Thursday August 28, 2014 Jenner CA.
Some dead Dungeness crabs
Ray was on the ramp as I arrived at Jenner today putting his kayak in the water. I joined him and we paddled across the river to Penny Island. Ray says there’s some dead crabs in the water. Ray always seems to see things under the water before I do. Sure enough, there were a number of dead Dungeness crabs scattered around in the water today. We saw them by Penny Island and some up past Eagle’s landing. Two inchers and some of these larger four inchers, across the shell, like this one.
I have no idea what is killing the crab. I don’t think it’s the change in water from fresh to salty from tidal changes as this year most of the water is saltier in the estuary because of the wide open mouth. And at this time, there is a lot of blue water indicating it’s very salty in the lower estuary as the salty ocean water turns the estuary a blue color, when it’s real salty.
White pelicans fly
Anyway, we started on up the river. The white pelicans flew off before we got up to where they were resting.
We worked our way up the river taking our time and enjoying the day as it was a nice one, a little foggy, but the wind was down.
Here is Ray as we paddled on up past eagle’s landing, headed a little further up the river.
A new bird, a yellowlegs
We were headed up to the musk rat beach area, but just before we got there, I saw a bird on the shoreline feeding. It looked like one I hadn’t seen before, ten to twelve inches tall.
Looking it up tonight, it looks like a greater yellowlegs, but might be a lesser yellow legs as they are very similar.
Here it is feeding.
A hike to swamp rock
After we sat around at musk rat beach in our boats for a bit, we headed back down the river and stopped at swamp rock trail to go for a little hike to the rock.
Here is where we landed at swamp rock trailhead.
Swamp rock is that rock up on the hill side. There is a trail over to the rock , but it is hard to find if you don’t know where it is, like most of the old trails down in this area. There is also a bit of poison oak in the area, so not many people hike in this area, only us.
We made it up to the rock and sat for a bit. This is our view looking out to the small town of Jenner, across the river and across Penny island.
Here is Ray, just as we left the rock. I found this little piece of trail several years ago and you have to know it is there or you’d never even think of going to the rock.
Harbor seals in the water
We got back in our boats and headed on down the back channel to the west end of Penny island where there are usually some seals in the water.
If I see one or two of them on the surface, I give them my special whistle and usually, a bunch of them pop up, sometimes more than twenty of them.
It could be they come up to see who the crappy whistler is, or maybe they are just as curious about us as we are about them.
River’s mouth area
We left them and continued on towards the river’s mouth.
It was still high tide as we approached the mouth area. We paddled into it a bit and sat at this spot for a bit, looking out into the Pacific ocean.
There were the usual harbor seals and birds resting at the mouth.
Here are some of the birds, seagulls and terns. Note the one seagull there with what looks like a feather in it’s beak.
There were also a few brown pelicans in the water by the other birds. Here’s one of them, just floating around, taking it easy, like us.
Here we are headed back in as we left the mouth area. Note the blue water I was talking about earlier. Even though it was foggy out, the sun broke though several times during the day and the wind stayed down.
We pulled our boats out of the water and went on in for the day.
Called the dentist
When I got home I called my dentist and asked the lady there to squeak me in as one of my teeth was starting to hurt, since yesterday, so with the holiday coming up, she squeaked me in on Tuesday, so I have to survive until then. It doesn’t hurt too much yet, so I should make it to Tuesday.
Pulled the radiator hoses off my van
After that, I was under my van taking off the heater hoses as they need to be replaced and I needed to know the size and how much I needed. Of course the hoses didn’t want to come off and were frozen onto the pipe ends, so I had to work on it a bit and of course got full of radiator fluid, but I got them off without breaking anything else which is always helpful.
I’ll get the hoses tomorrow at the local parts store, along with a radiator hose I ordered for the car that is starting to bulge a bit. It’s always something. :O)