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 Some info New
- Forum: BoaterTalk
Re: Moved to Texas, where's the water? knulpttam New
Date: May 26 2008, 11:48 GMT
From: RacIVRnr
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Well, first off . . . condolences . . . it looks like you'll be doing a fair amount of driving to get a whitewater 'fix'. Hope you have a good job (and hook up with other boaters to share the expenses) so the current cost of gas doesn't interfere too badly.
So, while I am loathe to direct any traffic 'his' way (since the jerk did a wholesale ripoff of data from American Whitewater database, then added boilerplate text and some other (nice) 'hooks' and 'bells and whistles'), Riverfacts - Abilene will show you rivers in your area, grouped and arranged by estimated drive times.
Otherwise, going to the 'source' . . .
American Whitewater's Texas Whitewater page will show you all the rivers (with color coding for those with USGS gauges, showing whether they are at runnable flows). Or, you can pull up Texas, by drainage, which will show a map (and list of drainages) which you can click on and the page will scroll down to the appropriate part of the listing.
Finally, it's a bit more work, but there is another sweet interface with this data available. If you have a high-speed connection and a reasonably fast, current home computer:
1) If you do not have it already, go to Google Earth and download the FREE version of their software. (It's an AWESOME application! And you can spend a lot of time doing 'virtual travel' around the globe and the universe!)
2) Pull up any river listing by state on American Whitewater (not 'by drainage' -- at least I have not been able to have it work from any of those pages), such as the Texas Whitewater page previously mentioned.
3) If you scroll to the very bottom of the page, you will see three icons with text next to each, "RSS", "KML", and "mobile". Click on "KML". You should be given the option to save or open the file. You can try 'open' -- this seems to work for some people, not for others. If it doesn't automatically start the GoogleEarth application (if you didn't have it running already) and open the file, then you will have to go back and click on "KML" and choose "save" instead, put the file in a folder where you can find it, then open GoogleEarth application on your computer, and (from it) open the file you have just saved.
4) Now you can see where each of the rivers in the state you've 'grabbed'. You can zoom in and out on any area of the state. You can click on any of the dots to get a 'pop up' description which contains a link to the AW page for each river.
Oh, and . . . if you repeat steps 2&3 above for other states on AW, you can open multiple files at once to be able to see and scroll seamlessly (through GoogleEarth) to rivers in those neighboring states.
So, good luck!
Rob Smage,
Volunteer StreamTeam Member for the AW River Pages,
Midwest Regional StreamTeam Leader |
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