Monday February 2, 2015 Jenner CA.
I was curious to see if the river’s mouth had stayed closed or opened by itself last night as I approached Jenner this morning. I could see right away that the river level was high on the way down so knew it was still closed.
I put my boat in the water and paddled across to Penny Island where I stopped to decide which way to go today.
John and I head to the closed river mouth
While I was sitting there, I saw John pull into the parking lot and launch his boat. He started down to the mouth area so that made up my mind. I caught up with him shortly and we continued on down to the mouth area. John’s always looking for fishing gear in the debrie along the river so we traveled fairly slow shooting the bull along the way, me telling John, hey you missed that one over there. He’s mostly finding little float type things.
We traveled along the shoreline here with the closed mouth just up ahead as far as you can see. The wind was down for a nice day. There was a bit of moisture in the air, maybe a light fog, making all my pictures not look so good.
We passed by this little grebe fishing away.
Yes, the mouth is closed
We paddled into this channel which is where the river’s mouth was before it closed. Notice the waves coming over the sand. It’s low tide right now, but I bet a lot more waves came over the sand at high tide. The new sign there is from the seal watch people saying to leave the seals alone as they will start to pup soon. 
We paddled on down to the end of the channel, which is also at the end of the river and sat and watched for a good while. John spent a lot of time looking through the debrie here looking for fishing gear. He found a few little things.
This harbor seal was on the beach directly in front of us.
And this great blue heron was sitting on top of Haystack rock which was also in front of us.
I think the mouth will open here
Eventually, we moved over to where the sand is the lowest right now, just in back of the end of the jetty. The water will go over this tonight I think and may open a new mouth in this area, maybe and maybe not?
We talked about some of the history of the mouth I knew. then started up the river along the south shoreline, passing by these seagulls bathing and resting in the river water.
We checked out a swamp, near swamp rock
We than headed on up the back channel of Penny Island and checked out this swamp area that is normally not accessible, except when the water is this high. We paddled around it, exploring and looking for fishing gear.. Notice the little house in the background. I bet the lady that lives there with her dog sees some really neat things here at times. They weren’t home so we didn’t have her dog barking at us. I normally don’t go in this area just to respect her privacy, although it is public, as is most water.
We than continued up the back channel and the fog came in as we cleared the end of Penny Island.
I told John I wanted to go up the river a little and check out an area that is only accessible when the water is high and said good bye at the end of the island as he headed in and I headed up river.
Change my mind
But about half way there, I remembered I had to repair the renters leaky toilet, so I turned around and started back as the fog backed off, looking down to the town of Jenner.
Checked out the water level gage
As I pulled into the boat ramp, I looked over to the visitor center and checked the water level gage. It read about 9.5 feet, up about a foot since yesterday. It starts to flood the visitor center floor just over ten feet.
Checked the door for the breaching notice
I checked the visitor center door for a notice they post the day before they open the mouth, but there was none posted. However, with the water this high, I think they might have posted one after I left. As if they don’t open it tomorrow, the visitor center will be in trouble and even if they do it might be flooded a bit in the morning, before they do. I’m sure they are watching it closely and maybe they are hoping it will open on it’s own. It would sure help if someone would just go down and use a hand shovel to dig a small ditch and save a bunch of money. I’m just an observer, so what they do isn’t of much matter to me. I’m just down this way to enjoy the river and I do.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Repaired the leaky toilet
I came on home and went over to repair the leaky toilet. I put a new flapper on it and adjusted the water level down a bit as it was flowing over the overfill pipe. Now we just have to give the system some time to drain down all the water that has filled up the leach field from the toilet flowing all the time.
I turned that one over to my brother Barry for now as I’m prepping my van for a trip up to Port Orford, OR. and won’t be around for awhile.
Lots of rain coming
It looks like it is going to rain up there for the next week or more. Looking at our weather here, it looks like it is also going to rain for the next week, so I’m thinking I might as well go up to Oregon and play as I’ll be just as washed out here and I can enjoy the storm just as well up there as Port Orford is known for it’s good storms.
Loading the van
So, tonight I’m loading some food and clothes in the van, thinking I might need more clothes as I know I might get a bit wet some days and things will take a a bit of time to dry out in my van.
Good test for the van
This will be a good test for my van as the last time I went up there, I had bad condensation problems on all the steel van walls. The water really ran down the walls and got everything wet and would mold eventually. Since then I cemented automotive carpet on all the steel walls which stops the condensation, so this will be a real good test to see just how well the carpet works out. I used polypropylene carpet, which is light and doesn’t mold easily. One of the problems with a small van is all my wet clothes have to dry out inside of the small space so it’s tough to keep everything dry. Lucky I have a propane heater, but eventually, the water has to get out of the van somehow. A sunny day with all the van doors open works out real well, but that means the rain has to stop long enough for the sun to come out, which might be some time looking at the weather report for that area.
Another nice day on the river, now back to loading the van.
