Saturday March 29, 2014 Jenner CA.
Another day of dodging the rain
I heard the rain last night and this morning and didn’t expect to kayak today, but it cleared off just as I got up this morning for about the fourth day in a row, or so.
I was thinking it might be windy down at Jenner today, so I was thinking of kayaking Monte Rio instead, but couldn’t really make up my mind, so decided to drive down to Monte Rio and look. The river water was real muddy at Monte Rio from the rain. But it was real calm so I decided to go down to Jenner to check the weather. I could always drive back to Monte Rio if it was not so nice at Jenner.
Ok, Jenner it is
But when I got to Jenner, the wind was down and it looked real nice out, so I put my boat in the water.
Interesting enough was the fact that the muddy water from the rain storm hadn’t come down this far yet. I did see the muddy water about two miles up the river from here on the way down, but since the mouth isn’t letting out a lot of water right now, the muddy water was being held back a bit. That also meant the only clear water for the birds to fish in was down by Jenner and not up the river, at the moment.
I saw someone I knew by the visitor center. A guy named Patrick, so I was shooting the bull with him for a spell. They were having some kind of meeting in the visitor center and one of the ladies recognized me from my blog and pointed the finger at me, so I had some more talking to do, before crossing the river and paddling up to the Penny Island east end channel.
Everything is really turning a nice green around here with spring popping like it is.
This is my view as I entered the east end channel of Penny Island where I took a break for a bit.
Fishing cormorants
From there I worked my way up the south shoreline up to Otter’s log. There were a bunch of cormorants in the water fishing away as I approached.
Here’s a few of those cormorants fishing.
I followed them up to Eagle’s landing where a great blue heron joined the fishing cormorants hoping to get a share. When other birds see fishing going on, they tend to join in hoping for their share. Several great blue herons were flying around keeping up with the cormorants movements.
Eventually, the fishing cormorants moved on up the river leaving me behind.
I paddled up to where the trail to Indian rock was and took it easy there for awhile, under those over hanging trees you see below.
After I tired of that spot, I continued on up to this spot and pulled into the grass.
From there I could look across the river to Paddy’s rock where I could see a bunch of cormorants landing in a group on the gravel to rest up. There were a few seagulls, ducks and geese mixed in with them too. I paddled on over there to get this photo of them.
I saw something on the top of Paddy’s rock and investigated. This goose was resting there, sorta hunkered down. I don’t think it was nesting there, just resting?
This is the view looking back down to the town of Jenner from Paddy’s rock.
From there I paddled back over to the eagle’s landing area and saw this bird way up in one of the trees. Looks like some kind of hawk.
I left eagle’s landing and this is my view going back down the river along the south shoreline.
The open river’s mouth
I continued on down the river headed to the river’s mouth area at a leisurely pace.
On the way, I stopped by John’s place to see how he was doing with the big redwood slab. It was right where he left it yesterday.
I paddled over to the river’s mouth from there. It was open and the ocean was very rough.
The open river’s mouth today, looking out towards the Pacific ocean. The waves are breaking over the end of the Jetty.
Some seagulls landed near me and were eating something I couldn’t see in the water. All I can say is whatever they were eating, they were small and there were a lot of them, but I couldn’t see anything.
About four PM, I started to head on back to the visitor center, but on the way, I decided to go back to the little channel on the east end of Penny island for a bit and almost fell asleep resting there.
Time to go home and I did.
Another nice day dodging the rains at Jenner.
