Tubers, will anything ever change?

As my journey across America goes on, I took a small amount of time off to make some money. I’ve stayed in a small tourist town called Rio Frio known for the rustic resorts and cabins for tourists. The main activities for these tourist is the Frio River. It attracts Texans from all parts of the state. The tourists/aka tubers, parties have lived up to my expectations in full measure. The land in TX is either state or private property, you can tube even kayak the entire river across the state, but you dare not step off to the shore or you will be trespassing on someone’s land and most Texans don’t cotton to that. Unless you happen to be their guest.

As it has been explained to me “I paid for this land and own this land and pay taxes on this land, so if you’re not a paying guest of mine ,you’re trespassing.” Great mentality.

Any way back to the tubers, if you’re a paying guest at some resort or renting a cabin or what not they supply you with these nifty yellow bags to take along with you. These are for putting your trash in, they even encourage you to pick up other peoples trash, great practice in theory.

Kayakers are awesome here they love nature and respect the rivers. Tubers not so much, they’re here to party, and come equipped with all the accoutrements that are necessary. If they can find state road side area where they can park there cars, vans or trucks, they not only trespass on private property doing damage to it, but when they leave they leave behind.

What do I mean by that? Broken foot wear is cast aside and left, litter and trash is cast on the ground. One time while I was hiking along the river I found a spot where people had a barbeque and they left an array of beer cans and the barbeque grill behind, to top it off the coals were still warm.

But my favorite is, let’s just hide the trash, out of sight out of mind. Like it’s going to break down by it self. The thing is they just don’t care. Our rivers and our water ways are our treasures.

I really don’t know what the answer is, stiff penalties and fines or just ban tubing all together, If  you can’t respect our waterways, just stay off our waterways.