tub" some visitors constructed