Suisun Bay & Napa River
There is an interesting bay to the north of San Francisco Bay: San Pablo. Today we headed through it, toward the Island Wildlife Area. Here we anchored, and visited a series of channels to one side of Snag Island. The typical vegetation was bulrush, cattail, California rose and phragmites, a grass that was introduced into the eastern US, and caused horrible damage to the different wetlands there. A few birds were seen, among them kites, hawks, turkey vultures and a rail, besides the more typical shorebirds, such as great egrets, cattle egrets, cormorants and different gull species. Yes, and the rain got us! Back on our ship, the National Geographic Sea Lion, we had lunch and moved to a new position, just along the mothball fleet of the Navy, where we saw a good number of old warships, including the U.S.S. Iowa. Victory ships and other old warships were tied up to each other, in waiting for the possible future necessity of a conflict, where these ships might be of use.
In the afternoon, we moved to the Napa River, where we anchored off the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which is home to a wide variety of birds. Here, cruising around in our Zodiacs, we had the opportunity of seeing green pickleweed, a change among the other vegetation, which is brown and gray at this time of year. Birds were more abundant, we saw turkey vultures, hawks, ducks, geese, different egrets and herons, gulls and grebes.
For dinner, we had a most scrumptious repast, prepared by Master Chef Jesse Cool, Senior Wine Educator Kim Cafery and Gary Jenanyan, Lindblad Expeditions Executive Chef! Yes, life can be marvelous!
