Tuesday October 8, 2013 Monte Rio, CA.
Just a day of gliding on flat water below Monte Rio
Steve said he wanted to do below Monte Rio today. Since the River’s mouth is still closed, I thought it might be a good idea to do that and paddle on up Austin Creek as far as we could get, as the water is high enough to get up the creek a little further when it’s like this, as the closed river’s mouth backs the river up in this area.
So, I met him at Monte Rio about eleven AM and we headed on down the river at a leisurely pace, stopping often along the brushy edges of the river.
It was a little on the cool side as we set off, but it warmed up a bit. Very little wind today as we headed down the river as seen in the picture below looking down the river towards Villa Grande.
We eventually arrived at the Moscow hole at Ryan’s beach. This is what it looked like as we paddled into the area. A beautiful area, indeed.
We stopped there for a bit of a break.
We entered Austin Creek
As we continued on down the river towards Casini’s Ranch. Austin Creek is across the river from there. Here, Steve is just entering the Austin Creek entrance from the river.
We didn’t see any turtles on the river on the way down, but once we entered Austin Creek, we spied this turtle stretched out getting some sun. Steve saw another little one in the water here and that was all the turtles we saw for the day, which is odd, as usually we see a lot of turtles on the edges of the river in this area. Something must be going on with the turtles in the river as they have been real scarce in the river this year?
We crossed under the first bridge and were able to get up just past this second bridge before we bottomed out on a gravel creek bed and that is where we were taking a break when another kayaker showed up. 
I’ve seen this guy before kayaking Jenner, said his name was Ed and we visited for a good while before heading back out to the river.
Here’s Ed on his kayak, just as we headed back out to the river from Austin Creek.
I had passed this pair of mallard ducks as we entered the creek and they were still there so I got this picture of them taking it easy under a big tree.
Ed followed us on up to the Ryan’s beach area, were we sat for awhile as it was so nice.
Eventually we left Ed and continued on up the river. We’d been out most of the day and it was now almost 6:30 PM when we got back to Monte Rio.
Here is Steve in front of the Monte Rio Bridge, just before we took out at the launch ramp for the day.
We got our boats off the water and went on home, a bit tired out from a long day in the yaks.
A nice autumn day kayaking the Russian River.