Tuesday April 1, 2014 Jenner CA.
Will the Rain stop long enough to yak?
It was raining this morning again when I got up. I checked with the weather guy and he said it was going to be heavy showers throughout the day. And the next cell of heavy rain was going to move in late this afternoon.
Take a chance
Ok, I’ll take a chance. I put my rain pants on and headed down to Jenner in my car. On the way down there, the rain poured on me, or at least my car. But as I approached to within a half mile of Jenner, it stopped and looked like it hadn’t been raining much in Jenner. Good.
I put my boat in the water and paddled across to the little channel on the east end of Penny Island. I was going to go through this channel to the other side, but my mark showed I wouldn’t make it out the other end. See the mark on the log?
I kayak around here enough to have little marks and things to indicate spots I can get through, or not, depending on the river’s water level.
If the water is lower than that mark on the log, I can’t make it through this channel so will have to go around it to get to the other side today.
Fish are safer with the muddy water
The river water was still fairly muddy, so that stops most of the fish eating birds and animals from seeing any fish to catch, so there wasn’t’ a lot of action in the area today.
I paddled up to eagle’s landing and took this photo of the cormorants across the river from this spot. There had been two or three hundred cormorants resting on the gravel there until the water got muddy, now there are only these guys. This also shows me the cormorants that have been here are eating in the river’s estuary and not in the ocean. If they had been feeding in the ocean and just resting here, they would still be here. But the river is too muddy to fish, so most of them have moved somewhere else.
Was that goose still on the Paddy’s rock
I paddled over to check out Paddy’s rock to see if the goose that I thought might be nesting on the rock was still there after four days or so?
Sure enough, the goose was still in the same place. Nesting?
I paddled up the river just a tad more before turning around and starting back down the river. I didn’t dally much today, as I was expecting the rain to start up this afternoon and I knew I might get washed out for the day.
This is my view looking back down to the town of Jenner, just past Paddy’s rock, where I turned around for the day.
Lots of harbor seals in the water
I headed back down the river, going down the back channel of Penny Island. When I got to the west end of Penny Island there were a bunch of harbor seals in the water there, maybe fifty or so. They didn’t seem to be fishing. A lot of them seemed to be napping. Nothing like having about fifty seals pop up around you and checking you out.
River’s mouth area
I watched the harbor seals for awhile and they watched me, then I headed on down to the river’s mouth area.
The ocean was real rough, with big waves breaking over the jetty.
My view as I sat in my boat in front of the river’s mouth, looking out to the Pacific ocean.
Big waves were breaking over the jetty as I watched. 
As usual, there were a lot of harbor seals resting on the sandy beach around the mouth. Here are some of them.
Showers were picking up
It was starting to shower a bit, so I started on my way back in. I passed these ducks which I think are golden eyes. They seem to be the most numerous bird on the water today. They dive down for something, but I know not what?
I paddled back to the east end of Penny Island as the showers seemed to be getting more frequent and heavier too. Since the weather guy said the next part of the storm was coming in, in the afternoon and might be heavy, I stayed until it picked up and then headed in for the day.
This is my view as I approached the take out area at the visitor center, with more rain approaching.
I headed on home and the rain picked up as I drove on home.
The fake Microsoft call
Just after I got home, the phone rang. It was raining hard and I could hardly hear the guy. Something about Microsoft detecting a virus on my computer. I hung up.
The phone rang again and it was the same guy, saying this was important, Microsoft had detected a virus on my computer and he’d like to transfer me to their hacker department?
Now, I know enough not to ever give anything out to a phone call from someone on the phone. Never, as it’s impossible to know who could be on the phone on the other end. It’s just impossible to know, so I never do it. But this guy was fairly persistent, so I followed the instructions they gave me to check my computer, making sure I didn’t’ give anything away. I’m more than fairly computer literate, so I didn’t see any harm in finding out what these guys were up to.
They directed me to some bogus stuff on my computer that if you knew what it was, was of no concern, but it would likely get a not so savvy person going, but not me.
He said if I wasn’t sure of things, I could hang up several times to try to keep me on, but I finally hung up, as again, I never trust anything coming over my phone unless I instigate it from my side.
I did a search on the internet for scams like this referring to Microsoft and they seem to be quite common for several years, so I did good.
Just to be on the safe side, I put my Microsoft essentials on full scan and am doing a scan for bad guys, which I do occasionally anyway. Tip: Always put antivirus software into full scan to really check things out. Quick scan just doesn’t check enough, although it is faster.
Don’t ever deal with anyone that calls you on the phone, unless you instigate the call. Period.
From the sound of all the rain on my house roof, I came home just in time, so it was fairly nice at Jenner today.