Canoeing · Caddo Lake, Texas, USA · recorded with NomadTracks

Canoeing Caddo Lake: 9 km through a flooded cypress forest

Caddo Lake is a labyrinth: thousands of bald cypresses standing in dark water, every channel looking like the last one. This 9 km paddle wanders deep into the maze — exactly the kind of place where a recorded track stops being a souvenir and becomes navigation.

Distance9.0 km
Elevation gain85 m
ActivityCanoeing
Duration3 h 35 min

About this data: this track and its photos were personally shared with us as samples by a NomadTracks user. NomadTracks never uploads, collects or shares your tracks or photos — your recordings stay on your devices and in your own cloud.

Route map of Canoeing Caddo Lake: 9 km through a flooded cypress forest drawn from the recorded GPS points on an OpenStreetMap basemap
The actual recorded GPS track — start marked green, finish orange. Numbered pins mark where the photos below were taken.

Download GPX Coordinates, elevation and relative times — recording dates are normalized out, photos not included.

Elevation profile of the track
Elevation profile over the full distance. Switch the map above to interactive mode, then slide across the chart — a marker follows the route.

A maze with no landmarks

On Caddo, GPS isn't a gadget, it's the way back. The boat lanes are marked, but one wrong gap between trees and the marks are gone. The live track line means your wake is always drawn on the map — turning around is following your own orange line home.

Quiet-water recording

A canoe track has no road network to lean on, so the raw GPS quality matters. The recorded line stays clean between the trees, and the speed chart afterwards is a meditation log: 4 km/h, herons, silence.

About the place: Caddo Lake, Texas, USA

Caddo Lake straddles the Texas–Louisiana border near the village of Uncertain, Texas, and is the largest bald-cypress forest in the world. Marked paddling trails thread the flooded forest, but side channels multiply endlessly — a GPS track is the practical difference between exploring and getting genuinely lost. Spring brings high water and nesting herons; autumn turns the cypress needles rust-orange.

Spanish moss hanging from bald cypress trees over the water of Caddo Lake
1 · Spanish moss hanging from bald cypress trees over the water of Caddo Lake
A lone cypress reflected in the still water of Caddo Lake under storm light
2 · A lone cypress reflected in the still water of Caddo Lake under storm light
Bald cypress trees rising from Caddo Lake's open water
3 · Bald cypress trees rising from Caddo Lake's open water
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