The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
The Russian River was running low and slowly. A few miles outside Guerneville at Steelhead Beach, several men stepped into the water, laden with flotation devices. A duck, a flamingo, a unicorn …
“Don’t you know?” asked Anna Deurloo, standing by me on the shore. “It’s Lazy Bear Week! That’s why the river is full of bears: big hairy men with beards. And Speedos.”
Deurloo, who lives in Guerneville, had made glittery bandannas for her crew of bears to wear at the annual celebration. Out on the water, Joe Souza of Long Beach adjusted his blinged-out headgear, hollering that he’d been coming to Guerneville every summer for more than 20 years.
“It’s a nice place to meet our friends from all over the country,” Souza said, “and get tricked into this river.”
1. Steelhead Beach is a popular starting place for warm-weather floats down the Russian River. 2. Families play in the Russian River near Johnson’s Beach. 3. The view from Korbel Winery includes vineyards and forest along the Russian River. (Photographs by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
When the weather is warm, the Russian River draws dawdlers of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ vacationers, longtime locals and Bay Area families. On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached. Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.
They know that time is of the essence. Many places on the river in and around Guerneville shut down November through early May because it gets cold and rainy and the river can run high and fast.
But for now through early October, with little rain and seasonal dams controlling the water’s flow, this might be California’s laziest river.
Still, for plenty of Californians, including me, this corner of Sonoma County is little-known territory. I’ve just gotten my first good look at the area, which is about 85 miles north of San Francisco, and I’m glad I arrived when I did.
For years, as Sonoma County’s wine country has grown ever more pricey and elegant, the communities of the lower Russian River have clung to their rustic, quirky and more affordable ways, in part because of the area’s vulnerability to changing seasons.
But the riverside scene is evolving. Since the pandemic, several new or revamped lodgings have boosted glamping and other upscale elements in a territory once better known for old cabins. At privately owned Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville, where parking was free in the old days, the fee is up to $10 a day. In the Johnson’s Beach lodgings, long known for summer-camp vibes, some rooms now come equipped with luxury linens and a French press. On the menu at the River Electric, there’s a “high-low dog” — a hot dog with black caviar — for $40. In other words, the lower Russian River is edging up-market.
“There’s a lot more new blood up here. A lot of new people in the last five years,” said Robert Baba, who runs Ideal Hardware in Forestville.
“Prices are going up and hotels are getting more posh,” said Michael Rex, owner of Guerneville’s Russian River Bookstore. But still, he said, “there’s a lot to do here where you don’t have to spend a dime.”
Here’s what I found in four days as a Russian River rookie.
River guide Keith Chandler prepares to kayak at the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Forestville: Stepping into the river
If you want to imagine time standing still, start at Burke’s Canoe Trips, which has been renting canoes and kayaks for decades. At Burke’s, which sits at the edge of Forestville (population: about 3,300), most customers rent a watercraft ($95 per canoe, $60 per kayak) before noon, drift 10 miles down river to Guerneville, then catch a Burke’s bus back to where they began.
The river water is shallow, often 3 to 5 feet deep. The beaches are pebbly. The redwood groves begin within stone-skipping distance of the Burke’s property and follow the river downstream. Drinking water and sunblock are vital. Sightings of blue heron, egrets and river otters are common. (Burke’s also has camping with hot showers and fire rings, at $20 per person per night.)
Canoes await paddlers at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A cat sleeps alongside a Jesus statue and beach gear at Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville along the Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“People know that no matter how the world is doing, when they come to the river, it’s going to be like it used to be,” said Linda Burke, second-generation owner of the business.
“It could be 1946 when you’re paddling,” said Ted Schroeder, longtime manager at Burke’s.
But even at Burke’s, things change: Demand is up for kayaks, down for the metal canoes, which are heavier.
