Saturday December 20, 2014 Jenner CA.
It wasn’t supposed to, but it was raining when I got up this morning. Steve came by and wanted to go down to Jenner to test out some rain gear, so off we went to Jenner.
It was raining driving down there, but not too hard. We donned our rain gear and put our boats in the water, crossing the river to the little channel on the east end of Penny Island.
I could tell something was different in the estuary today, because the water level was so high, higher than just if it was high tide, which it was.
We paddled down the back side of Penny Island as the rain let up for just a bit.
Harbor seals
When I got to the west end of Penny Island I was surprised to see some harbor seals in the grass beached on that end.
If you look close you can see some harbor seals in the grass on the right side.
They moved into the water as we approached and were all out there checking us out. Those dots out in the water are harbor seals.
Here’s some of them as they checked us out.
The ocean has been real rough
We moved on past them and this is what the beach looked like between the river and the ocean. See all the white foam on the beach. It looks like the ocean has been real rough and lots of ocean water has broken over the sandy beach.
We continued on down towards the mouth and stopped in to talk with John who lives down there. He said, three and four foot waves were coming over the sand earlier and smashing into the shoreline in front of his house. I think it would have been a bit much for a kayak down there at that time.
Open river’s mouth
From John’s house, this was the view down at the open river’s mouth. All that wave action has pushed more sand into the bottom of the open mouth causing the river estuary to be higher today. The river will wash it back out soon, but I hear there is supposed to be some more rough ocean action here tomorrow.
It’s rough out there in the ocean, looking out the open mouth.
We spent quite awhile talking with John and then headed back up the the little channel on the east end of Penny Island. We are entering that area here.
We crossed over to the south side of the river and headed on up at a leisurely pace, stopping often to watch the rain as it was starting to pick up.
An eagle glides off
As we approached Eagle’s landing, a Bald Headed Eagle, glided out of the big tree below and headed on up the river. Their white tail feathers are a very white, white.
Steve and I sat around here for awhile as the rain picked up some more. Steve broke out his umbrella. I got under the big trees a bit.
It didn’t look like the rain was going to let up any more today. Steve wanted to go up to the bridge, so we headed on up that way.
It’s really raining now. We made it up to the bridge and rested for a bit before turning our boats into the current and drifting down the river, headed for the boat ramp.
We pulled into the little channel on the east of Penny Island for a bit before heading across the river.
This was our view from the island as we started across to the boat ramp.
We got our boats out of the water in the rain and headed on home for the day.
I hung all my stuff up to dry as I was fairly wet, mostly on the outside. My pack and rain gear needed some drying out. I only got a bit wet. A couple of times I had cold water drip down my chest and also had it run into the back of my pants off my coat down my butt a couple times. Nothing like a cold drip down there. :O)
I’d say, that was a nice rainy day on the river.