Turkey Tales and Frog Fables: A New Annual Pass to LLELA

The Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area or LLELA is a nature preseve below Lewisville Dam. It is a joint venture of the City of Lewisville, the University of North Texas, the Lewisville Independent School District and others. It contains hiking trails, canoeing/kayaking trails, and a restored Denton County log cabin built in 1870 (originally located off of what is now FM 407 in Highland Village, but relocated to this site in 2005). There are also some primitive camp sites and access for canoe launching into the Trinity River. They used to have a herd of bison, but I am not sure they are still there since they are not mentioned on the LLELA website.

All of the trails except the Blackjack Trail, which is further west.

LLELA is a couple of crow miles from our house, but we had visited just a few times since they were only open Friday-Sunday. Buying an annual pass did not seem worthwhile if they were only open three days a week. However, under a new operating agreement with the City of Lewisville that went into effect late last fall, LLELA is now open seven days a week. In addition, the $60 annual pass that went into effect January 1 is good not only for LLELA, but also for Lake Park and Tower Bay Park, both parks on Lewisville Lake run by the City of Lewisville. These parks are all under water right now. However, once they dry out, they (or at least Lake Park) should be prime places to use my new Phantom 3 quadcopter, a new camera platform I got from Santa.

We drove over to LLELA yesterday to see if we could get an annual pass. Yes, they finally had the stickers and yes a single sticker is good for everyone in the car. Unfortunately the sticker is only good for one vehicle and is not transferable. That is ok. GeoJeep now proudly sports the bright pink LLELA pass on his windshield with registration number 00005.

We did not expect to be able to see much at LELLA since recent flooding has almost all of the trails closed. However, we thought we would at least drive through and see if we could see the water coming out of the flood gates below the dam.

It was our understanding that the Corps is trying to get the level of the lake (now about 8 feet over conservation level) back to normal as quickly as possible. A recent article in the Dallas Morning News created quite a stir when it described damage to the dam done by the flooding last spring and the Army Corps of Engineers' rating of the dam as the eighth most hazardous in the country. Apparently the Corps cannot start even temporary repairs until the lake level is lower. We hope they do whatever needs to be done in a timely fashion, since the description in the DMN article of a possible 65 foot wall of water moving down stream and flooding Dallas was not a feel good story right before the holidays.

We made it to the flood gates at the end of the several mile drive. Sure enough, the water was gushing out.

Water coming out of the flood gate.

Water pouring out of the flood gate. Note the fishermen on the far shore.

Seeing the water pouring out of the flood gate was well worth the trip. However, a very unexpected surprise was the sight of hundreds of birds just downstream. Apparently a large number of fish were also flooding down river. We saw gulls, white pelicans, cormorants (or maybe anhingas), herons, ducks, and more. Here are just a few of the great shots captured by the Frog.