Thursday, May, 2, 2013, Guerneville, CA.
A shuttle with Ray and John today
Ray let me know that he and his brother where doing a shuttle from Steelhead Beach, near Forestville down to Guerneville today. All I had to do was show up and load my yak on John’s truck and it was all taken care of.
We loaded the kayaks.
So, I met them at Ray’s house and we loaded my kayak on the truck. Off we went to Steelhead where we put the boats in the water around eleven am. John’s wife took the truck back to Guerneville and left it at the river for us, so it would be there when we arrived in Guerneville on the river.
Launched at Steelhead Beach
Steelhead beach is a county park, which has a nice launch area. The launch area is shown in the picture below and those are our boats, just before we took off down the river.
Nice and peaceful on the river today, just a few people on the river this time of year.
Below is a river scene as we paddled down the river, just below Steelhead beach.
We passed this male Great Blue Heron, getting some sun.
There was very little wind when we first started, the water was flat, see below. This is just after we crossed under the Hacienda Bridge.
There were a few people in the water just below the bridge having a good time in the sun.
John Does his Thing.
The thing in the photo below, just to the front left is John. He put on his mask and snorkel and stopped often to look for fishing equipment that fishermen had lost on underwater logs. If I remember right, he said he found either four or six pieces and had a lot of fun swimming around looking for stuff.
We continued down the river at a leisurely pace. Below is a down river scene around an area called the Odd Fellows Park.
A little shore break.
Just below that we pulled into shore for a much needed break in the area shown below.
As we continued down the river, it turns into a smaller channel which is real scenic, which is shown in the picture below.
Summer bridges are being readied to install.
There are a couple summer bridges that are installed on the river each year. The things you see below are to support steel bridge sections that aren’t in yet in the Knorbel winery area. There are some guys working just to the left of this picture.
If you look carefully, on the left, you’ll see the county guys starting the work to install the summer bridge in the picture below. See that dump truck dumping?
It was real nice as we continued down the river. A breeze came up in the afternoon, but wasn’t too bad.
The first ducklings of the year were spotted.
Ray said, aren’t those little ducks a little early? Not really, but they are the first little ducky’s I’ve seen this year. A female mallard and her little ones are in the picture below.
We were almost to Guerneville by now. A picture of the two Guerneville bridges is in the picture below, just as we approached them.
That meant that we were almost done with this trip, as the take out was just below these bridges at Johnson’s Beach.
The summer damn isn’t in yet at Guerneville.
There is a summer damn at Johnson’s beach that gets installed on June 16th. You can see the foundation logs in the photo below, before the dam has been installed. We pulled our boats out right at these logs.
We arrived at Guerneville just before five pm.
John’s truck was there so we loaded up and went home. I was pooped and went home and took a nap.
This trip is always real scenic and we all had a nice time on the Russian River.