The Beautiful Ride to North Point at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

The beautiful ride to North Point at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge follows good caliche road for the first seven miles. The last three and a half miles become somewhat challenging. On December 29, 2023, in the early afternoon, I pedaled my Surly bike from the Visitor’s Center toward North Point.

North Point, a ridge between the Arroyo Colorado and Horse Island, marks the northeastern-most point of the Refuge. Google Maps shows the area as North Point and Rincon Buena Vista. I have never seen another person there, but I have seen truck and bicycle tire tracks. Few people venture there. The trip is worth the effort to get there.

From the Visitor’s Center on Buena Vista Road, Los Fresnos, Texas, I took the hardpacked caliche Lakeview Drive a mile and a half to Osprey Overlook on the eastern bank of Laguna Atascosa. From there I rode a third of a mile south on the asphalt portion of Gator Pond Trail to Alligator Pond. There a Great Blue Heron stalked prey in tall grass on the edge of the mostly dry pond. I doubled back to Lakeview Drive.

At Lakeview Drive I turned north on the caliche County Road. It runs through the thick thornscrub of the Refuge on the west and the mostly cultivated fields of a private ranch on the east.

As I rode, I spooked hawks from perches and a dozen Turkey Vultures from fence posts. I watched Nilgai Antelope lope across fields and into brush and saw the white tails of deer bounding away from me. I crossed a wetland and stopped to photograph an alligator that waited beside the water.

At almost six miles along County Road, I came to a locked gate over a cattle guard and took a path around it to an intersection. To the right ran the dirt Horse Island Trail and to the left, the caliche Last Gate Trail. An armadillo dug for food on the roadside. I continued north on the bumpy dirt of North Point Trail, which ran through heavy mesquite and thornscrub with yucca, or Spanish Dagger, poking out of the brush.

The brown dirt of North Point Trail became off-white sand and silt, where my tires sunk in spots. As I plowed on through the sand and silt, Nilgai and White-tailed Deer bounded away from me. A coyote gave me a look before leaping into the brush.

The sand and silt became a bumpy, overgrown, seldom-traveled trail. The grass and bumps slowed my progress. Soon I felt the grade that would take me to North Point. To my left, the west, the water of Cayo Atascoso glistened in the afternoon sun, and, beyond it, the Arroyo Colorado.

At the peak of the grade, I pedaled downward through the grass to the end of North Point Trail. The Arroyo Colorado flowed into the Laguna Madre to the east. Horse Island rose above the water to the southeast. Herons, egrets, Willits and other birds fed along the sandy bank of the Arroyo Colorado.

It was for this view, for these birds and the other wildlife I spotted that made the ride worth it. When I returned to the Visitor’s Center, I had logged almost 24 miles.