The Galveston County Daily News

The first north winds in October become a signal for me to air out my tent and sleeping bag for a season of travel and camping from my kayak or rowboat.

The Upper Texas Coast has a geography that allows easy access to camping spots from bays, lakes, bayous and rivers. Fall and winter are great seasons for camping because of lower humidity, cooler temperatures and a more diverse selection of wildlife to observe and photograph.

If you just have the weekend to travel and camp, you can have someone drop you and your boat off early Saturday morning and agree to have them pick you up Sunday evening at your destination.

It’s best to tell them you’ll call once there or maybe call a bit ahead of your arrival, in case you’re delayed. Sometimes, I’ll just load the car up and drive myself to a put-in location, travel to my overnight camp and paddle back the way I came to my car.

This way I don’t bother anyone to drop me off or pick me up, and I am on my own schedule to stay as long as I prefer. However, there can be security issues with leaving your car in a remote area, so this works best at a frequently used boat launch with a streetlight nearby.

For example, I like to go to Halls Bayou on FM 2004, put in at the bait camp, paddle 11 miles south to a peninsula that divides West Bay from Halls Lake and make camp.

I have camped on the north and south sides, and even the western tip, along with a few coyotes, alligators and lots of birds. You can make a fire, watch the sun set, go for a walk and explore the beaches or just kick back and relax after a long day of paddling. Before heading back the next day, I like to paddle around the area, exploring places I may have not seen before.

At night, you can see lots of stars because of the absence of ambient light, while listening to all that goes bump in the night, usually the squawking of birds or nutria rooting around. To help me sleep at night, I usually carry a small shotgun with me, although I never have had reason to use it.

Another fun trip is to put in at High Island on Bolivar Peninsula, paddle across East Bay to Anahuac Wildlife Refuge area, and find a remote beach to camp on. The next day, you can explore by kayak or hike the beaches, then paddle back to Bolivar Peninsula.

When I have the time, I will stay out for four days, and go all the way to the Trinity River by way of Smith Point and Trinity Bay. You can camp at Smith Point and then at Double Bayou on Trinity Bay.

It’s always best to travel light, but if you’re just going for the weekend, the sky is the limit to how nice of a meal you can prepare, especially if you have others going with you. I like to take some rice in a pouch to boil, then add some precooked canned chicken, which cooks up fast and easy and tastes extra good when eaten outdoors with a sea breeze.

My breakfast is usually a granola bar with coffee cooked in a percolator-style coffee pot — Starbucks of course. This is easy to clean up and allows you to get under way quicker.

Mosquitoes are usually not a problem as long as you are in your tent before dusk, and this is a law you must observe. They take flight from the marsh grass just before dusk and are fierce for two hours after, then start to diminish thereafter to just a normal few here and there.

I have had them dense enough to form a blanket of black, covering every inch of my tent’s screen door, all humming together in a symphony of high-pitched whine. If this bothers you, you can light a mosquito puck and place it near your tent’s door, which works like a charm.

You want your tent on some semi-high ground if you’ve got it, and clear away all the small rocks and twigs before unfolding your plastic ground cloth. Amazing how the smallest of rocks can make an annoying lump all the way through your sleeping pad.

These sleeping pads need only be an inch or less thick of dense, closed-cell foam or thin inflatable ones. This makes for easy transport, and the big ones are overkill. Most people don’t realize our skeleton is best supported by a semihard surface, and once used to that, you will find it difficult to sleep on anything else. You also want your tent far enough from your buddies so you don’t hear them snore.

If you’re in sand that won’t hold your tent stakes, dig a small hole and place each tent stake horizontal in the sand, tie your tent ends to that, then cover them back up with sand. This will hold up well in the strongest of winds.

Pack light on everything but water. Take plenty of water and then bring extra, because you can always get rid of surplus before you leave the next day. If you were to get stormed in for a day or two, you’d need that water.

It’s best to have a number of small containers in case some leak. I have seen plastic gallon jugs get a crease and leak.

If you’ve never done this, I highly recommend you get a kayak or rowboat, and head out some weekend to some remote spot, take some friends and their boats with you, get some sustained exercise paddling, enjoy some real water front living, all under a big Upper Texas Coast sky.

David Bean, an avid kayaker, is assistant ad production manager for The Daily News.

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Camping Tips

• Look for a small beach, spoil island, or a place to tie the boat and hike up to a clearing

• Most rivers, especially when water levels are low, have abundant beaches to camp on. Each bend in a river has a shallow and deep side. The shallow side is on the inside curve, which is the slower water. Here you can usually find somewhere to camp.

• In heavy growth down to the water’s edge, you can use your body weight to flatten an area enough to pitch your tent, and it is surprisingly comfortable.