Monday December 1, 2014 Jenner CA.
It was raining again this morning before I got up and like yesterday, it stopped about the time I got it going so I went on down to Jenner to kayak for the day.
Ray was at the ramp and wanted to go down to the mouth area, so we headed on down that way in a light wind with lots of clouds, but no rain.
What are the vultures eating
Along the way, I saw these turkey vultures feeding on something. I went on over to see what they were eating on. It turned out to be the carcass of a long dead harbor seal which was mostly skin and bones. The vulture nearest the water is standing on it.
Continuing on, we ran into these grebe that have been hanging around in the area. I think most of them may winter over in this area and there seems to be getting more of them each year.
River’s mouth area
I followed Ray headed to the river’s mouth, which looked like this.
The mouth was open and there were a bunch of harbor seals resting on the sand in the mouth. They watched us go by and a bunch of them jumped into the water for some reason, but it wasn’t because of us.
These are some of the harbor seals that jumped into the water. They were looking at something to our left, but I never did see what?
We put ashore
We put our boats ashore on the right side of the open mouth and got out and checked out around the mouth area.
This was the view looking across the open mouth out to the Pacific ocean south.
Ray was munching on something and this seagull was interested.
This one is looking straight out to the ocean. It’s low tide right now. The surfers were riding the big waves here the other day during high tide.
This one is looking back into the river through the open mouth, with the harbor seals resting on the sand out there.
These two harbor seals were resting off to the side of the main group and looked to me like they might be a couple buddies that usually hang out up the river a ways, Whiskers and Coco, but who knows, they all look very similar and maybe not? Fat and plump, just the same.
Penny island walk with the old bones
Eventually we got back in our boats and decided to go for a little walk on the west end of Penny Island so worked our way over that way and found a place to put ashore. Just as we did, we noticed what looked like rain up the river the way Ray is looking. Note he doesn’t have his rain pants on in this one. Showers started shortly.
We decided to put our rain pants on, but that meant it wouldn’t be a good idea to go for a walk in the berry bushes, as one doesn’t want holes in ones rain pants.
We decided to just go for a walk in the grass instead. I followed Ray, now in his rain pants.
This big ol redwood stump caught my eye. It’s about eight feet high and looks like it might be the skeleton of some olden creature.
We did a loop and cut across the grassy part, walking by another old bone from some olden creature. These creatures must have been huge. :O)
The showers mostly stopped as we finished our walk and got back in our boats and headed up the back channel.
It was still early so we headed on up the river to Otter’s log and sat for a bit, before crossing over the river and heading on back along the north side.
We pulled our boats out and went on home for the day, where a nap was in order for me.
Nice day.