Tuesday September 24, 2013, Monte Rio, CA.
But first I had some repair work to do
When I woke this morning the first thing I thought about was that I had said I would help a friend try and get his scooter started. He lived in Monte Rio so I got a few tools together and headed down that way just after ten AM.
Just before I got to his turn off road, Ray passed me coming from Jenner and I thought, ha, the wind most be up.
We worked on the scooter for several hours. The starter turned out to have some bad segments in it and worked sometimes then would stop, and also just didn’t have enough poop to turn the engine over. It was a tricky problem because it sorta worked sometimes, but it appeared the battery wasn’t charged enough, even though it was. That just meant I had to test more stuff to make sure it was really the starter that was the problem.
So, that’s as far as we got with that problem and I drove off headed to Jenner, as I thought just maybe the wind would be down. As I drove on down that way, I could see that the wind was still up, but I drove all the way down there anyway to see. I stopped just before going into the town of Jenner on an over look by the road.
Yes, the wind was up real good. Here’s the view looking down river towards the river’s mouth, on past Penny Island to the left.
The river’s mouth is closing
I talked to Ray who was down at Jenner in the morning before I got there and he said the river’s mouth was closed when he was down there. If you look in the picture below, you can see sand across most of the mouth, but it is high tide now and it isn’t fully closed as the high tide is going over the sand bar still. Ray was down there at low tide, so he saw sand all the way across. The rough ocean waves are piling sand up into the mouth area trying to close it.
The lower Russian River dams are taken out tomorrow
However, Ray’s brother works on the lower dams, putting them in and taking them out. Tomorrow, they are supposed to drop the two lower river dams, so the extra water will likely open the mouth up for at least a bit yet? If the rough ocean continues though, it can still close it again after the water settles down again.
After working on that scooter, I was ready for a nap and it was real temping to just go on home and take a nap, but instead I went back to Monte Rio where I ran into Ray as he was coming off the river at the boat launch area, where he told me about the river’s mouth being closed this morning.
Like I said, I was ready for a nap, so I put my boat in the water and very slowly worked my way down to the Villa Grande Pool, stopping under trees to get some rest time.
This is the view looking down river toward the Villa Grande Pool, down at the end of the river as far as you can see. Just a little breezy here, but no real wind.
I passed several great blue herons hunting for small fish along the shoreline.
This is my view as I approached the Villa Grande Pool. I sat in that corner for an hour or so, snoozing. :O)
I also sat in the sun just above that hole and this is the view I had up the river towards Monte Rio.
After awhile I started back up the river and passed these female merganser ducks hunting small fish. They put their heads down in the water and race around snapping up fish.
Here they are with their heads above the water, on the hunt.
Just below Monte Rio, I ran into this great blue heron that jumped into the air just as I was going to take it’s photo. See the pink on it’s wing edges? I think this denotes it as a female.
I continued on to the boat ramp and put my boat on the car and went on home, where I put together an apple struddle thing and cooked it while napping and then went outside and picked up some more brush I had cut in the yard the other day. I picked up most of it, but still have some.
That was my day and it was a nice one.