Sunday November 30, 2014 Monte Rio CA.
A bit of rain
It was raining when I got up this morning, so what to do for the day? I sat around and drank coffee thinking about it, while the rain slowed up. More was expected until just after noon according to the weather people.
Up to check out our water springs
As the rain slowed down and stopped for a bit, I decided to take a ride up the hill and check our spring water supply. This time of year, I need to remove some of the springs as the water flows too fast and picks up some murky water along the way. Some of the springs do this more than others, so I remove the worse ones each year about this time.
My brother mentioned he might do this a couple days ago, but he doesn’t really know what’s going on up there, so I thought it’d be a good idea to check things out to see if he did it right.
I put my rain gear on,just in case and fired up the quad runner and off I went.
I traveled up to our water tanks on this road, where I stopped just above them to check the valves that control some of the springs
This is the main input line from the springs to our tanks. My brother had it almost right, he shut off the middle valve which stopped the spring from the right from going into the tanks, but he didn’t let the water flow out like it is now. So, he had that one mostly right.
I should of checked the water flow down from the main spring at this time to see if it was flowing, but I didn’t and had to come back later and do it.
I continued up the hill where some other springs were and fixed things the way they should have been and then headed on up to the top of the ridge which over looks the town of Guerneville.
That’s a Korbel grape field with the small town of Guerneville to the rear of it. The rain was just getting ready to start again.
I realized I needed to check the flow of the main spring
On the way down the hill, I realized I had better check the main spring to see how it was doing so went back to the valves. To my surprise, the main spring was just barely flowing. Sometimes animals eat through the plastic pipe so I would have to check that out, but first I went back to the main spring at the top and checked the water output. Almost no output of the main spring, which was not normal.
That meant I’d have to put one of the not as good as far as murky water springs back in the main line. The spring might get a bit murky if it rains real hard which one can live with, so it’s not like we don’t have any water.
It turns out our main spring water has been moving down to a lower spring in the past year, so I wasn’t totally surprised with this finding. Of course, the lower spring isn’t as clean as the upper main spring, but one can’t have everything. :O)
I went on home and checked the weather report again and things were looking good, so I got my stuff together and headed down to Monte Rio.
Off to Monte Rio to kayak
It looked like a real nice fall day as I put my boat in the water at the boat ramp and headed down the river.
Right away, I ran into these guys fishing for steelhead at the slot.
I shot the bull with them for just a bit and continued on down at my normal slow leisurely pace.
Hawk
A bird caught my eye landing in a tree to my right, so I approached it to see what it was. Looks like a red shouldered hawk to me.
Just past the hawk, these two female mergansers swam on by me, not seeming to be concerned by the hawk’s presence.
A couple harbor seals have a fish
As I was entering the Villa Grande area, this seagull caught my eye. Seagulls sitting on the water can mean they are waiting for fish scraps from feeding seals, so I sat and watched it for a bit and sure enough a harbor seal surfaced with some kind off in it’s mouth, but I couldn’t make the fish out.
The seagull and the seal with a fish it’s not showing.
I was just leaving the Villa Grande hole in this picture heading down the river.
Sheridan Beach area
I made it down to the Sheridan beach area, about a couple miles below Monte Rio and found a spot to sit and watch, which I did for a spell.
Looking across the river to the Sheridan Beach.
Headed back up the river
I sat around in that area and then headed back up the river when I came across this Great Blue Heron with it’s beak open. I think it swallowed a fish on the larger size and was having trouble getting it down as it opened and closed it’s beak a lot as I watched for around ten minutes at which time it finally seemed to get it down and closed it’s beak and I continued on up the river.
I ran into Andrew fishing and shot the bull with him for awhile drifting back down the river, almost back to Sheridan, before moving on back up the river again.
The water was getting real still, so the reflections were getting even nicer as I rounded the Villa Grande hole in this photo.
I’m almost back to Monte Rio in this photo. Monte Rio is up under the little cloud up ahead and that’s a great white egret flying along in the picture.
I was back at Monte Rio just before five and took my boat out of the water and went on home for the day.
Just another nice day.