After my recent trip in Drakes Estero, I was eager to try launching from the Limantour Beach parking lot directly into the Estero. This would save a 2 hour paddle (each way) from Johnson's Oyster Company and allow me to immediately explore Limantour Estero, a branch of Drakes Estero I have not seen yet. I suggested the trip to Marty, who figured we could go the Friday after Thanksgiving. She said there should be lots of unusual migratory birds. We did drive down to Limantour Beach Friday but arrived well after noon, when the afternoon wind had already started. We went for a walk instead, woke up early on Saturday, and managed to get back to Limantour and in the water by 8:00 AM. The NOAA Coastal Marine Forecast was predicting a mild wind all day and mild waves at sea, although waves should not be an issue in the Estero.
From our exploratory hike the day before, we knew that there was a place to put the canoe in the water in one of the twisty channels through the salt marsh. This channel looped back and forth and looked navigable on a reasonably high tide. There was a high tide in the early morning before dark, and we hoped to catch the end of this going out through the Estero. The low tide was not predicted to be a very low one. Then there was another high tide predicted for 2:00 PM which I figured would raise the water and give us a clear shot at getting back to the put-in spot. We were a little late, apparently, for that early morning high tide. The twisty channels through the muddy marsh were practically empty at 8:00 AM and I worried about getting out before they completely dried up.
We started paddling through the loops of the channel with enough water, but soon ran aground. We were in our kevlar canoe that has skimmed us over lots of marshy shallow water before. But this time we exceeded the limits. At first we were able to pole the canoe over the shallow parts, sliding the canoe along the muddy bottom by pushing off with one end of a paddle. But eventually I had to get out into the water in my neoprene booties with my pants rolled up over my knees. Marty predicted that I would end up over my knees in mud, but the bottom turned out to be surprisingly firm under only a few inches of mud. I pulled and pushed the canoe around one loop after another, and eventually we made it into the wider, straighter, and fortunately deeper main body of Limantour Estero.
Limantour Estero runs three kilometers parallel to the ocean, created by a long spit of sandy dunes and beaches. The resulting body of water has several side branches going up valleys in the coastline. One of these is quite large, around two kilometers long. This side branch is so long that when we walked past it on a hike the previous day, I had assumed I was seeing the central channel of Drakes Estero itself! Aside from that glimpse the day before, this was totally unexplored territory for me. We turned in and paddled most of the way up it. The whole distance we were herding a bunch of small black-and- white duck-like birds. Probably buffleheads and goldeneyes. They were very skittish and never let us get close enough to positively identify them even with binoculars. When we got most of the way up the side branch, Marty suggested that we turn back and not chase them out of their last refuge.
Continuing up the main channel of Limantour Estero, we had to search back and forth sometimes to find the deepest water. Seals started appearing and spy-hopping out of the water to get a good look at us. Of course from time to time a seal would surface near us and swim away with a loud splash when it discovered how close we were. My goal was to land on the small inaccessible beach where I had landed the last two trips out here from the other direction. But when we got to the mouth of the Estero system, we found a large number of seals hauled out on one of the isolated sand bars. We were not sure if we could scoot around the point and get to the beach without disturbing them. The point was also covered with cormorants who would have flown off at our approach, so we crossed over to the tip of Limantour Spit and landed there for lunch.
Looking across at the beach we had avoided, we could see that a sea kayaker was camping there. I studied the waves breaking into the Estero from Drakes Bay and concluded that the camper was going to have an easy time getting back out into the ocean. There was a totally calm channel out to sea, and the waves elsewhere were very mild (as predicted by NOAA). Camping in the National Park is only allowed in designated camp sights, and this is not one of them. Not that I was at all likely to report my fellow kayaker to the park rangers. The park is very large and many places like this are difficult to police, so you are unlikely to get caught doing this sort of thing. The park rangers spend most of their time driving around on the roads hassling people about parking and bureaucratic car details. Last summer while we were hiking and camping overnight in the park, one of these parking-lot rangers noticed that the registration on Marty's car was one month overdue. So this ranger wrote up a ticket that went to the DMV and resulted in a $50.00 ticket for Marty. How does this help maintain the National Park?
