Sunday December 22, 2013 Jenner CA.
Can I yak with a sore back?
My back was still hurting good when I got up this morning. It took a bit to get it under control, then I was wondering if I could load and unload my yak if I went kayaking?
Only way to find out was to go down to the river and try it out.
I arrived at Jenner just after 11 AM and put my boat in the water. The sun was out and there was only a light breeze. The water level was fairly high, but it was high tide and I didn’t know if the mouth was open or closed. Turned out it was open today.
I paddled over to the east end of Penny Island and was thinking I should do a little walk today as my back doesn’t seem to be as bad when I’m walking, so I paddled down the north side of Penny Island a bit and put ashore for a little walk.
This is where I put ashore on Penny Island for a walk.
I entered a trail there and worked my way into the center of the island. Only problem was under all that grass there was some standing water, so I couldn’t go far without getting wet. I think the water is left over from an earlier river mouth closure that backed the water up over it.
This is what the center of the island looked like where I entered it.
So, since I couldn’t go very far, I mostly just puttered around and spent some time looking around in the grassy shoreline where I pulled my kayak in.
This is the grassy shoreline where I spent a little time today, looking down towards the river’s mouth area. Some ducks are on the water.
I couldn’t tell if the river’s mouth was closed or open until I paddled down there. It was open as you can see in this picture.
The Pacific ocean was real rough today too.
There were a bunch of sea lions hunting around inside the river ‘s mouth. The ones in the below picture kept barking every time they passed the seals and made a lot of noise. Sea lions are in the water and harbor seals on the sand. I didn’t see the sea lions take any fish, so not sure what they were hunting?
By this time, the water had really flattened out. This is a photo of the flat water looking back up the river to the town of Jenner, as I started to head in for the day.
And this is the view I had from the boat launch ramp as I pulled out, looking down the river towards the ocean.
I was careful loading my boat lifting only one end of my boat onto the car at a time, so I didn’t have to left the boat all up at once and made it ok.
It was real nice down there, especially for the shortest day of the year.
