Sunday January 25, 2015 Jenner CA.
It was foggy as I got up this morning, but when I got down to Jenner the sun was out,but the wind was up too. It was still warm enough to make it a nice day.
I put my boat in the water and headed across the river to Penny Island and tried to find a place out of the wind on the upper river end. Normally the little channel there is out of the wind, but today, the wind direction caused the wind to blow right in there, so that didn’t work.
I pulled further up on the end of the island and found a good spot which looked like this looking up the river to where I was headed.
I paddled up the river along it’s shoreline on the south side, looking for places to pull in out of the wind. But, not today, the wind was blowing into all my normally good spots.
I did stop at otter’s log for a bit. Across the river from me, there were some geese making a bunch of noise.
Since the wind was blowing into the south side of the river, I crossed over to the north side at Paddy’s rock. The rock had some cormorants resting on it as I went on by.
I stayed on that side of the river and continued up the river as the wind started to slow down a bit.
Just under the highway one bridge, I turned around and headed down the south shore line and pulled into this spot at dead deer gulch for a bit of a break.
With all the winds earlier, there weren’t a lot of birds in the area. I worked my way down the river headed to the river’s mouth to check it out.
I pulled in here on the down river end of Penny Island for a break before heading across the open water to the mouth area down as far as you can see.
There was a female merganser duck out in front of me that did the, I got a fish dance. A lot of the birds do this little dance after swallowing a fish. I think it helps settle the fish into their stomach, but have no idea really.
I continued on down to the open river’s mouth which looked like this as I approached. Some harbor seals and some birds were resting on the shoreline down that way.
The Pacific ocean was rough making big waves out there in front of the open mouth.
It’s high tide and the ocean has been piling up sand in the river’s mouth, so, at times the mouth is barely open until it goes back to a higher high tide. There’s still plenty of water to let any spawning fish come into the river, especially at higher high tide. It’s possible for the ocean to pile up enough sand to close the mouth, especially if a storm was to come up. But at this time, it looks like it’s going to stay open for now.
You can see the sand at this point in the mouth area. Remember it’s high tide, and there’s not much water going out right now. But the higher high tide that happens at night right now will be high enough to let plenty of water in, at least until the sand is piled up even higher by the waves.
There were some sea lions hunting just inside the mouth area, going their usually fast speed hunting back and forth.
Here’s a picture of some of the harbor seals resting on the sandy beach, getting some sun.
I stayed down that way just watching and enjoying the day for quite some time, then started on back for the day.
I watched this hawk land in the big tree as I was paddling along, just up from the mouth. Maybe a red tailed or a red shouldered hawk? I couldn’t quite make it out.
John the trash picker upper guy lives almost under this tree and I was looking for him to get some info on the VA hospital where I’m going to get this BBQ brush wire checked out. He’s been down there plenty, so knew about all the goings on. I needed to find out about the place they have to overnight if one has to, called hoptel, I think it is.
John saw me out in front of his place and came out to shoot the bull so I got all the information I needed, so I’m set to go.
I continued on back to the boat ramp and was off the water around four PM and headed on home.
Something about the ocean air makes one want to take a nap, so I did when I got home and that was it for another nice day, once the wind settled down.