Monday November 18 2013 Jenner CA.
Kayaking with Ray and John
There is a rain storm coming in tonight so lots of times it’s real nice down at Jenner, just before or after a storm, so off I went around eleven this morning.
As I approached Jenner, I could see Ray in his kayak over at Penny Island so I put my boat in the water and joined him. We sat around there for a bit, then headed down towards the river’s mouth. His brother John came up behind us just as we passed the west end of Penny Island so we all continued down to check out the river’s mouth area.
The river’s mouth is open
There were a few seals laying on the beach near the open mouth, which is pictured below.
While we were sitting around down there, Ray noticed that there was some sand floating around in clumps. When you touched the sand it would sink to the bottom. Interesting.
This is a photo of some of the floating sand. I think it is dry sand that is flouting on the dry stuff, until you touch it?
I had just touched the below sand clump and if you look closely you can see the grains sinking.
We hung around the mouth area shooting the bull for a couple hours, then headed towards the back channel of Penny Island.
Here is Ray on the flat water as we headed away from the river’s mouth area. Bunch of people showed up on the beach to the right.
There seemed to be a lot of people on the beach today, some sort of school function I think.
We paddled up the back channel of Penny Island and John mentioned that he had tried to get to the old house on Penny Island not long ago, but couldn’t because of all the brush, so I said, ok, I’ll show you how to get to it though a secret trail I know.
We landed on the east end of Penny Island in the grass.
This is John walking the secret trail to the old house. John had played with one of the kids on the island in the seventies so was curious about what was there now.
I showed him how easy it was to get to the house if one knows the secret trail.
He poked around in the old ruins to his satisfaction, then I showed him some more secret trails around the island.
This is a picture of what’s left of one of the houses on the island that John explored.
As long as we were that far into the island I said let’ see if we can cross over and go up the other side. I just barely know how to do this so I had to explore around a little to find the way.
This is the view looking back towards the old milk barn which is the part most people see when they come on the island. Not many people venture around most of the island because it is over grown in brush and is hard to get around, unless you know the secret trails.
Once we got back to the boats we sat on the shore and took a much needed break. When we left there, John took off for home and Ray and I headed up the river towards Eagle’s landing.
We almost made it up there when Ray decided it was time to go home, so we turned around and started working our way back. There were about six hundred coots on the water today. As we came up the back channel earlier, a bald eagle flew over them but didn’t try to attack.
As Ray and I were paddling back in, the coots took off for no apparent reason. I’ve learned that when something like this happens to look for something that scared them. Looking closely, I saw an otter surface just for a bit and then was gone.
Here are the coots being spooked by an otter. Can’t see the otter, but they know it’s there.
We also passed this seal near the east end of the island, fat and lazy.
We were off the water about four PM. The sky was getting darker as the storm was approaching.
This is the picture looking west as the storm was starting to build, as we left the water for home.
A nice pleasant day on the river.