![]() ![]() Once you leave the put-in at La Linda, you have made a commitment to journey through some of the most beautiful and remote canyons. The Lower Canyons are one of the last truly wild places left in the U.S. Once I graduated and started working as a teacher for Austin ISD, my trips were limited mostly to Spring Break. While I was still in school, I guided all kinds of trips - backpacking, skiing, horsepacking, kayaking and canoeing. The coordinator saw me plenty and invited me to attend guide training and I have been guiding ever since. I was hooked and I wanted to try everything. We would get out and scout all the rapids and carefully plot our route – which didn't always work out but we knew what do when we tipped over in the rapids. I came back from that first canoe adventure and signed up for nearly every adventure trip offered by RecSports. We were so proud of ourselves as we practiced the skills we had learned on the river. We all became very close and when we got back to Austin, we organized a reunion canoe trip on the Guadalupe River. Professor Frary later published a book titled “Watercolors of the Rio Grande” which included paintings from our trip. Eventually, we had to enlist the help of the Aggies, who were camped across the river, to get the paintings safely to shore. We all worried about the paintings and hoped the canoe would stay upright. ![]() I remember at one point, his canoe got pinned on a rock just above a large rapid. The Art professor, Michael Frary, would set up his easel every evening and paint the beautiful colors and shapes of the canyons and river. I remember someone asking if my brother and I were married since we had the same last name. We were a motley crew of undergraduates, graduate students, community members (mostly UT alumni) and a couple of professors. I also knew where everything was packed which is very helpful knowledge to have. I learned to repackage the food and to consolidate items as much as possible to eliminate excess weight for our journey. I raised my hand to help and later met Sue in a small room under the UT stadium (which is where UT outdoor recreation was located). Sue also asked for volunteers to help with packing the food and gear. ![]() At our pre-trip meeting, Sue showed us a scary film (yes – it was a reel to reel film projector) about foot entrapments and the dangers of moving water – it got our attention. There were two guides – Sue White, who organized the group and equipment from Austin and Larry Humphreys, a former Outward Bound instructor who met up with the group at the river. Back then, UT used aluminum canoes and packed all the gear in army duffel bags lined with plastic. He wanted to do something fun and adventurous for his last Spring Break before entering “the real world of work”. One of my older brothers (who was a senior at UT), talked me into signing up with him. It was a canoe trip on the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande. My first UT outdoor recreation experience was during my sophomore year. Several of us met on a 10-day field trip into Mexico over the Winter break with the Geology Club and we have remained friends to this day. I also made many lifelong friends in those classes (including my husband Pat Goodson). I enjoyed it so much that I took another Geology class and another and another and finally, it became my major. What I liked about the Geology class was that we did a lot of learning in the field and it was fun. I started at UT an an undecided major and I took a wide variety of courses, mostly in Biological Sciences, before trying a Geology class. ![]()
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