Thursday October 3, 2013 Jenner CA.
Russian River mouth is closed up tight with sand
I decided today to go to Monte Rio to kayak, but on the way down I decided to go on down to Jenner and see how windy it was.
Jenner didn’t look too windy as I approached, some wind, but not too bad. I drove on down to the River’s mouth overlook along highway one to see how the river’s mouth was doing. It’s still closed up tight with sand.
This is a picture showing where the Russian River’s mouth is supposed to go into the ocean, with Goat Rock on the left. The river’s mouth is closed.
A closer look at where the river is supposed to empty into the Pacific ocean, closed up with sand.
After taking some pictures of the closed mouth, I went on back to the visitor’s center in Jenner and put my boat in the water. The water level gauge was reading about six and a half feet and the water was a bit choppy from the wind.
As I paddled out across the river, I turned and looked back at the visitor’s center, which is going to be in the path of the slowly rising river water. I think it is one of the first places to get water if it rises too high.
I paddled across the river to Penny Island where I sat in my boat for about an hour trying to decide whether to go up the river or down the river to the mouth area. Being it was a bit windy, I finally decided to go to the east end of Penny Island where there is a little channel that is almost always out of the wind and that is where I sat around for most of the day. There were these little birds swimming around in the area that seemed to be feeding on little seeds from the grasses that were now under the rising water. They stayed in the area the whole time I was there, coming and going around me, getting quite close sometimes.
Here is one of them. They were about four or five inches long.
A couple more of the little birds, feeding around me.
After an hour or so, I put the boat ashore on the east end of Penny Island and walked onto the island for a little look around.
Here is where I put my boat into shore on the east end of Penny Island.
There are some big gnarly eucalyptus trees on the east end of the island where the old milking barn is. The trees block most of the wind.
I stayed on the island for about a half hour then put the boat back in the water and paddled back over to the take out ramp, loaded up and went on home for a nap.
After the nap, I spent the rest of the day sitting around in my yard enjoying the fall evening.
Had a nice day, doing mostly nothing.