Working on the Dozer and the Russian River Mouth Opens Up

Saturday December 12, 2015 Jenner CA.

Dozer work first

This morning I needed to get up the hill and get the new hydraulic hose on the dozer, so first thing I got all the stuff I would need together for the job. After thinking about it for a bit and getting what else I needed I hopped on the quad runner and headed up the hill to where the dozer was parked.

I’d already done most of the work, so there wasn’t much to do. I just needed to get the hose hooked up and top off the oil tanks.

I started the dozer to check for leaks. No leaks.

After the dozer warmed up a bit, I decided to go move some dead trees off the road to give it a little test. Here’s one of the dead tan oak trees that died and fell across the road.

I cleaned off several trees which took about an hour, then parked it and went on home as I wanted to go down to Jenner and see what was going on.

Now it’s time to kayak and the mouth is open

I arrived at Jenner just after one PM and I could see the mouth had just opened as the water in the parking lot was just starting to go down.

Here’s what it looked like as I was just getting ready to put my boat in the water in the parking lot. The water has gone down a few inches, so I parked in the lot knowing the water would continue to go down.

Otters

I put the boat in the water and decided to go down to see what the mouth area looked like, so I headed on down the river’s north shoreline and shortly ran into these otters hunting along. They lost me rather quickly, I think they got out of the water and went to shore, so I continued on.

Lots of wood floating

I rounded the corner to where the restaurant parking lot was and it’s all filled up with logs and debrie, a big mess.

Just past that was John’s house. He was out there in his kayak pushing all the logs and debrie away from his house before the water went down too much and seemed to have things under control. John’s been through this before.

I talked with John a bit about when the mouth had opened. It sounded like it opened just about noon time or a little earlier.

I left John working away and started across to the now opened up mouth that looked like this as I crossed.

There were lots of birds resting on the shoreline. Some Pelicans and a lot of seagulls.

The mouth is open wide now

The ocean was still real rough as I looked out the just opened up river’s mouth.

I sat around and watched as the estuary slowly was emptying into the ocean.

End of the river

Eventually, I moved down to the end of the river which is past the open mouth. I sat and watched from this spot for a bit. The wind was down and it was overcast with no sun, but still nice out.

This was my view from the end of the river looking back up the river.

As I was leaving these cormorants landed on this rock that was a moment ago under water.

I sat in front of the open river’s mouth for a bit, being careful not to get into the current.

With all the overcast, it didn’t look like there would be any sunset, so I paddled back over to give John a report of the mouth. While talking with him, Ken showed up in his kayak. I shot the bull with Ken as we slowly made it back up the river to his place, where I left him and continued on to the boat ramp, here. Note the water level has already dropped to below nine feet and I can now use the boat ramp again.

My cars over heating again

I loaded my boat and headed on home when I noticed my cars heat gage was a little hotter than it should be and took a long time to come down which meant there was a leak somewhere.

When I got home, I left the engine running and popped the hood and looked around for the water leak.

Darn, the new intake manifold gasket I put on a couple months ago has cracked again. Darn, darn. :O) Always something. I need to get some more gaskets.

Nice day otherwise.