Caddo Lake Photo: Ernest Herndon

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My wife Angelyn and I were canoeing Caddo Lake, Texas, at sunset when I heard what sounded like heavy breathing coming from the woods.

"Huff! Puff! Huff! Puff!"

A bull alligator in distress? A herd of wild hogs?

Just then a paddlewheel steamboat rounded the point from behind the trees. The steam puffing out its stacks explained the heavy breathing.

Angelyn and I sat in the canoe as the crowded boat wheeled by on a tour through the intricate maze that is Caddo Lake.

At 25,000 acres, Caddo is said to be the largest natural lake in the South. It was apparently created during the earthquake of 1811, which also formed Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. There is now a dam on the eastern end.

Caddo sprawls across the Louisiana-Texas border northwest of Shreveport, La. The Louisiana half is more of an open lake, but the Texas side is a maze of channels among stands of swampy forest.

After the steamboat passed, we paddled across the channel into flooded cypress forest and came face to face with a raccoon. The critter, perched on a leaning cypress trunk, watched curiously as Angelyn talked to it like she does our pet cats. Then it crawled into a hole in the trunk.

We were staying in a rental cabin at Caddo Lake State Park (903-679-3351) near Karnack, Texas. The small park has nine cabins and two campgrounds for tents and RVs, plus a canoe livery.

"Soft air, pink dusk and frog sounds made this a fine place to be..."

Our main purpose on this trip was to see the American Rose Center near Shreveport, La. -- at 118 acres the largest rose garden in the nation, bigger even than the ones at Portland, Ore., or Tyler, Texas -- since it was my wife's birthday weekend and she's a plant enthusiast. I love plants too, but as an outdoorsman I was using the occasion to scout Caddo.

On our first evening we ate at one of several catfish restaurants in the vicinity. The window by our table looked out onto Cypress River, which feeds the lake. First thing the waitress did was bring a platter of lemon wedges, pickled jalapenos and slices of raw onion. Then came a big bowl of slaw, whole and filet fried catfish, French fried potatoes with the peel on, and regular and jalapeno hush puppies.

After supper, we got ready to launch from the park boat ramp onto Cypress River. A couple of personal watercraft cruised slowly by, respecting the "no wake" markers. Next, a pair of sea kayakers paddled in from a swamp trip, enthused about what they'd seen.

If you had a full day you could go down to the lake and make a lengthy circuit through the swamp. But with just an hour or two before dark, we headed up the currentless river for a short jaunt.

We passed several camps and houses, plus a number of fishermen at the Highway 43 bridge. We explored a couple of little swamp lakes that adjoin the river, venturing up them until logs or weeds blocked our way.

As we eased back downstream in the dusk, herons and egrets passed overhead en route to their roosts in the swamp. Soft air, pink dusk and frog sounds made this a fine place to be.

The next evening -- after Mexican food at Jefferson, the "bed and breakfast capital of Texas" -- we launched at the lakeshore town of Uncertain. I hoped to make about a three-mile loop, using the "Caddo Lake Map" I'd purchased at the state park.

The map shows a grid of numbered "boat roads," and we found plenty of numbered signs on the water. Unfortunately, there was little correlation between the numbers on the map and those on the signs. I gave up on the number system and tried just to keep up with what boat roads we were on. But as we paddled deeper into the swamp and the sun disappeared behind the trees, I became increasingly uncertain about whether we could find our way through.

So that's how the town got its name.

Ernest is the author of Canoeing Louisiana and Canoeing Mississippi, both published by University Press of Mississippi and is outdoors editor at the McComb, Mississippi, Enterprise-Journal newspaper