Just as Jerry told us two days ago, there's a spring in that wash that feeds into the river and it was running very well as it meandered under the shade of mature cottonwoods. The only downfall to that wash walk was encountering a few pissy bees that attacked Minnie, Sweetie and Zeke. Those same bees then attacked Susan on our walk back to the cars. We were both sure these bees were Africanized bees.
This 2.4-mile stretch of river was new to us all. Every turn in the river was a new sight. Jerry and Edina were not around this time, as we slowly walked south. Jerry said it was all on public land until we reached the Castro Electric complex a few miles upriver, so we made that our destination.
David was a good sport, too. This was his first river walk. We had warned him that we'd be mostly in the water, some of it knee high. He took it all in stride. The dogs welcomed him to the pack.
Water was free of the green algae, but there were a few deeper spots with murky water. The river ran narrow and shallow for most of this stretch, but there was a wide and deeper section at the 1.8-mile mark where a wide flood plain opened up. Someone had place red kayak against a tree, an indicator that this part does get navigable at times.
We now started noticing new things: a game camera high up a cottonwood powered by solar, another lawn chair squeezed in the notch of a cottonwood. When we approached a chain-link fence on the west side of the river, followed by horses and a spacious home with three Adirondack chairs facing the river, we knew we were on private property. The only thing that made us walk farther was a footbridge over the river. We wanted to know what that bridge connected to. That bridge was our agreed-upon turn-around.
We heard people working. A man on a tractor was moving debris. Susan is very inquisitive and walked up a gravel road to see what was around the corner. David and I followed her. We only walked up the bank and stopped at the curve in the road: It was another spacious house with a vegetable garden, protected on all sides by barren hills. Aerial photography from Google Earth, however, later revealed far more back there. The house and garden are just a front. The bigger building complex is behind that house.
And all this is owned by an electric company, a company that wires homes, installs circuit breakers?
The man on the tractor slowly came toward us. I moved away with the dogs to avoid any confrontation. David went with me, but Susan stayed to chat with the man, who happened to be Valentin Castro and the owner of all this land. David and I sat in the Adirondack chairs and waited for Susan, who came back reporting that Mr. Castro was very cordial with her and wasn't angry for our trespassing, adding that we are welcome to walk in the river.
We sat on the chairs for a while, drinking and letting the dogs rest. Minnie now was showing fatigue, but the two horses and one donkey were too much for her to ignore. We finally decided it was best we leave for our return walk so that the dogs don't harass the horses.
We walked the same way we did going out, stopping only at the crumbly railroad bridge, noting it lacked any swallows' nests. The walk back wasn't quite so slow. Perhaps the heat prompted us to get moving. The sun burned my neck whenever I was unprotected by shade. My phone overheated twice and shut down, making me lose almost a mile of tracking. We got back to our cars in 4.5 hours. We were all feeling the heat now and were tired. So were the dogs. I promised Kevin that I would stop by Vinny's Pizza and get him an order of spaghetti with four meatballs. By the time I got home, it was past 2pm and Kevin was already asleep.
The dogs slept the rest of the day. The 4.8 mile walk would not have been possible without the water and shade along the river.
***
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