Fall day at the river.
I was rested up enough from my trip to head to Jenner today to kayak around 10:30 in the morning. When I arrived at the parking lot, a lady was standing in a parking place, saving it for someone else. What the? Parking places are few in Jenner, so I headed in said blocked space and the lady said it was saved, I said, not many parking places around here and you can’t do that or something like that and she huffily moved aside. But on the beach were about thirty science school kids, loading up in kayaks to go out on a filed trip. They do this every year, I think there are five or six classes. So, I backed out and went to the boat ramp area instead to launch giving the lady back her space. After I launched my kayak, I stopped by the lady to apologize for hassling her. OK, no damage done, but I made my point.
The river mouth is partly closed today.
In the picture below I’m sitting in my yak just inside the mouth of the river looking out over a sand bar toward the ocean. The sand bar was washed up by a rough ocean blocking the mouth opening at low tide. This kind of closure restricts what goes in and out of the mouth when this happens. The sand bar acts sorta like a one way valve on the mouth opening. At low tide, nothing goes though, but when the ocean tide gets high enough, it will break over this sand bar with waves and eventually, if the high tide is hide enough, water will flow into the river over the sand bar like a river, bringing in salt water and whatever else in out there.
In the picture below, the tide is getting higher and you can see that some of the ocean waves are coming into the river mouth. As the tide gets higher, the ocean will fill this whole area with incoming ocean water with all the goodies that come in with it, including big fish.
In some ways the sand bar acts like a one way valve on the river mouth.
Because the sand bar in the mouth is across the mouth opening it lets high tide water into the river, that goes over the sand bar, and only lets water out into the ocean during low tide until the sand bar damn blocks the river flow. This effectively lets more water in, then it lets back out.
However, as the ocean tides go to higher tides, so much water can come into the mouth from the ocean to wash all this sand into the river from the mouth, opening it up a bit, then when the tide goes back out again, all that water can keep washing more sand out of the bar, opening up the mouth wide. This is the action that opened up the river mouth in early August this year, from a partial blocked mouth to a fully open mouth that let water and ocean type things flow freely in and out of the river.
Ocean water breaking over the sand bar damn in the mouth of the river.
White pelicans are migrating south this time of year and some stop over for awhile at Jenner. I haven’t seen these types eat any fish while here. I’ve only seen them pulling up big stringers of moss across from the visitors center near the island.Saw that action twice so far, once today, but couldn’t get any pics of it.
Now, what is that one doing?
Geese are also moving south, lots of them are in the area.
These fat seals were scampering across the sand bar in the mouth, heading out to the ocean to likely feed or whatever they do out there?
I lasted until about three today, before I had to come home for a nap. After a nap, I moved some pepperwood leaves to my blueberry patch. Darn crab grass has been moving in on my patch and I thought this stuff might check it by putting it on over the top of the grass. We’ll see on that? I also moved a few wheel barrels of fire type wood in from the yard to the wood shed, something that needs to be done before we get any rain this year. A few loads in at a time will do, I still have plenty of time, I think.
That pretty much wraps up my day today. Another great day.