Wednesday, July 3, 2013, Jenner, CA.
The day started out again with a dentist visit
Yes, off to the root cannel dentist to see what he thinks about a root cannel tooth he did about three years ago that has some decay problems.
His assistant took some x-rays. When the dentist came in and said hi, how’re you doing, I said fine, but it depends on what you have to say about my tooth?
Unfortunately, his next words were, I have some bad news for you. It appears that there is some infection at the tip of one of the roots he removed three years ago that looks pretty bad, which means $$$$$$. At least he thinks he can save it. We made an appointment for me to come back and he would do another rooter on the roots of the tooth and pack them with antibiotics for a couple weeks and if things improve he can redo the tooth. As we were talking we got onto kayaks, which he does a little, so we got along just fine, although it’s hard to get much work done when you are shooting the bull, but the price is the same, it’s not based on by the hour, or I’d keep my trap shut. :O)
Well, that was a bit disappointing, but things are what they are, just fork over the $$$$. At least I’m glad they have the ability to fix this kind of stuff.
After that, I decided to go over to Whole Foods and see if I could find anything good to eat that didn’t have corn stuff in it. I didn’t find much that I could be sure about, but did find a couple kinds of mustard that were not made with white vinegar, which is usually made from corn. So now I can spice some things up with the mustard, something welcome.
Back home again and had something to eat and then I headed down to Jenner to kayak, around two PM.
On the way driving down there, I could see that the river’s mouth had opened as the river was a bit lower than yesterday.
Sure enough, when I got to Jenner, the river was down, reading about 3.6 on the gauge, a drop of about four feet.
I put my boat in the water and headed across the river to Penny Island and on up the river to Eagle’s landing taking my time as I went. From there I paddled over to Paddy’s rock for a bit before heading back down the river.
Since the water had dropped about four feet, there was a lot of shore line exposed leaving lots of little things dead or dying with no water. I noted that there were sure a lot of turkey vultures sitting around the area today, although, I didn’t see most of them eating much. Maybe it was the dying smells that brought them down here? Or maybe they already had their fill for the day and were just resting up?
I also noted a lot of this weed growing all over the place. When the water was four feet higher, this stuff was also four feet higher, until the water went down and it condensed into these big masses.
This weed is interesting stuff. It appears to be fresh water, so when the mouth is closed there is a lot of fresh water and it grows like mad and needs to do it’s thing before the salt water that can now come in the mouth kills it, as it doesn’t appear to like salt water.
It’s an interesting weed. It puts out pollen pods that float up to the surface of the water and pops and floats on the surface to do the pollination thing to all the little flowers on the plant. Lot’s of pollen floats around on the water surface when this happens as seen in the picture below.
With the mouth now open, salt water can come in on the high tides.
Once the salt water hits this stuff it turns brown and dyes, but another type of moss grows on it, which is brown. In the fall, mud hens come into the estuary to eat all the dead weeds under the water in the area. It also provides lots of fish habitat and likely lots of food for the fish too. It’s also a little hard on motor boats, gets all tangled up. 
Moving on down to the river’s mouth, sure enough, it was wide open, as seen in the picture below, looking west out to the ocean.
Remember yesterday, the little ditch someone shoveled out in the sand? When the tide goes low, the ocean water is over four feet from the top of the sand where the river water level is. Very slowly, the water permeates the sand and slowly begins to move sand into the ocean. It starts out very slowly, but as it goes, it builds, until the sand moves like water and begins to flow, moving faster and faster toward the ocean until there is a river of sand and it washes a deep path to the ocean and then the river’s mouth is open.
I paddled past the mouth and sat in the side area for awhile. This little duck was in the area and left when I entered. Not sure what kind it is, but it was a cutie in it’s own right.
There were quite a few other birds coming and going near the mouth. Below are some cormorants, a merganser and a pelican landing.
While I was sitting there, I noticed a red kayak approaching. It was John, who lives down there and goes out and picks up a lot of the trash from people on the river. Thanks John. I shot the bull with him for awhile, before heading back up stream.
This is a picture of what it looked like down there today, looking back up river from the mouth.
I left about seven PM and this is what it looked like just as I pulled into the boat launch area to take my boat out. This is looking west, of course, see the sun on it’s way down.
I was off the water around seven PM and went on home, since I was tired I didn’t do much but take it easy.
Had a nice day kayaking.
