Nov. 1, 2012 Monte Rio, CA.
I woke up to a light drizzle, but by the time I got going it had stopped and the sun was out. I planned to go down to Jenner today to kayak and see what’s going on.
Looking down on the river while driving by Monte Rio, the river looked flat and very nice, I had a hard time continuing on and going down to Jenner.
But, at Jenner, the fog was in big time, all the way down to the water. Now, I don’t really mind the fog, but I’d been in enough sleet and snow and weather last week, so I sorta would like some sunshine, so it wasn’t too hard to make a decision to go back to Monte Rio and kayak up the river to the Vacation Beach dam and back again.
I headed back to Monte Rio and put my boat in at the launch ramp. Just above the ramp a hundred yards or so is a shallow ripple type area, just below the bridge that the water is usually fairly fast and worse than that, it’s shallow, it’s hard to get much of your paddle in the water. My method of dealing with this section is to land on the far shore and drag my boat in the water by the shore edge until I get up to the big rock just at the head of the ripple. If I do this right, I don’t get wet. I get back in my boat just behind this big rock and paddle up the river from there. That’s the only place I have to get out on this trip. The water today is flowing a bit faster than normal, because of a recent rain. It’s up about six inches, but still mostly clear.
Was on the water around 11:30 AM.
After going up the ripple, I’m just below the Monte Rio bridge, looking up the river as can be seen in the picture below.
Cormorants often can be seen in the big trees along this part of the river.
It was a nice day, mostly sunny with lots of river reflections. The below picture I’m looking up the river toward the Bohemian’s place.
Still looking up the river toward the Bohemian’s place, only closer for the below shot.
I’ve made it to the Bohemian’s area just coming into it in this picture below.
These fishermen in the boat are the only ones I saw on the river today. They are just leaving the Bohemian area, headed down the river. They were fairly tight lipped, as they should be. Mostly only salmon running now and you’re not supposed to even fish for them.
I spent and hour or so sitting in this spot at the Bohemian area, taking a good break before I continued up the river to the Vacation Beach dam.
This is one of he spots I rested for a bit on the way up the river. It’s about mile up the river from the Bohemian’s area.
I made it up to this spot just below the Vacation Beach dam. You can see the cement supports up river that the bridge and dam are built on.
A little closer look at those supports for the Vacation Beach dam. This is as far as I went up the river, at this point, I turned around a received my reward of drifting down the river. I earned it, as I has just paddled up the river.
On the way back down, I ran into this great blue heron, sunning himself on by the rivers edge.
While cruising along the edge of the river, I spotted this dead fish. Not sure what it died from, or what it is, might be a spooned salmon?
The river reflections wee spectacular in some places as can be seen in the picture below.
This Great Egret just caught a little fish you can barely see at the end of it’s bill.
And this Mallard pair were resting by the rivers edge and didn’t seem too bothered by my passing.
Just above Train Island going down the stream. It’s almost 5 PM now and my batteries are going dead and so is my cameras. :O)
The day was real pleasant with a warming sun and almost no wind up in this area, maybe just a little breeze. I think I yakked about six hours today. I took my time going up and back. Because the river was flowing a little bit more than normal I got a little more work out paddling up against the river current, but it wasn’t too bad.
Another great day on the river.