<posted by JSCARC member, Joe Gibson K5KUA>
On Monday, February 9 about 7:45AM, I loaded up my truck, entered Big Boggy NWRs location into my truck’s GPS, and headed out. About a mile down the road, I realized that I forgot to get water and left my coffee siting on the counter. Moving on, I made my usual pit stop at Buc-ee’s to get a bottle of water, a super humongous Coke, and a breakfast burrito. About a half hour after my stop, I noticed my GPS started rerouting everything, pointing me to go down a bunch of country roads, so I started following it. After a little bit, I realized my GPS was rerouting me to the San Bernard NWR! I then stopped, opened up Google maps on my iPhone and manually dropped a pin. The route it chose looked like it was the quickest way to continue from where I was.
The first turn it showed said to turn left onto County Rd.l 263. I turned, then stopped and looked down the road (if you could call it a road). The GPS said continue for 4 miles to County Road 262. So I continued on and when I got there, it then said to turn left on Chinquapin Rd. This was a better gravel road so I continued on another 4 miles. After a total of 2-1/2 hours I finally found an entrance to the park. After my arrival, I backed in about 50 feet to where the entrance gate was. I opened up my big green umbrella and set up my rig on the tailgate.
Conditions were good on 20M. The band was relatively busy as usual but QRN was quiet. I Made my first contact at 11:10 AM on SSB and an hour later I switch to CW. My last contact was at 2:37 PM. Then I packed up and headed home, taking a little over an hour and a half to get there.
My preliminary totals are:
SSB – 49
CW – 98
Total – 147
P2P – 22
In retrospect, had I have gone a little further down the highway to Wadsworth, TX, I would have avoided the dirt road. However, the adventurous soul in me kept me going down the dirt road.
All and all despite the excessive drive time and it was such a beautiful day, it was a successful activation for me. Would I go back? Probably. Is it a good POTA for the group? It could be but we would need to talk about it more.
Joe K5KUA
Note on photos: These 3 pics are County Rd. 263. Definitely not advisable to drive down after raining.
