Thursday, Apr. 19, 2013, Jenner, CA.

Nice in Jenner today

Kayaking Jenner today was what I had planned. I got off to a little late start, I was down there around noon and put my boat in the water. The sun was out, with a light breeze.The ocean tide was low, so the river water was on the low side exposing a lot of muddy shore line.

I did my normal thing and paddled across the river to Penny Island where I sat around for a good while, just watching. If you sit and watch long enough, something usually happens. In this case a new family of geese came out of the bushes and did their thing.

A family of Geese showed up.

Six little ones and a mommy and papa showed up as I was sitting there, as you can see below.

Looked like the little ones where born not too long ago. They continued to walk up the beach as I was sitting there in my kayak watching them, as you can see in the picture below.

Headed down to the river’s mouth.

I decided to go down to the rivers mouth to see what has changed since I was last down there, instead of going up the river like I usually do first. The tide was way out and the river’s water level was way down exposing a lot of beach title area. There were a group of Terns sitting on the west end of Penny Island on the exposed title area as you can see below. They seem to be fishing the estuary for small fish at this time of year.

I took my time and paddled down to the river’s mouth, passing a big flock of Gulls and some harbor seals in the water. I also watched a tern or two dive into the water from high above, but didn’t look like they caught anything.

River’s mouth was wide open.

The river’s mouth was wide open. Lot’s of seals laying on the beach there, many had new pups.

Below, the view is looking out the river’s mouth, toward the Pacific Ocean, which you can see as the white wave in the middle of the picture.

Seals with pups

Quite a few seals had new pups, two are pictured with their momma’s below.

I hung around the mouth area for over an hour,  just sitting their enjoying the day and watching what was going on. There’s lot’s of types of birds flying and some in the water and harbor seals swimming around, so there is plenty of stuff to watch, besides the people on the beach and up at the overlook on the road above.

The channel was likely closed because the tide was so low.

After awhile, I started working my way back up the river, going around the backside channel of Penny Island. Since the tide was out so far, I expected the channel not to be open all the way, which meant I likely would not be able to get though to the river on the east end of the island.

Sure enough, when I got to the east side of the island, there wasn’t enough water to paddle my kayak back up to the river, so………………. time for a little hike on Penny Island and if I waited long enough, the tide would come back in and I could continue on up the river as I had planned. That could take several hours. Since the tide was out so far, it gave me a good chance to explore the shore line.

Below, you can see the tide is out and the channel of water to the right is not much water for the kayak to go though.

Below, you can see my boat, just barely, in the grass, where I went to shore to walk around the island area. I walked all around the east end of the island shore first.

Tried to walk around the main east end of Penny Island.

After that, I tried to walk around the east end of the island a little, that’s where the old milk barn is. It’s rather over grown, so it’s not so easy to look around.

I made it down to the old house site, which is a ways into the bushes, very overgrown and full of berry bushes, so one has to be careful.

Below, you can see a pic of part of the old house, just under the cherry tree. The house is rapidly falling apart.

After all that hiking around and exploring the tide still hadn’t come up enough to get my boat though, but it looked like it was starting to rise, so I took a nap on the island for about an hour while I waited and finally, around five PM, the water had risen enough for me to continue my trip up the channel. I had waited so long, that I decided to call it a day and headed in towards the visitor’s center in Jenner.

On the way, I passed this little bird sitting on a stump in the water, just taking it easy. Not sure what type it is, but they come around at certain times of the year and hunt along the shore, usually in small flocks.

Most of the wind had died down during the afternoon, so it was a real nice day. I pulled the boat out abut six PM and went home for a nap.