Saturday December 5, 2015 Monte Rio CA.
Working on the dozer
The plan for the day was to go up the hill and work on repairing the broken hose on the dozer. I got all my stuff together and then sat down to think about what all I needed up there to fix things. I remembered I didn’t have the funnel to put the oil in the tank which I was planning to get before I left,………..but.
I did a couple other things then forgot about the funnel which I discovered later.
Anyway I went up the hill and found I couldn’t get the new hose on because I couldn’t bend the last part far enough to get the threads started as it was in a tough place to work and there were a bunch of other hoses in the way. After much tinkering, I realized I’d need another fitting to make this all work. It turned out that the new end on the new hose had a longer metal piece on it than the old one did and it wouldn’t make the sharp turn because of it. I also realized I forgotten the funnel so there wasn’t much I could do.
I was thinking maybe the Napa parts store in Monte Rio might have it, so maybe I should go kayaking.
I did what little I could for the dozer and went on home to decide what to do.
Headed to Monte Rio for parts and a paddle
I made it down to Monte Rio just after 1PM and checked at the parts store. No, they didn’t have it, but would start carrying stuff like this soon.
I drove the short distance over to the boat ramp and put my boat in the water and headed down the river which looked like this.
It was overcast with almost no wind. The fall colors were showing as I paddled down stream and the reflections weren’t bad either.
Villa Grande is up ahead were I stopped for a bit and watched.
It wasn’t really this dark, but as I made the turn at Villa Grande this was my view.
Otters
I was paddling along just above the Sheridan beach when I ran into several otters going fairly fast along the shoreline headed up the river, so I turned and started following them. They seemed to be in a hurry. I stayed out towards the middle of the river so as not to spook them and either followed them or scooted ahead up the river and waited for them to show up again.
This pair of mallards greeted me as I paddled back into the Villa Grande hole.
Just after that, I saw the otters go by headed up above me, so I started following them again.
This great blue heron is all fluffed up ready for a damp cool night.
I was following the otters, but most of the time they were going through the brush on the side of the river and only showing briefly.
I got ahead of the otters again as I wanted to get to this weed patch before they did as I suspected they would feed in these weeds a bunch looking for fish and crawdads as I’ve seen them hunt in this stuff before.
Sure enough, shortly the otters came into the weeds and started hunting. This one came up rather close to me, see the front of my boat there.
Lots of times the great blue herons will get close to try to get some of the fish the otters might scare up. This one flew in right in front of me to land near the otters in the water.
The great blue heron is landing. Chick on it to see a better picture.
I sat and watched as the otters worked the area over.
Otters catch things under water, but have to bring them to the surface to eat them, not like a seal that can eat things underwater. At least this way, I have a chance to see what they are eating. This one just came up and is eating something. They sure have some teeth.
Eventually the otters went to shore and out of sight in a spot where I think they overnight a lot.
I left them and continued on up the river to Monte Rio.
Here I’m just paddling into the boat ramp area just below the Monte Rio bridge.
I pulled in and loaded my boat and went on home for the day. That was my day.