Monday December 9, 2013 Jenner CA.
Another cool day, but the sun was out
As I was just leaving in my car this morning to go kayaking, my brother Tom, who lives next to me, flagged me down and said he wanted to go kayaking, so I stopped and went back and loaded another kayak. Seems he’s been reading my blog and wanted to go.
We arrived at Jenner to a crisp day, but the sun was out in force and there was only a low breeze, no fog and clear. Of course we were the only kayaks on the water. Most people stay home when it’s crispy out.
The ocean was at low tide and the river water level was real low, because of the tide, with a lot of mud shores exposed at this level.
We paddled across to Penny Island and slowly worked our way over to the south side of the river and on up.
There seemed to be a lot of birds out today. We passed a couple of these guys feeding on the shore.
You can see them feeding in this picture. They are cute little birds.
We continued on up the south side of the river to otter’s log and up to eagle’s landing. We stopped there for a bit and then continued on up the river at a leisurely pace, almost to the highway one bridge. There were a half dozen or so harbor seals in the water hunting around.
A day to stay in the sun
I turned around and started back down just before we got to the bridge as the sun was going down behind the little hill to our south and today, it was better to be in the sun.
We could get back in the sun if we headed down towards the river’s mouth, so we did.
This is our view of the town of Jenner as we paddled back down the river. You can see the water is fairly flat in this picture.
Going to shore on Penny Island
We paddled down the south channel of Penny Island and went to shore near the west end.
Here we are, just after going to shore near the west end of Penny Island. A bit muddy today at this level.
This is the view off the west end of Penny Island looking down towards the river’s mouth. Notice the biologists in the boat out there at the buoy? You need good eyes.
We didn’t stay long on the island, just a little stretch and we put back in the water and headed down towards the mouth area.
Biologists
Here’s the two biologists I mentioned. They are collecting the data off the measuring devices attached to the buoy. I stopped to talk with them a bit and asked if they saw any sea lions in today. Yes, they did, they’ve been swimming back and forth by them, but I hadn’t seen any yet. We also talked about fish a bit too.
Tom and I continued on to the river’s mouth where we sat around for awhile.
Sea Lions
Sure enough, some sea lions came by, hunting, but not to vigorously. Here’s one of them as it went by. There were also a lot of harbor seals swimming around us in the water most of the time we were down there.
We didn’t see any fish taken today, but seeing that kind of action is more of a rarity. It’s one of those things where you just have to be in the right place at the right time. The fact that sea lions are in the estuary is a good sign big fish are coming into the river, likely in small numbers, or we might have seen some action.
This is a picture of the river’s mouth open with birds and seals on the sandy beach.
After awhile, we started heading back towards the Jenner launch ramp.
This is the view of Jenner as we headed back.
Penny Island deer
I noticed something moving on Penny Island as we went by and went over to take a look and got this picture of two deer getting a drink of water. These are the same two deer I saw swim across to the main land yesterday. These two seem to spend most of their time on the island as I see them all the time.
It turned out to be a real nice day kayaking Jenner. Cool, but nice just the same.