Hello all you dry sensible Sunday homebodies. Dick M. sure knows how to plan a trip just right. It rained good and hard on the drive out to Inverness and very nearly drained the clouds completely. After a little drizzle at Chicken Ranch Beach launch (where Don F. joined us) , it quit raining while we three paddled south and watched birds following a school of fish around and feeding. A few more drops fell while we were riding the nice tidal current past a bald eagle and a distant swan into Giacomini Wetlands. Then we actually got patchy blue sky and a little sunshine while bushwhacking up Lagunitas Creek as far as you could possibly paddle on a very high tide. We tried hard to suffer but the weather wasn’t miserable enough. We beached on a handy gravel bar for a bachelor style lunch, and rode the receding tidal waters past the sunning turtles (saw 6 of them), and headed across the wetlands again. The drippy clouds advanced on us the last few minutes of paddling to remind us what a miserable day we were supposed to be having. An arc of rainbow on the way home put a nice finishing touch on the day.
Liz
Actually it was 4 turtles, we saw a pair of them twice, once going up, and again on the way out, on the same log. Going upstream we made it past several old bridge pilings and fresh water diversion intake, but hit the end of the road when we came to a willow thicket that had fallen into the creek. On the way up, through the marsh the bald eagle was a 10 point sighting, as well as a flock of at least 30 Lessor (Fairy?) Terns, that were diving in around the large flock of feeding cormorants. Never saw the minnows they were fishing but there must have been a lot, because about 300 birds – cormorants, pelicans gulls and terns, were all following the school. We made it much further up the creek than I thought possible. Much of the bush roadblocks must have been pushed out in last winter’s storms. I will post a link to some photos shortly.
Dick M.
0 Responses to “Tomales Bay and Giacomini Wetlands – Nov. 7, 2010”