John and I Explore the Ravine at Muskrat Nest Beach

Tuesday November 11, 2014 Jenner CA.

As I was putting my boat in the water at Jenner this morning, John pulls up in his kayak. He’s been out early and was returning to the boat ramp. I said, let’s go up to Muskrat and I’ll show you this new ravine Ray and I have been exploring. John says ok, maybe there are some mushrooms out?

So, we crossed over the river and headed on up the south shoreline about a mile up the river. Of course we cross back over to the Paddy’s rock area to look for the coyote that I haven’t seen in about a week, but he’s not around.

We crossed back over the river here to Muskrat Nest beach and are going to hike up that ravine in back of the big rock there on the right. It looks fairly easy, but it’s all brush with lots of poison oak.

Ashore at Muskrat

We find the place to go ashore and get out and I show John some of the muskrat nests along the river bank. We spot some white berries on some of the bushes. I think they are out of the Nardina family. I don’t know if they are good or poisonous, but they are very blend, so no good anyway, so we only did a taste and spit them out.

Lots of poison oak

We work our way up the hill through the poison oak bushes. We both don’t catch the stuff, much.

We made it into the trees in the ravine and I take a break in this spot as John looks around.

Lots of ferns on the way up

Continuing up the ravine through the ferns heading to the top.

We made it to the top of the ravine and this is our view back down at the river where we started.

I suggest we walk over to the old Indian ladies face rock to the left in this picture with Jenner in the background.

We walk over that way, but before we get there, we change our minds and decide to head on over to ridge on the right of this photo.

This was our view near the top, looking over the ridge to the ocean south.

We spied an old water trough near the top in the direction we are headed so veer off to check it out. Seems it’s a tank for an old spring that is still dripping water. We looked for the spring in the grass, but didn’t find it, maybe next time. There used to be a lot of sheep raised in the area when I was a kid, a long time ago. :O)

Up pops a buck

While we were exploring around the water area, we spied this buck that had popped up from it’s bed and was checking us out. It continues to watch us as we started down the hill.

Somewhere is the trail down to the river

Here’s John as we look for the trail down the hill. We need to get back into the trees in the ravine if we want to get back down through all the poison oak, as it’s too thick everywhere but under the trees.