The sun hasn’t risen yet but, we’re both ready for today’s Delta ride. Initially, Roberto wanted to launch at Coyote point (same as yesterday) and then head right instead of left towards our Delta destinations. I say to him; are you feeling extra adventurous today? Do you now know that the only thing now standing between us and the Delta are countless miles and miles of nothingness but boring water from here to there. “We should conserve our gas and drive up. What do you think?”
Well, Mother Nature quickly intervened on my behalf and covered the entire San Francisco bay with a thick layer of fog spread out as far as the eye could not see.
And so, by 0900 we departed for Pittsburgh, California to launch for today’s Delta tour. We packed ourselves an overnight bag just in case one was needed. About an hour’s drive from the Bay Area we began to lose the fog.
We each towed our own personal watercraft on ever winding California freeways. The freeway signs around here favored the number 8. There’s the 580 and the 680 and soon it all just began to look like a different country to me.
A people mover commuter train was now in the middle of four and five lanes of freeway traffic on either side. All the traffic flowed in the direction of San Francisco while we drove at around 75 mph. We entered a near endless mountain tunnel. When we emerged at the other opening I saw way up ahead a break in the fog. The hills now were all gold in color from dried grasses or other vegetation and totally denuded of any trees.
Welcome to the bread basket of the central California countryside. Flowing south from here is the mighty Sacramento River. It meets the northbound San Joaquin River to form the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Here the Sacramento and the San Joaquin begin to mingle with smaller tributaries to form a 700-mile maze of sloughs and waterways surrounding 57 manmade islands.
Roberto asked me what a slough was; I responded with “a lazy person, and then I was forced to look it up since I corrected myself with skinny water.
A slough, also called a tidal channel, is a channel in a wetland. Typically, it is either stagnant water or slow flowing water.
The Bay-Delta Estuary is the largest estuary on the West Coast, where the mix of fresh and salt water provides a unique environment for growing crops like corn for ethanol that contributes towards the state’s $1.2 trillion dollar economy.
Our good friend Gpskevin from San Diego is something akin to M and his relationship with James Bond. In our case K is our angel from afar, who is also vicariously enjoying our adventures. This morning he must’ve stayed up late last night; as he forwarded us fresh gps tracks to follow so we wouldn’t get lost on any slough, delta or river waters.
Yoda Roberto is the overall master yoda when it comes to anything motorcycles; dirt or roads, makes no difference. Gpskevin is wise to keep him safe. Me, on the other hand; well, I’m the Master Yoda when it comes to the watercraft and boating world but, here I am seen as the more expendable one. And here it’s true that the guy with the best gps wins. It’s extremely easy to get lost.
Last night I dreamt that I heard an owl. This morning I found out from Roberto that there truly is an owl living in one of the trees. I slept with the bedrooms sliding glass door open enjoying the cool brisk bay air and all the smells from the nearby redwood trees surrounding his property.
And again this morning the second thing that I thought of was the smart toilet in the master bedroom. Who wouldn’t want a near $10k marvelous piece of human ingenuity to use. The marvelous seat begins to heat up the moment you so much as look at it or start to think of using it. And just as soon as you sit your bum down, a fresh stream of warm mountain water magically cleans and soothes itself way down there in ho ho territory land.
After a cafe con leche breakfast we drove to Costco and topped off our fuel tanks. Costco gas was $4.49 and in Robertos neighborhood they were charging $7.49 per gallon. The weather was extremely foggy so we weren’t in any real hurry to get into the fog.
My past experience with the Delta is that it always reminds me of the movie Cape Fear. There’s Nick Bolte as a bad defense attorney and Cady played by Robert De Niro, in a role filled by Robert Mitchum in 1962.
Cady is all covered in prison tattoos spelling out dire biblical warning. A redneck who learned to read in prison (“I started with Dick, Jane and Spot and went on to lawbooks”).
Somehow the family ended up in a houseboat on the Delta at night, a storm developed and the houseboat is now adrift and guess who shows up for dinner. Allot of the Delta can be sketchy looking since it’s primarily agricultural land surrounding the diked up levees.
The town of Walnut Grove (where we rode to for dinner) was founded in 1851, by John Wesley Sharp as a steamer stop on the Sacramento River. By 1865, Walnut Grove had become an important port for agricultural produce, primarily Bartlett pears.
In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the area and started their own town called Locke. This is where we had homemade ice cream for dessert.
And then as it was getting dark and the bugs were coming out we headed back to the B&W. With a hand held over our eyebrows we blanked out the bright sun as it was starting to go down. Next we tied up our boats right in fridge of our cottage and entered our two bedroom cottage with a kitchen. The bathroom toilet didn’t have any sanitized for your protection wrapping on it and the bath water smelled like agricultural sewage water that you wouldn’t want to drink but, we each got our own room. My pillow was as firm as a brick and the other one available was like a bale of straw.
Thanks to our four gps devices we never once got lost or misdirected.
Trawlercat Chronicles 