Sunday December 14, 2014 Jenner CA.
It wasn’t raining this morning as I got it together, but it was overcast. I got my stuff together and headed for Jenner to kayak for the day. When I arrived it was a bit windy and a bit chilly too.
I put my boat in the water and crossed over to Penny Island, not having decided which way to go for the day. I started heading up river, but then changed my mind and paddled down the north side of Penny Island to the west end. The wind was blowing down river and making some waves in the river as I went.
From there, I headed down towards the river’s mouth. On the way, I saw John at his house, so went over that way to shoot the bull with him for a bit. John picks up a lot of the trash down this way, so he related some of his stories of pulling boats and debrie out of the water during the last storm.
From his house, which is real close to the mouth, I cautiously headed down closer to it. The water had quite a bit of current and it was hard to find a place I could stop and watch things as my boat kept moving around, which also made it hard to get pictures. I was hitting quite a few rocks sitting there, which isn’t too good as the water surges up and down. If my boat is on top of one of them when the water surges down, it’s not so good as I’m now stuck on the rock and could tip over. In a short time, the water surges back and I carefully get away from any of those rocks. I had some close ones, but I stayed dry and so did my camera. It’s hard to take pictures and watch for the rocks just under the muddy water surface.
Here is what the open river’s mouth looked like taken from my rocky spot. The ocean is rough. Seagulls and pelicans are resting on the beach.
I left the mouth area and the wind died down a bit and it got a bit warmer, as I headed up this north side of the river towards the town of Jenner.
I continued on past Jenner and headed along the north shoreline, still not knowing where to paddle today.
I pulled in behind this big rock to take a break. Just to my left was a great blue heron trying to get something to eat. I had followed it up the river as it took off and landed a short distance ahead, repeating this as we went. We did that for about a half mile until we got to this spot where I watched it trying to catch fish.
Here’s the heron, just in front of me. It was using me to fish. Just as I moved ahead a little, it got a very small fish and I left it and crossed over to Penny Island.
As I approached the east end of Penny Island I decided to go ashore and look through some of the debrie to see if there were any treasures hidden in it. I checked out this pile of debrie and some of the island on this end too.
With the water up from the recent rains and down now, there was about two inches of mud on the shoreline which I discovered when I took out here. 
Besides the mud getting one muddy, it’s also good for checking out tracks of critters. I saw these tracks right near where I landed my boat. I think most of them are otter tracks.
I looked through the pile and found mostly a bunch of trash and nothing I was interested in. Sometimes I might find a paddle or even a boat in this stuff.
While I was there, I walked through the mud and did a little walk on the island. The east end of the island where the old milk barn is doesn’t get flooded, at least not so far, so there was no mud on that part.
Here’s the old milk barn.
I was taking a few drops of water, as in sprinkles, so I decided that it might be a good time to head in for the day, so I crossed back over the river to the boat ramp and headed to Monte Rio to checkout the boat ramp area and the river there.
This picture is looking down the steps to the road below where the boat ramp is. About four inches of mud down there. Almost too muddy to use. I hope the next rains coming tomorrow wash the mud back into the river a bit.
Harvested some potatoes
It was still early when I got home. I went out in the yard to my potato patch and harvested a few potatoes. I usually don’t have to dig them up. Little animals dig them up for me as they hunt for bugs in the soil and don’t appear to like to eat potatoes, so all I have to do is pick them up.
And got a bit wet
After that, I decided to go get the measurements of the length of the pipe that broke in the creek during the last rain storm. I needed those measurements to get some new pipe and the insulation to protect it from freezing. It was just starting to sprinkle a bit, but I decided to take a chance and go without my rain gear as this shouldn’t take very long.
On the way over, I saw this culvert was plugged up. Our road goes over it and was plugged up with debrie and more rain was coming so I had to unplug it which took more time and the sprinkles increased as I was working on it.
Behind the post on the left is a three foot diameter culvert that is a third plugged up with sticks and stuff that didn’t want to be removed easily, but I did get it. The water level was down enough to get the stuff out of it.
Of course while I was working on that, the rain increased some more, so when I was done, I had to go get the broken pipe measurements in the rain. I measured the pipe, but didn’t write the measurement’s down because the rain would get my paper wet.
As I was walking back home, I realized I’d forgotten the measurements and had to go back and get them again. :O) I found a place that wasn’t too wet and wrote them down this time.
When I got back home, I put dry clothes on and decided to work on making some bread, which I’m still doing.
