South Deer Island Geocache - Galveston West Bay

Article By Shorty



BLURB ABOUT THE SITE:
The Saturday before Father's Day, I dragged my friends Tim and Robert to go pladdle down to South Deer Island with me so I could plant a geocache on the island. We launched from Teakwood marina and paddled due south towards the island. Tim is in my Splash I kayak, and Robert (who is a certified canoe instructor) is paddling his Sawyers canoe. The water in West Galveston Bay is suprisingly shallow. Many places it is only a couple of inches deep at high tide.


We arrived at the island after 45 minutes of paddling. I was amazed at the imense amount of birds that inhabited this island. The South Eastern edge had a little structure, possibly an old dock or something. North Deer Island is a marked bird sanctuary where landing and tresspassing is strictly forbidden, but South Deer Island has not marks or signs that I have seen.


Some speed boats kept passing us and giving off lots of wake. Tim was frustrated with this so the next one that passed by he knocked the driver out an we lit fire to his boat. This is the charred remnants and you can see that Tim is still taking his frustrations out on it.


We paddled around to the southern edge of the island where there was a small cove. Was hoping to find a beach and protected area but it was mostly just mud and reeds. It would be difficult to get thru there at low tide so we moved on along the edge of the island in search of another placed to leave the cache.


This photo was taken from the cove looking to the West.


There weren't any big landmarks, so I found the biggest pile of shells that I could, and buried the cache with a marker stick. It isn't the greatest spot, and about an hour later I found a small island that was MUCH more desirable spot to leave the cache on, so I plan to return in another month or two and move this cache. For now, it is there and filled with lots of goodies.


We paddled around the west side of of South Deer Island and on towards North Deer Island. Standing up near the shore of North Deer Island, we could see this aluminum boat that had probably blown onto the island during a storm.


Then paddling along the West side we saw the remnants of a fiberglass boat. The only thing left was this piece of the bow. It sure was a big boat.


Looking up in the sky we could see hundreds of birds. There were just swarms of them.