Wednesday November 20, 2013 Jenner CA.
I’d say this was an otter day
When I got going this morning, it had rained most of the night, but now it was just cloudy. I had two inches of rain in the gauge this morning. It rained hard for a bit last night.
The weatherman said more rain likely coming this afternoon. I put on my rain gear and headed for Jenner. When I got to Monte Rio, it started to rain lightly and was doing the same when I arrived at Jenner.
Bills to pay
First off, over to the little post office to mail my bills. John the trash picker upper was in there waiting for the shower to stop so he could walk home, so I shot the bull with him for a bit, killing time as I wanted to see if this light rain was going to stop too. It didn’t’.
I already had my rain gear on, so I put my boat in the water and headed across the river to Penny Island to the east end channel, where I tried to get under some trees to get out of the light rain, but the trees were saturated from last nights rains, so big cold drops of water were dripping off of those. Just the same, I took some time there before crossing the Island back channel to the south side of the river, heading on up.
Here is my view from the east island channel. It was raining lightly, with big cold drops dripping off the tree branches.
I crossed over to the south side of the river and headed on up towards otter’s log.
These three seal buddies of mine were resting on a log as I went by.
I stopped at otter’s log for a bit and continued on up to the Eagle’s landing area where I stayed for a bit. The light rain was still coming down, so eventually I headed back down the river.
This is the view as I headed back down the river. Fog and light rain, cover’s Jenner.
Just before I got back to Penny Island I pulled in behind a big redwood log stump and sat there out of the breeze for a bit. All of a sudden there was a big splash about two feet in front of my boat, but all I could see was the big splash. Whatever that was scared me and I must of scared it too. I backed up a bit to see if whatever it was would show itself?
Lots of otters
About a minute later about twelve river otter’s surfaced not far from me and headed on up the south river shore where I had just come from.
They were moving rather fast along the shore line, so I moved out about sixty feet from them and followed them on up the river, past otter’s log, past eagle’s landing all the way to the highway one bridge about a mile and a half. They went to shore twice in the brush, but a lot of otters communicate with each other and make a lot of noise so I didn’t lose them. I waited until they came back in the water and continued on up the river watching them. I took a lot of photos, but only a few are good ones in my opinion. Otters move around pretty fast most of the time and a lot of them where blurred or just washed out.
Here are some of the better ones.
This otter came out of the water for just a bit and is about to dive back in. The like to mark lots of spots with their scent and pee.
These two guys popped out right in front of me. Note the one has a small fish in it’s mouth.
See, I told you it had a little fish.
And teeth too.
At the highway one bridge, I decided I was tired of following them and let them go on their way as I turned around and headed back down the river. Just about this time the rain showers mostly stopped and the fog came in.
This is the my view of the fog as it rolled in, looking down river towards Jenner.
As I got closer to Penny Island, the sun started to break though and a light wind came up.
Approaching Penny Island in this one, just before the sun came out.
I decided to go around the north side of the island headed down to the river’s mouth area to avoid the wind.
That turned out to be a mistake, maybe the wind changed, but it put me right into it. It was only ten or fifteen miles an hour so wasn’t too bad and it was still not raining so that was rather nice.
There were lots of seagulls down near the mouth area as can be seen in the picture below.
The river’s mouth is open
I was curious to see if the river’s mouth was open or closed? It was not easy to tell today, so I had to get close. It appeared the river was open.
The photo below of is the open river’s mouth. It’s hard to tell, but just to the right of the seals, the water is flowing on out to the ocean in a small stream.
I sat around the mouth area for awhile until I got tired and then headed on back to the visitor center take out, letting the wind carry me along.
A little rain, a little fog and a little wind and some otters, for an interesting day of kayaking Jenner.
