Friday, May 31, 2013, Jenner, CA.
Work on the Spring or Kayak?
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do today when I woke up this morning.
Around ten, the guy I was helping with the spring called and said he had the parts and we could go up and work on that,……..but. I had been thinking about that last night and decided we needed another part to do the project right. He came down and we went to the hardware store to get the parts, but we decided to wait on going up and doing the project until he got a filter screen he has someone else working on to block all the holes where the roots where getting into the pipe. We had the screen on the spring and the roots didn’t grow though it, but found little holes in the corners and grew though them, so we are getting the screen welded so there are no holes in the corners.
That all meant I needed a nap and something to eat.
Around three PM, I headed for Jenner to Kayak. The sun was out and the wind wasn’t too bad, so I put my boat in the water and paddled across to Penny Island and headed on up the river about a half mile to Paddy’s Rock, where I spent some time just enjoying the day
The mouth of the river was still closed with sand so the water in the estuary was fairly high. The level of the river read six feet at the visitors center. When it gets to seven feet, they have to open the mouth up, so it doesn’t start flooding houses and roads. The Sonoma County Water Agency uses an excavator to cut a small channel in the sand to open the river’s mouth, which they have to do by law, likely in a couple days.
Some cormorants and mergansers were on this log as I passed going up the river.
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I hung around up the river before heading back down to Penny Island, where I put ashore and walked around the island looking for berries to eat. The vegetation on the island is thick and it’s not easy to walk around. The few trails that are on the island are not easy to follow as they don’t’ go straight and the brush is over six feet high in most places, so it’s like a big maze.
This is one of the trails I was following today on Penny Island.
I was looking for these little black berries that are just starting to get ripe.
Some parts of the island are covered with what I call swamp grass. These are the parts that get real wet when the waster comes up. The picture below is of some of this swamp grass looking east toward the milking barn, which can be seen toward the back of this photo.
It was fairly windy when I started this walk, but when I came back out to where my boat was parked, the wind had died down to almost nothing and below is what it looked like where I went to shore on the island.
With no wind the water was flat, so I cruised down the backside of the island and headed toward the river’s mouth, just taking my time. I passed quite a few seals playing in the water on the way. The sun was starting to go down, so I took the picture below looking out toward the river’s mouth. You can see ocean spray in the this picture as the ocean was real rough today, but the river was real nice.
I stayed down at the mouth area for an hour or so, then headed back toward the west end of Penny Island where I spotted this Great Blue Heron on the shore.
A short paddle back to the put in at the visitor’s center and I headed on home for the day.
Had a nice day.