Because Marty and I drove to the park in separate vehicles to meet Friday and planned to come back the next morning, we wanted to leave a car behind. As a courtesy to the rangers, (so they wouldn't think I had fallen off the cliff and needed rescue), I went to the main office to tell them where my car was. They told me that overnight parking was forbidden, and I must remove the car or get a ticket. When I pointed out that I had left cars here overnight before while I was camping, they said that was different: Those times I had a permit. I explained that I was simply trying to save some driving time, pollute the air less, save the planet, etc., and so could they kindly issue me a permit. Sorry, the bureaucracy cannot issue me a permit unless I am camping. I suggested that I could pretend to want a campsite, but then she refused to give me one because she knew I really wouldn't use it and somebody else might actually need it. I told this story to Marty, and she was so angry with the inflexible bureaucrats that she went in and reserved a campsite anyway. It was late in the day, and we probably didn't inconvenience anyone. But beware: If you fall off a cliff in Point Reyes National Seashore, the Bureaucrats_in_Green_Uniforms (called Park Rangers) will not try to rescue you. Instead, they will give you parking tickets for leaving your car in their lot while you die of exposure.
I had a similarly infuriating bureaucratic experience last month when I went kayak-camping on the Mendocino coast. I wanted to leave a car in one State Park while I paddled down the coast from another park. But overnight parking being forbidden (dangerous in some unspecified way), I was not allowed to do this unless I rented a campsite. I didn't mind donating the camping fee to the State to rent this parking spot, but I felt it was criminal of them to force me to hold down a campsite that someone else might have a use for. They wouldn't let me pick a campsite off the map, and forced me to drive out to the site, leave the car in a campsite at random, go back to the office and fill out the forms, go back to the campsite and put a sticker in the window, and finally drive back out past the office one last time. I left the "number of people in party" blank, and when they forced me to fill it in, I wrote ZERO. There's this concept called a "trial-head" which is sort of a long-term-parking-lot for campers and bikers (and kayakers) that seems to be lost on some of these bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, I had planned on spending most of the day out on Limantour Estero. I wanted to show Marty the geologic formations I had learned about my last trip out here. I brought my wetsuit tucked into the nose of the canoe so I could go snorkeling and collect some crabs for Marty to eat for dinner. Marty loves fresh crabs, but had apparently made other plans. She had promised to be available for fixing problems at work after noon. So after lunch, we started straight back.
Earlier in the morning while (inadvertently) chasing little duck- like birds around the Estero, Marty had mused that we should see some predators looking these birds over. Namely peregrine falcons. As we paddled back up the Estero, Marty finally saw her falcon. It flew around us for a while, and had a beneficial (to us) effect on the little birds. They were afraid to fly with a peregrine overhead, and stayed in the water long enough for us to get close to them and get a good look. Then when the ducks couldn't stand it any more they started to take off and the falcon dove on them. The ducks could tell when the falcon was close to them, and the nearest one would fall noisily back into the water to escape. Splash! Splash! Splash! One at a time as the falcon flew through the flock. This show repeated four or five times for us as we paddled along. One pass, the falcon flew straight towards us and we heard the air "tear" off her wings as she pulled up to avoid us. A smaller falcon joined the first one before they disappeared, making us think we were seeing a mated pair.
Peregrines cannot take birds over water, so this behavior is interesting. We saw something like this on Lake Pillsbury once before, and hypothesized that the falcon was trying to panic the birds into flying over land where they would be vulnerable to attack. The attacks we saw today were all wing-powered flight, not power dives, and didn't look like serious attempts to get a meal. We hypothesized that our bird might be an inexperienced hunter who hadn't learned the ropes yet. We hypothesized that this falcon had learned that humans can be useful in flushing birds off the water, and followed us for this purpose. When the second falcon appeared, we hypothesized that this was cooperative hunting: The first falcon was trying to flush ducks over land for the second falcon. Whatever the cause, we enjoyed the show.
The peak tide wasn't expected for another hour or two, but was rising most of the time we were out. As we approached the end of the Estero, I though I saw two people standing up in the middle of the marshy area. I'd look again later and they would be gone, then they would pop back up again. Eventually a dual sit-on-top kayak came out of the mud. With a much deeper keel than our flat bottomed canoe, they apparently had more trouble than us getting out to clear water. The tide had in fact risen enough to float us all the way back in through the twisty maze of channels in the marsh. We did slide over shallows a few times, but Marty kept watch over the prow and pointed out the deepest spots. We were able to slip into deeper water or poll the canoe over the shallows and made it all the way back without anyone having to get out into the mud this time.