Along Front Street, Forestville’s tiny commercial core, you could get a corn dog for $3.30 at Carr’s Drive-Inn, which looks like a time capsule from 1979. Or you could get some wood-fired pizza on the big, bright patio of Sonoma Pizza Co., which opened in 2022; or maybe a cup of organic ice cream at Angela’s (since 2023).
If you want to go luxe, you can eat or sleep at the Farmhouse Inn, a 6-acre property on River Road that includes 18 rooms and cottages, a pool and some spa services amid lushly landscaped grounds. Its restaurant occupies an 1873 farmhouse. (Nightly rates start around $440.)
For a lot of people, however, Forestville is just a place to slip into the lazy river — often at Steelhead Beach, half a mile downriver from Burke’s.
Glamping tents are a central part of Dawn Ranch, near the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
As glampers arrive, Guerneville gets fancier
Guerneville (population: about 4,500) is the hub of human activity on the Lower Russian River. River Road becomes Main Street there, and in summer its shops and restaurants buzz with people. Riverfront recreation at Johnson’s Beach is a block away. A network of redwood forest trails awaits 2 miles up the road in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve.
Be warned, however, that on weekends, Guerneville is often short on parking. Consider parking for the day ($10) in the big dirt lot at Johnson’s Beach, which has food, drinks, rental kayaks, canoes and inner tubes, campsites, historic bungalows, modern tiny cabins, canvas cabanas and a four-bedroom lodge. There are about 35 units in all, open mid-April through October. (The bare campsites start at $55, historic bungalows at $165.)
“It’s a lazy river and walkable to town, so we can camp and eat at restaurants,” said Kim Loda of Oakland as her son, Axel, 10, showed off his juggling skills near the Johnson’s Beach snack bar. “I don’t know why my family didn’t bring me here growing up.”
The River Electric, a resort along the Russian River in Guerneville, Calif., includes glamping tents.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Guerneville grew up as a 19th century logging settlement, prospered as a weekend getaway for San Franciscans arriving by ferry and train in the 1920s, slumped in the ‘30s and suffered extensive flooding in the 1960s. It entered a new chapter in the late 1970s, when a handful of gay entrepreneurs began buying up and revamping rustic resorts and bars.
First, in 1978, was a riverside getaway called Fife’s. Another early gay-owned venture was the Rainbow Cattle Company bar, still in business on River Road, a.k.a. Main Street. (Every week on Give Back Tuesday, the bar stages raffles, offers $5 dinners and earmarks 10% of revenue for charities.)
When the 1980s and 1990s arrived, Guerneville suffered deeply — from the AIDS epidemic and from repeated floods.
Nimble & Finn’s sells ice cream inside the Guerneville Bank Club building in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Yet a generation later, the community has gained ground.
Since 2008, entrepreneur Crista Luedtke has built a series of businesses, including Boon Eat+Drink and Boon Hotel+Spa. The Guerneville Social Club, “Russian River’s First Queer-Owned Social Club,” is due to open with a restaurant, bar and shop in 2027. Lazy Bear gatherings have been staged every July since 1996 by the nonprofit Lazy Bear Fund to raise money toward LGBTQ+ community health. There’s also a Russian River Pride parade Sept. 19.
Cars park along Main Street on July 30 in Guerneville.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Timing my visit to avoid weekend crowds, I ate a dinner of chicken in tasty mole negro at Three Cultures Kitchen, which opened last year. I got ice cream at Nimble & Finn’s, lunch at Coffee Bazaar and a $15 sandwich to go at the Korbel Winery, which offers a deli, tasting room, wine shop and free tours at its scenic site about 3 miles west of Guerneville. I also browsed at Russian River Books & Letters.
“I ended up here because of the pandemic. It just went on and on, so I decided to open the bookstore,” said bookshop owner Michael Rex. Since that time, Rex said, he’s seen a growing number of remote workers.
Most notable among the new and renovated Guerneville resorts: Dawn Ranch and the River Electric, both with a glamping focus, both with docks on the river.
