IT’S HIGH NOON on a scorching Saturday in August, and I’m standing on the banks of Hinman Island in Landa Park in New Braunfels, the main public access to the Comal River. Dubbed “the longest shortest river in the world” by locals, the cool river is a hot spot in the summer. I’m watching a parade of folks of all ages and walks of life plop down in clusters of multi-colored inflatable tubes.
A steady line of tubers enters the river across from Hinman Island at Texas Tubes, one of the main launch sites. Before long, the 60-foot-wide waterway is filled bank to bank with several hundred tubers. It creates a traffic jam just upstream from the Tube Chute, the city-owned concrete waterslide that’s the highlight of most Comal tubing trips.
An hourlaterand about amile downstream, across from the packed Schlitterbahn parking lot, I watch another tube jam from the porch of a riverbank condo just below War-necke Falls. Despite the crowding, all I hear is laughter. Everyone is having a grand time.
Tom and Patty Pfost, the condo owners, view the scene with measured amusement. “You should see it July Fourth weekend,” Patty says. “You can walk across
