Tuesday October 1, 2013 Monte Rio CA.
Let’s start with the dam at Guerneville
I decided this morning that I’d kayak Jenner today, so on the way, I stopped off at Guerneville, Johnson’s beach and checked out how the dam guys were doing taking the dam down.
They were working away as I arrived and only had a couple of boards to go to get it opened up in time for tomorrow’s deadline.
This is a picture of the Guerneville dam being taken out by the Sonoma County Parks guys at Johnson’s Beach.
Only a couple of boards left to get it down.
And the Russian River mouth is still closed
I left those guys to their task and drove on down to Jenner were I was going to go kayaking. I drove onto the launch ramp and noted the wind and thought, the river sure looked flat when I went by Monte Rio. I decided to go on down to the Highway One overlook at the river’s mouth in my car to get a picture of the closed river mouth, so that’s what I did and I’d think about kayaking Jenner.
Here is the picture I took from the overlook. The mouth is closed, although, it may look open. That’s just a big wave from the rough ocean washing over the sand dam, the mouth is not open. It is closed tight with several feet of sand higher than the river. Looks nice down there though, but not as nice as back at Monte Rio.
I put the kayak in the water at Monte Rio
After taking some photos of the mouth closure I headed back to Monte Rio and put my boat in the water.
Here is the view I saw while paddling down the river toward Villa Grande. See why I came back to Monte Rio to kayak? Not even a breeze.
The river is a huge lake right now with the mouth closed
Since the river’s mouth was closed, the lower river is just a huge lake up to the Vacation Beach dam and it is all flat right now.
I only stayed at the Villa Grande hole for a short time and headed back up the river on the lake, taking my time. My plan was to go on up the river past Monte Rio, maybe to the Boho Hole, a couple miles or so.
This is the river view as I approached the Monte Rio area coming back up the river.
Here I am approaching the Monte Rio Bridge area, which I will go under and up the river, past the launch ramp near the left of the picture.
Will the picnic tables float to Jenner?
As I went under the bridge, I noticed the Monte Rio Parks picnic tables were in the water, from the river rising because of the river’s mouth being closed and the dams being taken out. I hope someone knows about this and gets them out before they go down river to Jenner?
I continued on up the river, where I passed this green heron sitting on an old log in the water.
When I got up to the Boho Hole, this is what greeted me, nice view.
There were a couple guys fishing there, not catching anything so I shot the bull with them for awhile and after about an hour I headed back down the river at a leisurely pace.
Ha, a turtle, I barely got it’s picture as I passed. I’ve noticed that there seems to be something wrong with the turtle population in the Monte Rio area as I’ve not been seeing hardly any at all and there are usually quite a few of them in this area.
I passed under the Monte Rio bridge and the sun was just right to cast this shadow from the bridge.
Fire chief to the rescue with a big red truck
As I was down there taking pictures of the bridge, I noticed the Monte Rio Fire guys truck heading for the beach with the tables afloat, so I headed back up there to see what was going to happen with the tables.
That’s him in the truck, coming down to check out the table situation. He just drove in and then drove back out, so I started to head back down under the bridge.
But shortly, this is what appeared, a big red truck, the fire chief was back with some help too.
So, naturally, I had to paddle back there to check out the operation. He got his winch out and drove the truck out and hooked the table up and dragged it in to shore without getting wet.
Well, what a day. Nice time on the river.