A Nice Sunny Day Messing Around in the Estuary with Ray and John

Monday December 22, 2014 Jenner CA.

It looked like it was going to be a nice day, so not having anything better to do, I went on down to Jenner around ten thirty AM. I could see Ray’s and John’s trucks in the parking lot, but I couldn’t see them in their boats anywhere. I got my boat in the water and headed down towards the down river side of Penny island and sat and watched in this spot for awhile.islandend

 

I didn’t see those guys anywhere, so I headed on up the back channel of Penny Island and sat in this spot on the up river end of the island for a bit enjoying the sun.penny

 

I paddled up the south side of the river until I got to this spot, eagle’s landing.elanding

 

A  walk at Muskrat beach

From here, I crossed over to Paddy’s rock where I thought I saw a reflection from a paddle, across the river, over by Muskrat, so I crossed back over the river to Muskrat and found Ray there, but no John. Ray wanted to go for a walk up the hill at Muskrat, so we pulled our boats in at the muskrat beach, which was a bit muddy and started up the hill.

We passed through this little creek with the big ferns on the way up the hill.ferns

 

Ray and I were sitting up the hill taking a a break when John showed up. He had been up the river scrounging and saw our boats on the way back, so pulled in to join us.

We were looking for the place the water started for the little creek we had walked up. John jumped in a hole to see if this was the spot. It was one of them, water was running down a lot of places under this grass. It appeared to be drainage off the hill. Look carefully and you’ll see John up to his ears in the grass.jhon

 

The grass is sure green

This was one of our views from the hillside, looking down to the river. The grass is sure greened up from the recent rains.bridge

 

It looks like the bovinosarous are grazing on a carpet.bovines

 

Some mud too

We had a nice little walk in the nice sunshine. When we returned to our boats, the tide had gone out, so getting back in was a bit on the muddy side.boat

 

An otter pops up

I was following Ray and John back down the river when I saw something red on the shoreline, so I came about and when I did an otter popped up right behind those guys and went to the shoreline and under this log. The otter had swam under them so as not to be seen and I only saw it because I had turned around.

Here’s the otter under the log. It dove and I didn’t see it again, even though I watched for it.otter

 

The devil duck

The red thing turned out to be a little red rubber ducky, with devil horns.

Down to the river’s mouth

John wanted to go down to the river’s mouth, so we dropped Ray off at the boat ramp and continued on down that way.

We paddled on down until the current started to pick up and stopped along the shoreline to watch for awhile. You can see John just down ahead of me a bit. I pulled in behind that rock there by John. If you paddle into the current too much, there’s no place to stop for a break as the current keeps taking you to the open mouth. Getting into this strong current creates what we call a rather bad pucker factor. Not a good place to be, so we try to be careful.mouth2

 

It was low tide now, so the river water level was down a bit. The river is going out on the right of Haystack rock and the ocean is fairly rough, with lots of birds flying aroundrivermouth

 

This was our view of the open river’s mouth, looking out into the ocean.mouth

 

Lots of birds in the water and in the air. Seagulls mostly.ocean

 

There were some brown pelicans mixed in with the seagulls on the sandy beach.birds2

 

After sitting around for a good while, John and I headed back to the boat ramp, loaded our boats and went home for the day around four PM.

Nice day and no rain or drizzles for a change. :O)

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