Holy smoley, the water is right here!

Saturday was a lovely sunny day, so Bernie and I took the dogs for a walk.

Having heard that the Stanislaus River was high enough to put the city and county offices on alert, we decided to walk down the street to have a look at the river that flows past the Jack Tone Golf Course.

Well, normally it flows past. Currently the golf course is a back water appendage to the river, as you can see from this picture of the lovely golf course. All but the highest holes are under water.

We watched avocets and geese poking around the edges of the lake, and even saw a fairly large fish swimming around in what is normally the driving range. My guess is that it was a big entrepreneurial carp who saw a great opportunity for rare goodies.

Like any pair of lackwits with a couple big dogs and nothing better to do, after observing the flooding at the golf course, we decided to walk down to the levee and see where the break might be that allowed the course to be flooded. Although we came to no harm, and didn't reach the break, I have to say that I knew it was a stupid stunt to pull, that I knew better than to try to find where a flood was occurring, but that I could no more stay away from the river than I could stay away from the ice on the creek that ran past my parents' property, even when I knew the thickness was iffy. Old habits of curiosity and waywardness die hard.

What we saw surprised me. Normally, from the levee path, you look down some twenty-odd feet to the river. This time, the river was right there, only about three feet from the top of the levee. Across the river, the flood plain fields were all under water, as could be seen in this picture. Where the trees are in the distance is where a farmer's fields will be when the water goes down.

I don't know when that will be. Today has been cloudy, but we've had no rain yet; any rain in the mountains is going to end up down here in the Valley. There is talk of having to release water from the reservoirs so that they don't overflow -- that might put the water in the Stanislaus over the edge of the local higher levees.

Parts of the levee path we were walking on were very spongy and crumbly. They were not quite "wet" though they were damp. Unfortunately those levees are riddled with the holes and dens of ground squirrels. If the water comes up over them, it will eat them away like butter on fresh mashed potatoes.

When Babe started to limp, we turned back to find some shade for him to lie down and rest, and after our break, headed home, back past the golf course and up the street. There are lots of low-lying fields and farms that will keep our little residential area above flood danger ... at least for now.