Friday September 12, 2014 Jenner CA.
It was a bit overcast when I arrived at Jenner this morning, but the wind was down and the fog was lifting as I paddled across the river to Penny Island and on up the river.
White pelicans
I spied the white pelicans just up ahead and headed on over near them. They are in this picture, but hard to see.
As I was heading over to the white pelicans, a harbor seal was swimming around me, coming very close and not seeming to be bothered by my presence, if anything, it was checking me out. The seal hung around me for quite awhile, until I headed on up the river after checking out the pelicans.
The pelicans were resting in this area, near the swamp rock trail.
They’ve seen me often enough that they didn’t spook and fly off.
Ray joins me
While I was sitting there checking out the pelicans, I saw Ray’s truck pull into Jenner, so I waited until he caught up with me before continuing on up the river at our slow pace, along this spot at the redwood log grave yard. The sky is clearing a bit and the sun is starting to poke through a bit.
Musk rat nests
We decided to go up to the musk rat nests area and poke around on the shore, so we went ashore here, where there seems to be many musk rat nests, over ten.
I fell over the bank while checking out a nest
While we were poking around in the lush vegetation, I was checking out this nest, which you can barely see in this picture, looking for it’s entrance, when I fell over the side of the bank here. I had just found it’s entrance and was intent on seeing it, when, over I went.
It was only about five feet to the river shore below me. As I started to fall over the side, I looked to see what I could grab onto to stop my fall, but all that was there were some salmon berry bushes which have big thorns on them, so I couldn’t grab them, so I turned over and slowly fell on my back in the berry bushes. I had no choice and was lucky I only got a few thrones in my hands. I laughed a lot over the situation as I now had to extricate myself from the berry bushes I was laying on top. I turned over very carefully and slowly got myself out of the berries, then had to find a way back up the bank, while all this time Ray was laughing away at me. :O) I didn’t get hurt, so I was laughing a bit myself. :O)
We saw a lot of musk rat nests. I’m pretty sure these are all musk rat nests as the entrances are too large for regular rats.
This is a nice lush area and we’ll be keeping an eye out for the musk rats. There seems to be a lot of these musk rat nests. The musk rats seem to have moved into the area last winter in fairly large numbers.
We had a good walk and put our boats back in the water and headed back down the river along the south side.
Otter fishing away
Something caught my eye as we paddled along. An otter was fishing and wasn’t a bit concerned with our presence.
I think it was eating some small fish, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was eating for sure?
A harbor seal buddy
We continued on down to the redwood log graveyard, where this seal that had been following us most of the day had staked out this underwater log and didn’t want to give it up for us, as we approached.
This little guy seems to be accustomed to us, as it sees me most every day.
When we left, we paddled around it and left it to it’s rest.
Headed down the back channel
We paddled on down the back channel of Penny Island and Ray went on in for the day as we rounded the west end of the island.
Headed for the river’s mouth
I went on down to the river’s mouth to check it out.
It was high tide and the mouth was wide open with harbor seals and birds resting on the sand.
I didn’t stay long and headed back in shortly and headed on home for the day.
Home for the day
I needed a nap when I got home, then spent some time getting some of those berry thorns out of my hands. I think I got most of the thorns out, maybe one or two left.
After resting up, I worked a bit on the van, tightening up a leak in my gas filler pipe and tightening up the heater hoses I put on the other day.
That done, I took the rest of the day off.
Armstrong Valley Farm
I went on over to my brother’s garden to eat a few strawberries.
His garden is looking good. Lots of lettuce and things growing in it.
Lettuce.
The bell peppers are looking good too.
That was it for my day, another good one.