Tuesday October 22, 2013, Jenner, CA.
Kayaking in Jenner and the water was up
I went down to Monte Rio today and helped a friend with his computer and then went on down to Jenner to kayak. When I got there, the fog was in and it was a bit on the cold side. Did I want to go or not. I ate an apple in my car and thought about it for awhile, before finally deciding to put my boat in the water. It was almost high tide when I got there so the water level of the river was up.
As soon as I put my boat in the water, I noticed an otter fishing right in front of the visitor’s center. I approached it and it didn’t seem to be bothered much by me. I watched it fish for about a half hour. I think it mush have been the same one that I took pictures of yesterday.
It didn’t’ offer much for good pictures today, but this is the one I got of it eating a little fish.
As I was watching the otter, Steve showed up with his kayak and joined me. We paddled over to Penny Island and went though the little channel on the east end, where I noted the water was a little high, even for high tide.
After taking a break there for a bit, we paddled to the south side of the river and headed on up to otter’s log where we took another break for a spell under some trees to try and stay out of the cold wind.
While sitting there, I heard a seal grunting not far away and I said to Steve, there’s a seal right close, but he said that’s only a log there, just up from us. When we started to leave towards that area, sure enough, that was a seal and here’s it’s picture.
We took our time paddling up the river, keeping on the south shoreline, wishing the sun would break though to warm us up, but it didn’t.
Here is one of the places we sat and watched for awhile while heading up the river.
We turned around just below the highway one bridge and started heading on back.
We were sitting under some trees when a couple guys came by in a motorized canoe. I had met one of them before at Monte Rio, so we shot the bull for a bit.
They left and Steve and I continued on down the river, down the back channel of Penny Island. The bunch of coots I saw yesterday feeding were still there feeding away as we passed.
Steve shouts there’s a sand piper sitting on the bank as we went by. Here’s it’s picture, as we passed.
We pulled into the slot near the west end of Penny Island to get out of he cold breeze.
We were both noticing that it was way past high tide and the water level of the river was still up, which meant the river’s mouth had likely closed again.
Because of the chill factor, we decided not to paddle down the the mouth area to find out and instead decided to go on in and pull our boats off the water, which we did.
We drove down to the highway one overlook just past Jenner and took a look at the closed river mouth.
Here is the closed river mouth as we saw it. If the ocean is rough, it will pile sand up in the mouth and close it, especially during a high tide, which it likely did last night.
So, the river’s mouth is closed again and now no more salmon can come into the river to spawn until it opens again.
It was rather cool today, which is good training for how the weather will likely be in Oregon were I hope to be next week.
Nice cool day at Jenner, kayaking.
