Sunday August 30, 2015 Jenner CA.
It was already a bit on the windy side as I arrived at Jenner this morning and put my boat in the water. The sun was out and it was going to high tide. High tide meant I can get into the Willow Creek area, so I headed on up the river at a leisurely pace.
This egret was sitting on a rock and jumped into the air and landed again on the same rock. It’s just landed and is trying to get it’s balance in the strong wind.
I passed on by and sat here at Muskrat Nest beach for a spell before continuing on up the river.
I was drifting up the river in the wind fairly fast, five to ten miles an hour when I spotted some otters coming my way. With the wind blowing me around and trying to hold onto my paddle while moving up and down with the waves and trying to take pictures at the same time, pictures just weren’t lining up well and the otters dove and I didn’t’ see them for some time, much later.
Headed to Willow Creek
Here I am coming up on Willow creek, just off to the right. You can see the waves from the wind. Nice day otherwise.
I paddled on into Willow Creek as far as I could and got out of the wind here were I had a nice break.
Eventually, the wind picked up in that spot so I headed on back out the creek.
A little loon
Just under the bridge, I spotted a bird off to my right just hanging in that one spot so I had a look to see what it was, working my way around it as not to scare it off.
It didn’t’ take off as I approached. I think it might be a young loon. It seemed to be hanging out staying out of the wind that was picking up even more now.
I left it and moved on down the creek towards the river. I’m almost back to the river here and you can see the wind is blowing in here too now.
When I got to the river the wind had picked up to about 25 miles an hour with gusts to 35, still doable by my standards, but most other boats are off the water by now, which is fine with me.
I paddled on down the river and pulled in here out of the wind at Dead Deer Gulch where I sat for a bit.
Otters
When I left that spot, I ran into the otters again. They appeared to be small ones, likely this years litter and were moving rather fast through the water feeding.
I could see some birds on the shoreline across the river by Paddy’s rock, so I paddled on over there to have a look.
There were some terns on the shore resting. Here’s one of them.
Just past the terns were some white pelicans resting on the shoreline in the wind.
From there I paddled back across the river and stopped here by a big redwood log that gave me some protection from the wind. It’s blowing harder than it looks in this picture.
I worked my way through the wind over to the boat ramp and took my boat out and was headed home. But.
Road is closed on the way home
I went through Monte Rio and the traffic was stopped on the road. A few cars were coming the other way and they signaled to turn back. I didn’t’ know what was going on, but I thought I better go do something else for a bit so I returned to Monte Rio and went up to visit my friend Charlie to see what was up.
He said a big tree had fallen across the road and taken all the power lines down that crossed the river and the road would be closed for quite awhile, so I stayed and talked with Charlie until his sister came home, then I ended up working on her computer for a couple hours before I left to try the road again. His sister said to take the back road around the tree so I did, but there were a lot of cars taking that back road too. It was a narrow mountain road which we snaked our way through playing pull over to let cars go by all the way.
I make it home just before dark and that was pretty much my day.
