Saturday April 5, 2014 Jenner CA.
I misplaced that nest, but where
Today, I’d told a friend in Monte Rio I’d help him find out why he didn’t have any electricity on part of his house. He just came home from an overseas trip and it wasn’t working, so I said I’d help him figure it out.
I stopped at his house and we ran through all his breaker boxes of which he has several and I found that one of his circuit breakers hadn’t been reset properly. That wasn’t too bad. I visited for a bit, then went on down to Jenner to kayak.
I was thinking to just go down and do Monte Rio, but at the last moment changed my mind and headed on down to Jenner.
It looked like it was going to be windy
I could tell on the way down there by looking at the river that it might be a little windy down at Jenner today and it was.
When I approached Jenner, I could see that the white caps were up on the river and the wind was blowing nicely.
I pulled in and thought maybe I should go back to Monte Rio where it only gets breezy compared to Jenner. I thought about it for awhile and finally decided to go ahead and put in, as it was only a little wind and it wasn’t a real cold one.
As I put in, I could see there were several rental kayaks over on the island. This wind was strong enough today to make people that weren’t used to it to be very cautious, as they should be.
The water was still fairly muddy from the recent rains and the sun was out as I started to paddle across the river to Penny Island in the wind and the waves.
This is what it looked like headed on over towards Penny Island.
I checked in with one of the parties of kayakers on the island and they seemed to be ok, but were headed in. The other group seemed to be hunkered down on the east end, so I paddled on past them and headed on up the south side of the river, looking for a place out of the wind.
There didn’t seem to be any place totally out of the wind today, so I slowly continued on up to the eagle’s landing area.
Across the river from me, the cormorants that are left and some ducks.
A bit later this cormorant swim by me. I would hate to be a little fish with them around.
I looked across the river at Paddy’s rock to see if the goose was still there and it was. Can you see the goose? I doubt it would be there this long if it wasn’t sitting on a nest?
I only paddled a little ways past eagle’s landing before I decided there wasn’t a good place to get out of the wind today, so started heading back down the river.
This is my view as I started back down the river.
Where is that darn nest
Just past this place, I remember the nest I’d seen a couple weeks ago, that I thought may be a pack rat nest. But now, I’m thinking it might a a musk rat nest as it’s too close to the water and a while back I saw it again and it was about six feet high when the tide is down.
But I haven’t been able to find it where I thought it was. I looked where I thought it was today and still couldn’t find it again. It’s either washed out, or it might still be in another place I haven’t checked out yet. But it sure wasn’t where I thought it should be.
This is the picture of the nest I took a couple weeks ago. It’s about four feet across at the water level. Like I said, I’ve never seen a pack rat nest this close to the water.
I paddled around a bit and just couldn’t find that nest
I stopped here for a bit before continuing on down the river, looking on down towards the town of Jenner.
The wind was still kicked up as I headed back to Jenner.
It was blowing hard enough that I decided not to go down to the mouth area today. Just a lot of work for nothing, but I wasn’t ready to go in yet.
The hunkered down group of kayakers finally decided they had to go for it. I could see them hesitating, but finally one of them crossed over and eventually the others followed too.
It can get fairly windy at Jenner and the wind can come up not expected which can be kind of hard on people without much boating experience, such is a river near the ocean.
Usually, the winds blow in the afternoon, starting in the spring, up until about August.
Playing in the wind and the waves
Like I said, I wasn’t ready to go in yet, so I played around going through the wind and the waves out in front of the visitor center where there are some of the bigger waves. The best way to get used to being in the wind and the waves is to experience it, so that’s what I do when I can. That way, I can enjoy boating even in so called bad weather.
After about an hour, I was tired out and went on home. I puttzed around the yard a bit, cutting some blackberry vines back and just sitting around taking it easy, until the sun went on down for the day.
