Friday July 12, 2013 Jenner, CA.
We explored a new place toady, which we named Fern Grove
I was at Jenner today around 11 AM and put my boat in the water and headed on up the river at a leisurely pace, just poking along enjoying the nice day. It was almost flat with just a gentle breeze, with just enough fog to block the sun.
Steve said he was going to go up to this new place I showed him a couple days ago and do some exploring, so I was also headed up that way. I thought maybe I’d catch him coming back.
For some reason there seemed to be a lot of birds on the water today. I ran into this osprey early on, just past Eagle’s landing. We took a break in about the same place and it sat there until I moved on up the river and it also moved on up the river.
It landed just above me again and was in a better place to get a picture, so I tried again.
I continued on up the river to Seal Haven, where I took this picture of the seals taking it easy on the old redwood logs in the area.
As I looked around the seals I noticed a lot of different birds sitting on logs in the area. Some geese and cormorants in the picture below.
A great blue heron and a goose to the right.
There was a snowy egret too.
And all these ducks sitting on Goose Nest Island. A cormorant too.
I moved on up to Goose Nest Island, which we named a couple days ago. The anchor chain is located to the left in this picture. I’m headed up the river from here.
This is the anchor chain and big timbers I spotted a couple days ago.
Where the anchor chain goes around this old redwood log, it’s plated the iron into the redwood stump and petrified a part of it. See how the iron chain is attached to the redwood stump. The redwood bark you see is ironofied, a word I made up.
At first I thought these big rocks where part of the river bed, but, looking closer that’s not the case. Note that they are on top of the timbers in the below picture. This is either some kind of boat, or some kind of thing weighted down with the rocks, maybe an anchor point? But, that chain is really too big for most things that might be anchored in the river and nothing that was ever anchored in the river that I know about would ever need a chain this big to hold it secure in this area. It could be the chain was salvaged from a wrecked ship and put to use for what ever this thing is?
About a hundred feet down river from the chain thing is this vertical log. I was looking close at it when I noted that it had a bunch of lead in it as can be seen below. Lots of it.
See, 22 cal. and on up. Lots of lead.
I’m not sure if this log was a target or all this lead was from people shooting things on the log over the years. Here’s a zoomed in shot of a copper coated jacket bullet in the log.
I went back and checked the chained log for bullets and did find a few, but not near as many as this log. I also found a lot of blood on top of that log, looked like something just got eaten there just before I arrived.
I stayed on Goose Island for about a half hour exploring around, then continued on up the river. This is where I stopped for a bit at Markum hole to take a little break.
I rested up a bit then continued on up to the next break spot, pictured below.
That’s what I do, go up the river, stop, take a little break and continue.
Here’s another break place further up the river, almost up to the Great Blue Heron Rookery tree. The new place we explored and named is just up a ways from here, just to the right of center, in an old forest that is steep, so I don’t think this area has ever been logged.
I found Steve already here, so I joined him and we looked around the area for a couple hours. Lot of big ferns in this area and no poison oak. We named this area Fern Grove.
Lots of ferns as can be seen in the picture below, which is of a trail we were checking out.
We started back late in the late afternoon. I spied some fresh dirt on a bank of the river just as we started back down it. Something was digging a hole and stopped as I made some noise. I put the bow of my boat into it while looking, that’s the mark I made in it and you can see the dirt on my bow. Don’t know what was digging here? Maybe I’ll see it next time if I remember to check it out again.
We were still heading down river about seven thirty PM and the breeze had died. This photo is of a tree on Penny Island with the late sun in the background, looking west, just before we headed in for the day. 
We were in by eight PM. Let’s see, 11 AM to eight PM, that’s nine hours out on the water today, with some of that time hiking too.
Nice day on the water at Jenner.
