Another day, another boat

 We changed our plans.  Originally  from having a relaxing start to the day, hitting the boat for a couple of hours and then heading to nice dinner.  We ended up getting on the boat earlier, having a nice long wonderful boat ride, and needing a little bit of recovery time before nice dinner!  

This time the boat was a fast motorboat, and we did some zooming!  It was really really fun.  First we slowly got out of the harbor

Then it was zooming time!

I again took out my binoculars and we spotted lots of stuff, the highlight for me was a flock (raft?) of at least 175 surf scoters!  They are a cool looking duck with white on their necks that at first fools you into thinking they are maybe buffleheads.  But they are bigger, the beak is wrong, and they have other markings that will leave you doubting until you look it up, and find they are scoters!  That was pretty great.  We went super far, further than Deborah had gone before, so that was really cool.  Again a lot of sandpipers I wasn't able to ID, even though I looked at some in a guide last night.  I did see some that I was confident about, including a long-billed curlew, which was really cool!  Oh and some brant which were really hard to ID.  Looking up a black duck with a white neck ring was useless.  Merlin eventually came up with it, but only on try 3 or 4 of going through the process.  But we got there!  I really need to study my sandpipers and plovers etc. for next time I'm here.  Here's the checklist:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153361223

Here's my best bird pic, of the brant. I miss my superzoom!  

Then we had a really fantastic dinner at a nice restaurant on the water.  I wore a skirt!  So fancy!  It was beautiful and delicious and I got to spend some really great quality time with Mom.  

Then back to Deborah's to again basically collapse exhausted!

San Diego, Canyon and Boat day!

 I got to San Diego last night, and today was a big day.  We started the day with a walk with the local Audubon Society in Tecolote Canyon, it was wonderful!  Deborah came along and loved it too.  Great guides, great group, easy walk, lots of birds.  Great views of hummingbirds, hawks, scrub jays (a favorite of Deborah), bushtits, wrentits, just a lot of cool stuff.  Here's the checklist

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153297743

I only took one pic from the boat, I sort of forgot:

And here we all are on the doc afterwards!

Then back home for a bit of recuperating, and then we picked up Mom and met Kat and Charlie, and went on a boat!  This kind of boat is called a Duffy, and we went out on Mission Bay, which is calmer.  The combo gave us a nice smooth ride for Mom, and Charlie brought some trains to play with.  I of course brought my binoculars and Kat and I counted just so many great blue herons!  And cormorants.  It was pretty amazing.  Also some sandpipers but I could not ID them, so I didn't enter them.  There was one mystery grebe, which ebird wanted more info about, but I didn't have any more info for them.  I didn't get a pic, and the light was bad, so, sorry ebird!  A highlight for me was a big group of about 40 skimmers!  They are so cool.  Didn't see them skimming, just hanging out.  Hopefully next time!  :-) It was so so wonderful to be out on the water!  Here's the checklist:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153289672

Then we took Mom back home and headed to Kat's place for kebobs for dinner and some Charlie time, a house tour, and some kitty time.  It was great!  I got to hold a purring cat on my lap!  <3 

Back home to Deborah's, worn out from a wonderful day.

Jack is becoming a regular

 A couple of days after that, Jack's swim leggings came, along with his rashguard and swim socks.  So he had a full outfit, and on a good river day, we went down to the float-in-place spot, and had a wonderful river float!  

Mostly it was beautiful and relaxing and just nice to be there.  And then we saw a beaver!  It came out and played in the water briefly, then got out on shore.  Then a few minutes later came back into the water a bit closer to us, played for a longer while, and went back out on shore.  It was so cute!!!!  Then we heard it on shore going past us, and heard it getting back into the water upstream from us, but we didn't see it again.  I got terrible pics on my phone and I was so happy!!! 

Alternative Spot Float

 Then the three girls came back, and I showed them the other river spot, on the spur of the moment.  We were taking our chairs down to sit in the river, and I thought, hey, let's check that out.  We did, and it was not good for a river sit, but it looked awesome for a river float in place instead of doing the whole down-river float.  So we went back to the bridge and sat there.  That's when I met Sean and Todd and talked to them about the Christmas decorations, which was great!  The next day we decided to float there instead of doing the whole down-the-river float.  Good choice!  It was a very easy in/out, we didn't need to do a car shuffle, and it was easy to stay in place.  Anastasiya got me an inflatable floating cooler, and I had gotten the bungee cords with D-rings at the ends, so we joined together and made a flotilla, and had a wonderful afternoon.

Jack gives floating a try

 A few days later, I floated down the river with Jack!  He was wearing my leggings and Chris's shirt, so not totally ideal, but had a great time.  We saw a juvie eagle, then an adult eagle.  And a bullfrog making loud noises, which I learned about at a C&O canal walk.  

Then a deer on the left bank, followed pretty closely by a deer on the right bank.  And then a group of about 10 mergansers, who just went as a group under a tree and stayed calmly hanging out in the shade as we passed.  It was awesome! 

And then at the end a tiny jumping frog by the bridge as we got out.  It was a big day for him, and very tiring, but I'm so glad he tried it out and went.  He can enjoy this stuff too!  

Twice in one weekend? Sounds pretty nice.

 The next day Erin and I went alone, and I remembered to actually take some pics with my phone.  Me fully decked out in my swim leggings, rash guard, just covered tip to toe practically.  She just had her bikini.  We are so opposite, and both so happy!  

It was another beautiful wonderful float down the river, and we had some really great one-on-one time. We did see a little snake.  Anastasiya and Vhary picked us up at the bridge, it was great!    

Floating on the River - How it Started

 

My first time floating on the river was with Tami, late summer 2022.  She was in her little pink kayak, I was in a big blue inner tube, with one paddle.  What a wonderful time!  Chris got us set up and in the water at Common Area 3, and we floated and paddled and chatted all the way down the river to the bridge.  From there we texted Jack who came and got us.  The biggest problem was that my water shoes were not good for the river.  They were snorkeling shoes, not made for walking on river rocks, and every step really hurt!  Oh and I overdid the paddling, and re-injured my shoulder a bit.  I knew I was doing too much, but it was so fun!

That was the only time that year.  My next time was also with Tami, early summer 2023.  We left a car at the bridge this time, and Chris got us in the water again.  It was basically a repeat, but I had better river shoes this time, and I was much better with my shoulder.  It was really wonderful, so relaxing and so beautiful.

Then some friends came to visit, and I took them!  I got new inner tubes (the old ones had failed an overnight test), and took Erin and Vhary and Anastasiya down the river.  We loved it!  When we got in at CA3 we saw a beaver!  Oh this was the time we first went down to the bridge to test out the inner tubes, so Vhary could figure out whether she could do the whole float.  And she could, and she did!  Erin and Anastasiya knew how to inflate the inner tubes very well, so I learned from them.  And I got to tell them why they are called inner tubes, which was funny!  They are all so much younger than I am, it's funny that I am now the one who explains old-timey stuff!