Sunday March 22, 2014 Jenner CA.
The river’s mouth gets breeched on Monday too
It was real foggy as I approached Jenner this morning in my car. That’s ok with me, just keeps more people away. And anyway I was hoping it would clear and be sunny like yesterday did.
I unloaded my boat and parked my car and then I saw Bill over in the corner of the parking lot. I went over to chat with him a bit. He’s good for the local news of Jenner.
I spotted the county poster man
After I got that, I was headed for my boat when I noticed an orange shirted guy walking towards the visitor center with a piece of paper in his hand.
I asked if that was the notice to breech the river’s mouth tomorrow and he said, yes it is. So Monday the Sonoma County Water agency will open the river’s mouth, if it doesn’t’ open itself before that?
Water level gauge
I got in my boat and checked out the water level gauge on the visitor center. About 8.75 feet, almost to the deck of the center. The center gets flooded just over ten feet, so they need to open up the river’s mouth so the water can get out and drop the level of the river’s estuary.
I paddled on across the river to Penny Island and checked out the little channel on the east end to see if any of the big logs came back in. They didn’t. Good. They still may come back before the high water drops or during it’s dropping?
I paddled over to the south shoreline and continued on up the river to almost the highway one bridge, taking my time as usual.
The fog started to burn off and the wind came up just a little so I looked for a place to take a break out of the wind. With the water level this high, it opens up a few new places that I can’t usually get too.
Dead Deer Gulch
I pulled into what I call Dead Deer Gulch, which is under some real old trees that are really wind blown.
This is the view as I entered Dead Deer Gulch. A big old fir tree with lots of ferns.
And once I was in there, this is the view I had. A nice protected place. A little nap was in order.
Lots of birds on the grass
After awhile the fog was gone and the sun was out and the wind was just a breeze. There were lots of birds across the river from me along the shoreline in the nice green grass. I paddled on over there to get a closer look.
There are quite a few geese in the area at this time. I think they like to eat the nice green grasses.
Ducks squabble too
These two pair of Merganser ducks swam by and there seemed to be some kind of squabble going on? Notice the two male mergansers have their tails up in the air and seem to be doing some kind of communication with the female. Shortly after that, the female got out of the water, while the others swam on. It’s possible male mergansers have a lot of problems with the females as they only stay around them during mating season? :O)
Here’s the three remaining mergansers in front of some geese as they left the other female duck behind.
I paddled back across the river to the other side and continued on down the river.
A pack rat nest
I went by this nest which some may mistake for a beaver lodge. But as far as I know, we have no beavers on the river, at least, not yet.
It’s a pack rat nest, built a little too close to the water. They don’t build them in the water, but in the brush, but the water level has risen to almost flood this one. It’s about four feet across at the bottom.
Part of Penny Island is flooded too
On down the river I went to the west end of Penny Island which was flooded, so I paddled on in to check it out.
This is the view looking over a flooded part of Penny Island down towards the ocean. The island is usually exposed way out past the grassy islands you see in the photo.
I spent a little time on the flooded part of the island before continuing on down to check out the river’s mouth area.
The ocean piled more sand up
During the night or sometime since I last looked, the ocean piled up some more sand which closes the river’s mouth.
I was talking with Ken down here yesterday and it only had about a foot of sand above the river’s water level and now it was about three feet higher as can be seen in the picture below. Some harbor seals where beached there too with some seagulls.
River’s mouth is closed up with sand
The ocean was fairly rough out there, that’s what piles up the sand and closes the river’s mouth. See those big waves splashing? Note they are a bit brown, which means they are carrying sand and piling it up on the beach. This is one of the spots the river goes out and it’s lower than the other spot, so they will likely open it here, unless it opens by itself during the night and this is the only place it can do it right now. It’s only about six inches of sand over the river’s water level so it doesn’t have far to go.
John the trash guy shows up
While I was down there, John shows up. John spends a lot of time picking up trash in the Jenner area. While I was talking with him he says, I’m getting a bit dizzy, and reaches for his pace maker, which is one of those that gives you a good jolt it you need one and I think that’s what it was doing? I was thinking, now what if? But the pace maker seemed to do it’s thing and we didn’t need to do anything drastic.
Here is John with his trash bucket.
Sea Lions in the estuary hunting
While I was talking with John, the sea lions put in an appearance and I was able to get a photo of one of them. They have been in the estuary fishing most of the time I’ve been there for a long time now, since the first part of February. They are hard to get photos of, because they usually are only on the surface for an instant and then back under water again.
I talked with John for quite awhile and followed him for awhile, while he picked stuff out of the water and bitched about how messy people were. :O) Lucky for him and me he didn’t seem to have any more trouble with his heart. :O)
I was getting tired as I’d been out most of the day, so I said bye to John and headed on in for the day.
This is the view I had of Jenner as I went in for the day.
I pulled my boat out of the water and went on home for the day.
At home I had a little nap and then went out in the yard and enjoyed the rest of the day, until the sun went down.
Nice day.
Making some non corny cookies
I decided I better bake some more oatmeal raisin cookies. Because of my corn allergy, I can only eat this kind of stuff if I bake it myself with carefully selected ingredients that don’t’ have corn type stuff in them. That’s not really that easy to do, but I’ve sorta figured it out and developed my own recipe.
I eat them too fast to mess with making the standard cookies, so cook them in a pan to speed things along a bit and cut them into cookies.
You’d think it would be easy to make a cornless cookie out of this stuff, but it’s not. One must watch every ingredient for corn stuff in it, as most things we eat today have some kind of stuff made from or grown on corn in it. For instance, I haven’t been able to find a cornless butter so I can’t use any. I substitute olive oil for that and also have found that some no-corn sour cream helps out a bit too.That’s just it for one of the ingredients. I have to do something for almost all of the ingredients to be safe, but it is certainly worth it. :O)
Yummmmmmmm.