Dawn Ranch, dramatically upgraded in 2023, is a 22-acre, all-ages property that once held the Fife’s resort. The verdant grounds feature 86 cabins, cottages, chalets and glamping tents (open year-round) that share bathrooms and showers. There’s an upstairs restaurant, spa services, a pool and boathouse bar, along with a dock and private beach at the end of the short trail that feels like a secret path.
The tents, which start at about $300 nightly, have furniture, electricity and Wi-Fi, but if you show up on a 93-degree afternoon, as I did, your un-air-conditioned tent will be about the same temperature. That’s when it’s time to jump in the pool or river.
The Russian River runs past a dock at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville, Calif.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The River Electric is sited on long-idle, flood-prone 12-acre expanse of riverside land that old-timers remember as the site of J’s Amusement Park in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2025, the current owners unveiled a newfangled resort with a restaurant, two pools (one of them round) and 46 furnished, electrified tent units, which start at about $260 nightly.
The resort stays open until Oct. 31. Then, by design, most of the resort will be carted away or submerged when the river rises.
“Everything except the concrete, we take off-site, Which is wild,” said River Electric’s Jessica Baker, who gave me a tour. The resort also sells day passes for $38 and hosts many weddings and special events.
Yet another glamping option is Guerneville’s Autocamp Sonoma, which opened in 2016. It doesn’t have river frontage, but it includes 25 Airstream trailers and 10 glamping tents in the shadow of a redwood grove.
Stand-up paddle-boarders are common at the Russian River estuary, next to Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This is how the river ends: with roaring wind on an empty beach
Heading west from Guerneville, you roll through Monte Rio, seeing more redwoods, cabins and glimpses of river.
You might spot the 11-room Inn on the Russian River, a recently upgraded property whose riverside perch includes a private dock and summer rates of roughly $260 to $430 nightly.
Kayakers often come across harbor seals in the Russian River estuary at Jenner on the Sonoma County coast.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
What you’ll need to imagine is the Bohemian Grove, which hides in the nearby forest, serving as a haven for the rich, powerful, famous and all-male members of the Bohemian Club since the 19th century.
Gathering every July at that 2,700-acre compound, club members, who have included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Bob Weir, are said to stage a ritual “cremation of care,” burning an effigy of “care” in front of a 40-foot owl statue. (Suddenly, Burning Man seems a little less original.)
Anyway, a casual tuber or kayaker can’t float all the way to the Pacific from Forestville. (Obstacles include seasonal dams at Johnson’s Beach and Vacation Beach.) But if you drive the river road past Monte Rio and the historic but touristy shops at Duncans Mills, you reach the coastal hamlet of Jenner. That’s where the water flows into the Pacific, where the Russian River goes from mild (in summer) to wild.
To see the converging waters and feel the roaring wind, you can drive to Goat Rock Road and Goat Rock Beach. Or you could stop for a snack at Cafe Aquatica, whose patio fronts the water’s edge.
Or you could do both, followed by a night at River’s End, where a restaurant and five woodsy guest rooms enjoy sweeping views of the river, sea and sea stacks.
Kayakers paddle through sunset on the Russian River estuary, which looks out at the sea and sea stacks near Jenner.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I did that. And on my last morning along the river, I got up early and met Keith Chandler of Jenner-based Watertreks Ecotours at water’s edge. Then we paddled around the estuary on a pre-breakfast kayak tour.
“I never get tired of this,” Chandler told me.
Some tours go out by night, focusing on bioluminescent plankton. We skirted Penny Island, where native Pomo people lived and farmed for generations before immigrants from Europe arrived. In fact, Chandler’s boss, Suki Waters, is part Pomo. Jenner might be small, but river, sea, natives and newcomers all converge there.
For a good chunk of this morning, however, there was just two of us in a kayak, sidling up to egrets, cormorants and harbor seals, watching pelicans glide in formation over the long, empty beach where the Russian River ends.
