Tuesday February 9, 2016 Jenner CA.
VA’s working on things
I was a little late getting it going this morning, but that meant I was around when the VA lady called to confirm that they were working on getting my allergy appointment to an outside local party set up and it usually takes about seven days to set these things up. Once I get an allergy doc, then I still have to set up an appointment. But at least things are moving in the right direction.
Paddle time
I left for Jenner shortly after that phone call. I saw Ray’s truck in the parking lot, so I knew he was down here kayaking somewhere.
It was high tide, so I decided to head down to the river’s mouth area first, so headed down along the north shoreline here. The wind was up a bit, but the sun was out nice.
Mouth is open for the steelhead to come in
The river’s mouth was open and the ocean was real rough making some nice big splashes up on the rocks on the jetty.
This is looking out the open river’s mouth with some harbor seals resting there on the sand. Later Ray tells me he saw some seals eating big fish in this area this morning, so the steelhead are still coming into the river to start their spawning.
The wind seemed to be picking up, so I didn’t stay in the mouth area long and headed back up along Penny Island to the upper end channel here and sat for a bit.
The wind was starting to die down, so I headed on up the river along the south shoreline.
I see Ray’s kayak up ahead
At this spot, eagles landing, I could see Rays yellow kayak up ahead on the shoreline, so I knew he was out for a hike to the old Indian rock on the ridge top.
As I paddled over a bit closer, I could see two people up on the rock and they waved.
At first, I hadn’t planned on hiking on up there, but as I thought about it, I decided to land and hike up there.
I paddled past this golden eye duck as I headed to shore.
Hiking up the hill
I decided to take my time walking up the trail as I didn’t want to get overheated and get my hives activated and get to itching a lot and I thought they might come down as I was going up, but that was ok.
I hiked up the trail here and yes, there is lots of poison oak in this area, even though it is dormant right now.
Well, I got a little warm and itched a bit, but I made it up to the rock before they came down.
Here’s the view down river from the rock. Things look nice with all the greened up grass.
And here’s the view looking up the river from the rock.
Ray was up on the rock with his daughter Anna whose been wanting to hike up to the rock for some time now, so she got her wish today. She thought it was a pretty neat rock and it is.
Heading back down to the river
Here’s Ray and Anna just as we started down from the rock on my secret trail. The trail is not really secret, but you have to know where it is to use it, or you won’t be going far on this hill and you better not get poison oak, or you might be sorry. :O) Anna says she gets it some, but toughed it out. :O)
I followed them down the trail. Anna is having a little swing on the limb as she passes.
Here’s Ray and Anna as we got back to the river where the boats were parked.
River otters
We got back into our boats and started down the river slowly drifting along, when I think it was Anna that said there’s an otter. Two of them where diving and feeding along the shoreline as we watched. Here’s one of them.
For some reason the wind really picked up as we moved down the river, but that’s the way it is when you are by the ocean.
We paddled down along this shoreline headed for the boat ramp at Jenner ahead.
We took our boats out for a nice day.
Visiting Charlie turns out to be work
I headed on home, but decided to stop and visit my friend Charlie near Monte Rio, so I drove up to his house and found him home.
He seemed to be having a bit of problem with his electrical system in his house.
Seems it started blowing breakers last night and now it was blowing out light bulbs.
I told him to get his electrical meter out, so I could take some measurements and find out what’s going on. I checked and checked and found that he had 230 volts on his 110 line which meant he lost his ground or neutral line which let the 110 volt circuits float. That’s bad because it puts 220 volts on the 110 line which can blow any 110 volt equipment out. We could already see some lights had blown out.
I helped him check things until it got dark and told him to check out the wire that goes to his house tomorrow looking for a break in the ground line. His electrical supply wires come from another house and are not run properly, so I suspect he has a problem somewhere in that mess. He may have blown out a bunch of his computer and T’V stuff, only time will tell once he gets things fixed.
I got home just after dark and that was my day.