Friday October 24, 2014 Jenner CA.
Last night I decided to go shopping at the shopping centers, but this morning I came to my senses and headed on down to Jenner to kayak for the day. The shopping will keep for a bit.
Ray had just got his boat in the water and waited for me to catch up. We decided to go for a hike up river someplace and headed that way.
The fresh water green weeds are growing
Here we are on the east end of Penny Island. This green weed has all of a sudden started growing in the estuary.
As far as I can tell this weed grows mostly in fresh water, not so much in the salt water. The last two summers there has been a lot of fresh water on the surface and the plant really took off.
But this summer, the estuary turned salty and the plant didn’t do good at all, almost none of it.
But when the river’s mouth closed a couple weeks ago, a fresh water layer formed on the top of the deeper salt water layer about eleven feet thick or deep. Apparently, it’s growing like mad, even though it’s not spring now,which sorta surprised me.
I noticed before that when it starts to get salty, it starts to die, that’s why I know it’s more a fresh water plant.
This is the plant as we paddled through it heading up the river. At times most of the lower estuary is choked with it.
Hiking to Lookout Point
As we paddled along we discussed where to hike for the day and we finally decided to go on up to Lookout point on the trail at eagle’s landing, which is to the right of this picture.
I should give a warning here that this trail is full of poison oak, which Ray and I don’t catch much, so this trail isn’t for just anyone, even if you could find it.
It was a little tight landing, but we made it. We tied our boats up, just in case and headed on up the hill.
Here is Ray, catching up to me as we started off on this hike.
The trail went straight up the hill through these ferns.
This is the view of Jenner as we sat on Lookout point for a bit, before deciding to continue on up the hill to the Upper lookout point, which also overlooks the Pacific ocean.
The up river view from Lookout point.
Upper Lookout Point
We hadn’t planned on it, but we headed for this rocky spot which is on top of the ridge, which we just named the Upper lookout point. We jumped a buck out of the grass as we approached.
The Pacific Ocean
This was the view from the Upper lookout point where we sat around for a bit resting up. This view looks south down the ocean towards Bodega Bay, which is on the other side of the longer land you can see in the far background.
The Old Indian Ladies Face Rock
As long as we were up here, we walked on over to the old Indian lady’s face rock which is in this picture which has a real good view of the Russian River down below.
One of the views of the Russian River from the Indian Rock, looking up stream.
We had a fairly long break on top of that rock before heading down for the day.
We passed through these pepperwood trees on the way down.
We got back in the boats and let the down river breeze carry us along slowly enjoying the day.
Whiskers
We passed one of my friendlier harbor seals with the whiskers.
We had planned to go down and look at the opened river’s mouth, but we only got as far as the boat ramp and pulled out for the day, a bit on the tired out side.
Our view looking down towards the river’s mouth as we headed on into the boat ramp.
We had a nice paddle and a good hike too for another great day on the Russian River Estuary.
