Friday September 6 2013 Monte Rio, CA.
The day started out kayaking Monte Rio
I decided it would be a good day to go down to Monte Rio and kayak in the sunshine. Arrived around eleven AM and put my boat in the water and headed down stream at a leisurely pace. The sun was warm and the breeze was mild as I made my way down the river to the Villa Grande Hole. There I sat around for about an hour just taking it easy and watching.
After awhile I headed on down the river some more to the Sheraton beach area where I pulled under a tree to watch some more. This great blue heron was preening nearby.
I continued on down the river just a bit more. This is the view from one of my resting spots, looking down the river.
Frist time I’ve run into the otters in awhile
I went on down just a some more, when I ran into five or six otters. They saw me too.
This is the shot of our first meeting.
I backed off and watched for the way they were going and that was up the river, so I turned around and followed them for about a half hour.
They are checking me out in the picture below,
The dove and disappeared for a bit.
This is an otter starting it’s dive.
They reemerged across the river and went into the bushes and that was the last I saw of them. I’m not sure where they disappeared to. Either they went to shore and took a nap or they dove down deep and circled around me. They let out little bubbles as they swim under water which I didn’t see any of, so I think they went to shore to ditch me.
Here they are swimming across the river, just before they ditched me.
I continued on up the river taking it real slow. This is a view of the river below Monte Rio as I worked my way up.
Another great blue heron was sitting on an old tree branch as I passed.
I was off the water around three PM and went on home for a nap and something to eat and another nap, I seemed to be tired out.
Some spring work was in order
Around six PM I got some energy and hopped on my four wheeler to go check out our water spring as it’s not giving us much water the last couple days.
One of the things I discovered is a redwood tree has grown around an air vent and is closing off the pipe and leaking water out the air vent pipe. I needed a saw to fix it which I didn’t have so I’ll have to take care of that tomorrow.
Drip, drip, drip goes the water onto the ground instead of down to the water tanks
Above that is our spring and below that I found quite a bit of spring water coming out of the hill, which I dug out just a little. It’s muddy now, but tomorrow I’ll put a spring tab in there and clean it all up and add that to our tanks.
There is at least a half gallon a minute flowing down the hill in this picture.
I rode around and checked a couple other springs I might get some water from and then checked the water line that goes into the water tanks just above the tanks and this is what I found. A log had rolled over the top of it, not causing any real problems, but it needed to be cleared of the valves which I preceded to do. Only problem was I heard and felt a muscle tear in my left bicep and now that hurts pretty good. Ouch.
The log is about a foot in diameter and twenty feet long, so it was heavy. The pipe valves are underneath it, but they didn’t get damaged.
Tomorrow I’ll go back up there and see if I can fix things up and get some more water into our water tanks as we seem to be a bit low on water right now.
It’s actually rather fun working on the water system as it’s in a redwood forest which is nice to hike around in, which I have to do to check the system out.
Had a nice day.
