Canyon River Gorge, Texas

A few weeks ago I got to check out Canyon Lake, about an hour outside San Antonio, Texas.  I previously have not been a big fan of Texas, but Canyon Lake was really a neat place to check out.  The scenery and vegetation are different than Nashville - a little more like the dry climate in Colorado, a little less foliage for some clearer view of the lake.  I hadn't heard of the 2002 storm even that resulted in some serious rainfalls.   In 2002 there was a massive flooding event, where the pool got so high it overtopped the spillway:

Spillway during the flood
picture from GeologyTimes.com

Here's what wikipedia has to say about the flood:

'A record flood in July 2002 over topped the spillway by more than seven feet and caused significant damage downstream. In the 2002 flood, the peak flow was about 70,000 cubic feet per second.  The amount of water that flowed over the spillway was about 3½ times the amount of water that the reservoir holds. Erosion over the course of three days tore away soil to reveal what is now the Canyon Lake Gorge.'


View Canyon Lake Flood in a larger map.  Or just look at the flood erosion here... crazy

'Canyon Lake Gorge is a gorge around 1 mile long, hundreds of yards wide, and up to 50 feet  or more deep, which was carved through limestone in 2002 when extensive flooding of the Guadalupe River led to a huge amount of water going over the spillway from the Canyon Lake, Texas. The gorge provides a valuable exposure of rock strata as old as 100 million years showing fossils and a set of dinosaur tracks, and forms a new ecosystem for wildlife with carp and other creatures in a series of pools fed by springs and waterfalls.'

Here's what the Canyon River Gorge looks like now:

The barren terrain exposed by the flood waters

Our guide mentioned to us that the rocky and soil-less landscape has been used as a set to film a couple alien movies



Cool rock.  I think it's some swiss-cheesy Limestone. 
I will try to find a geologist for more professional insight.
Or maybe more wikipedia. 



Reinforcement structure built at the spillway
Also a great sidewalk

While the flood event created a horrible scar on the landscape... the plus side was that it created some new unique habitats and revealed some super awesome geological and paleontological specimens.  Despite the damage from the flooding, I couldn't help but be impressed by these hidden treasures that might have otherwise never been seen. 


Dinosaur Footprint!
Revealed after all the soil was washed away



Something else interesting... my crew took the interstate out to the lake, but on the way back to San Antonio we followed River Road to Gruene.  Supper was at The Gristmill.... I went there with my aunt when I was little.  It made me smile to be riding around in a rental car and suddenly things emerge in familiarity.  LOVED it!  The scenery along River Road was pretty awesome too and it made me want to book tickets during the summer just to float the river.  Much like with BBQ in Austin, Texas may be slowly changing my mind...