Easter Weekend at the River 


Down at the river and most of the beach is now accessible. The water is beautiful, not quite summer green, but a nice shade of olive green. Moving too fast for boats, but the ducks like it fine. Bright sunshine. I expected to be cold and wore a coat, gloves, and scarf, and then had to take them all off. Even my fleece was too warm. A lovely lead-in to Easter Weekend and all of of our canine guests should have a great time (along with their human companions).

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The Beaches 
Drove around to survey the beaches and all have good stretches above water now, including Drake's Beach. Sunday there was just a bit of grass available for the dogs to play, running in and out of the water, but Tuesday lots of beach was exposed and we were able to have a good romp for quite a distance. What we all know is the river comes up fast and it goes down just as fast.
The Water Agency has announced that the river flows will not be reduced as planned, so there will be plenty of water for summer water activities. Miracle March indeed!

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Hoping I missed the rain.... 
Breathe easy, Sonoma County, we are back to normal.

What Sonoma County Water Agency officials are calling a “Miracle March,” of heavy rainfall has pushed water supply conditions for the Russian River from “critical” to “normal,” ”

The move to normal means the water agency will not reduce Russian River flows in April.

“That means there is more water in the river system for recreation and more water in the system in the fall for the Chinook salmon run,” said Sonoma County Water Agency spokesman Brad Sherwood.

Pillsbury Lake went from 43 percent of capacity to 82 percent in 3½-weeks.

All this happened without me--I was in the desert in India. So I have the best of all worlds--missed all the rain, but it rained enough to bail out the drought fears.

And right now the sun is shining after some morning showers. All is good! We won't be dragging kayaks over gravel bars this summer!

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Off to India 
This blog will go quiet for three weeks as tomorrow I head for northern India: Rajasthan, Agra, and Varanasi. I will be back, blogging my Russian River experiences, the beginning of April. In the meantime, if you're in the Russian River area, please check out the River Reader, our locally owned bookstore. There's a great selection of books about our area, plus some interesting music selections, and there are many events here---book clubs, readings by writers, etc. It's right on Main Street in Guerneville and always worth a visit.

One of the projects for when I come back is to gather information on all of our arts. We have an abundance of artists, art galleries, community theaters, and performance venues, many of which tend to be known only to locals but are deserving of much broader support. So stay tuned....

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Coho? 
Today I saw two large fish in the river, both heading downstream. One was moving quickly in the channel, near the surface, and the other was jumping in the channel. Wondering if these might be Coho Salmon. They should be up in the tributaries now spawning, but with all the dry weather there may not be enough water in the streams. Not sure what this means. What happens to the adults if they can't get up into the streams to spawn? They turn bright red when they are spawning and I didn't see any red. They were headed the wrong way if they were Coho looking for streams.

They are so endangered any loss is a big loss and if they are in the river when they are not supposed to be they may be hooked by people who don't know what they are. Fish and Game has been posting information to educate people as to what they look like, so they don't get fished by mistake.

Worrisome in a year when we've had record numbers of returning adult Coho.



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