Monday, Jan. 14, 2013, Monte Rio, CA.
They were fishing at Monte Rio today.
Today, I decided to Kayak from Monte Rio down the river a couple miles and back again. The morning was crispy, but the sun was out and the wind was down, so off I went around eleven thirty in the morning.
Ordered another new, bigger, fuel oil stove today.
On the way down, I stopped at the local gas delivery guy’s place, just down the road from me and told him the heater I just bought from him wasn’t going to cut it, as it just didn’t have enough poop to heat my house. Not much I could do about it, but buy a larger model.
It was a good time to test it out with this cold spell. The day before, I turned it on at nine in the morning. It was about fifty four degrees F. in the house when I started it. It slowly rose though the day, but, running all day, the heater only heated the house to about sixty eight degrees by ten pm that night. Just wasn’t going to cut it. I’ll just have to sell this one.
And ordered parts from the local Napa parts house.
From there, I went down to the local Napa parts house and ordered a brake switch for my van and got some more rubber hose to hook up my new Wave3 propane heater I’m installing in my van.
Yes, the van no brake lights problem turned out to be a corroded brake light switch, I wonder how long I’ve been driving around without any brake lights? No way to tell, unless someone tells you, lucky, it wasn’t a cop. That part will come in tomorrow.
Finally got to Monte Rio to launch the Kayak.
I continued down to Monte Rio. The boat launch area was fairly muddy, but doable, there were four drift boat trailers in the parking lot, so the fisherman have finally started fishing down in this area for Steelhead.
I had to negotiate though some mud on the boat ramp, that wasn’t too bad and got the kayak in the water and headed down stream.
Fishermen, where a fishing in their boats.
Most of the fishermen were just below the boat ramp, about a hundred yards down the stream.
Below is what they looked like as I drifted down the river. They said they had hooked three native steelhead, which means they had to throw them all back, but they are fun to catch. You can only keep fish that come from the hatchery. You can tell the hatchery fish as one of the back fins is clipped off, by the hatchery, on those fish and they can be kept.
I shot the bull with those guys for a bit and continued down the river, stopping along the way when I found a sunny spot along the shore line.
Continuing down the river.
This egret landed near me and was soaking up some sun shine too.
I passed an old tree growing out of the water and noted this turtle trying to get some sun shine too.
Continuing on down the river toward the Villa Grande area, the picture below is what it looked like. A nice sunny day.
A pair of Mallard ducks swam by me as I was taking it easy, as can be seen below.
Sheraton Ranch beach was my goal for the day.
I paddled down to the Sheraton Ranch area, which was as far as I was going today, about two miles down the river from Monte Rio. I spent about an hour there, just hanging out. While I was there, this seal popped up beside me, from nowhere and stayed for about five minutes. He looked like he was sleeping to me. This is likely one that knows me or he wouldn’t have exposed himself, showing any more then his head.
Blow is the seal that popped up beside me. Is he sleeping or just taking it easy, like me?
I headed back up the river after awhile.
Nothing much was happening down there, other than it was a real nice day, so I headed back up the river at a leisurely pace, as the sun was getting lower in the sky.
I took a picture of the sun and the big redwood trees at Villa Grande as I went by as you can see below.
It was still fairly early, around two thirty, but the sun was already behind the mountains as I headed up toward Monte Rio.
Below, you can see a picture of what that looked like.
The fishermen where still at it.
As I was coming up onto Monte Rio, I could see the fishermen up there in their boats. One more had joined the group, since I last came by, as you can see below.
Here is a closer shot of them, all lined up, nice and neat. Lining up like this forms a sorta dam for the big fish that slows them down, so one has a better chance of hooking one of them. I shot the bull with them some more and gave them my report of down stream and headed up toward the boat ramp.
Below is the fishermen lined up.
The boat ramp was cleared of mud while I was downstream.
I got to the boat ramp and noted that the Monte Rio guys had cleaned off most of the mud from the ramp, which makes things much easier to launch boats, of course.
See how much better it looks in the picture below.
Otters and I called it a day.
I didn’t take my boat out right away, I paddled just past the ramp and was about to head for the ramp to take out when I noticed something strange surface nearby. When I checked it out, it was about three river otters sneaking by me, almost. They submerged and I didn’t see them again.
One of he otters below that I barely go a shot of, before they were gone.
With most of the mud off the boat ramp, it was much easier to get my boat out and I was off the water by three pm today.
Home to warm up and get to work on the van project.
I went home, had a cup of coffee and went out to work on my van. I did start the heater while I was making my coffee to warm up the van a bit.
I added more main gas line under the floor of the van to go to the new heater. I did this with steel tubing and ran it over near the new heater, put in a gas valve and hooked up the heater with a rubber hose, so I could still open and close the van side door.
I also had bought ten feet of rubber gas line to hook up my cooking stove, as this would allow me to move the stove outside or on the floor to cook if I so desired.
Once that was done, I turned on the new heater, of course. It is much better lower to to floor like this and was warming up my legs nice, which should work out good when staying in the van and it gets cold out.
Rolled out fresh noodles and made some dinner.
By this time it was dark out and I came in and made some noodles from scratch and made a sorta beef stroganoff, with some bison burger I had. Yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
Had another great day.
