River’s Mouth Opened Up and the Wind Was Blowing Good

Tuesday November 24, 2015 Jenner CA.

Checking out the opened mouth

The rain stopped by the time I got it going this morning so I headed on down to Jenner to kayak for the day. As I drove into Jenner, I could see the wind was up real good, so I drove on down to the river’s mouth overlook just past the town of Jenner to have a look at the mouth that was breeched yesterday.

The river’s mouth had opened up wide and looked like this, looking out into the Pacific ocean.

There were lots of birds resting on the sand down there. Click to enlarge the picture.

On the right side of the open mouth these harbor seals were resting.

And just below me on this big rock rested these cormorants and brown pelicans.

But I put in at Jenner

About this time, I was thinking I should drive back to Monte Rio where it wasn’t so windy, but I drove back to the Jenner boat ramp instead and put my boat in the water.

I paddled across to Penny island and found this little hawk in my spot. It flew off as I approached.

I decided to paddle into the little channel on the upper end of Penny island where it was out of the wind. There was a great blue heron fishing in that spot.

Waves are white capping

I sat in the little channel for quite awhile before I headed on up the river. You can see from all the white caps out there that the wind is up.

I stayed along the shoreline as I paddled up to Eagle’s landing as the wind doesn’t usually blow as hard by the shoreline. At Paddy’s rock I crossed over the river as it looked like there might be a place out of the wind behind Paddy’s rock, so I sat there for awhile.

Eventually, I paddled down  along the shoreline headed back down the river watching for birds along the way.

I ran into this big flock of coots, feeding on weeds along the shoreline.

Continuing on down the river, I ran into this great blue heron fishing. The wind was blowing it’s feathers around a lot and I didn’t see it catch any fish.

Ashore on Penny Island

When I got back to Penny Island, I could see a bunch of turkey vultures doing something on the green grass there, so I pulled my boat into shore to get out and have a look to see what they might be eating. I pulled in here and looked around.

They must have been having a social get together as I found nothing dead there. Some of the vultures had moved up into the eucalyptus trees.

Should I paddle down to the mouth area

I was thinking I’d like to go down to the mouth area and see what the birds where doing, but it was real windy down that way. Even so, I paddled down along the north shore of Penny Island to see just how strong the wind was down that way.

Well, the wind was up good, so it didn’t make sense to paddle down to the river’s mouth, so I just took a picture of that area from the end of Penny Island.

Island deer

On the way back I ran into these two deer feeding on the green grass on Penny Island. I stopped to take some pictures thinking they would disappear back into the brush, but they just stood and checked me out.

Windy waves

I ran into some good wind blown waves between the island and the boat ramp. I took my time and enjoyed paddling through them and made it to the boat ramp still dry.

I took my boat out and went on home for the day.

Bridge repair work

At home I saw my brother by his house so went over and got my screw gun and worked on screwing down some metal under the bridge I’ve been doing repairs on trying to reinforce the rotting bulkhead boards.

I only did some of that work as it was cold under the bridge and I soon decided to stop and get the wood stove fire going in the house and that was it for me today.