Thursday February 26, 2015 Jenner CA.
Checked the Monte Rio Boat ramp first
I stopped by the Monte Rio boat ramp on the way down to Jenner today to see how the mud situation was. Someone had cleaned a lot of the mud off the ramp. Thanks to who ever it was. I was just checking the ramp for a possible paddle this weekend, which was now a go.
I continued driving on down to Jenner.
I could see the wind was up when I arrived at Jenner today. The weather guy said it was going to be windy today, but not until afternoon. Since it was already windy, it would likely be even windier later today and it was.
I saw two Johns I know shooting the bull by the visitor center so I joined them for a bit before putting my boat in the water. John is a very popular name in Jenner and it gets confusing.
Going for a hike to Indian Rock
Since it was windy I decided not to go down to the open river’s mouth, but headed up the river to a place I call the Indian Rock trailhead instead, as the wind should be less in that area and I was thinking about going for a hike up to the Indian rock.
The trailhead is about a quarter mile past this spot.
This is the shoreline at the Indian rock trailhead and I’m deciding how to get out of my boat here. There is a bunch of mud just to my left, so I moved to the rockier part and got out and tied my boat up to a tree just to be on the safe side.
Enjoying the day
Instead of heading out for the hike, I sat in this area for awhile just enjoying the day. 
The trouble with sitting there is that doesn’t get me up the hill and I was thinking of just sitting there instead and not going up the hill to the rock. I find as I get older, it’s easier to just sit around and not do anything. But that doesn’t do me much good as far as getting some exercise and I might miss something if I don’t get up the hill, so that gets me going most of the time, so I finally got it going and started on up the hill. The trail is an old animal trail that animals take to get down to the river for a drink of water. It’s fairly well traveled by the animals, but one has to know where to go to stay on the trail as it’s not your normal well marked trail and there is lots of poison oak on it, which is just getting it’s new leaves for the year.
This was one of my views as I hiked up the hill to the rock.
I’m headed over to this big rock, which is known as the Old Indian Lady’s Face Rock. There is a turkey vulture nest in one of the cracks in the rock I wanted to check out.
The wind was blowing on top of the rock
I made it to the top of the big rock and this was my view looking down to Paddy’s rock with some cormorants on the gravel. What I didn’t expect was how strong the wind was on top of the rock. Not a good place to sit today.
I heard a thunk and looked across at the dump truck dumping dirt at the dump site there again today.
I see my hat blowing over the edge of the rock
I was trying to get some pictures from the top of the rock. The wind was blowing me hard from the side and I couldn’t keep the camera still, so as I got up to move to a better spot, I saw something greenish fly down the side of the big rock on the steepest side and realized it was my hat I had stuffed into a pants pocket earlier to keep it from blowing away. I looked after it to see where it was going to land so I could go down and retrieve it when I spotted two deer just below the rock keeping out of the wind. So my hats flying down the side of the rock and the two deer got my attention so I didn’t see exactly where my hat landed.
I did get a picture of one of the deer just as it started to bolt into the brush.
I was thinking I should check out what’s below the big rock on the way up, so now was my chance if I wanted my hat.
On the way down, I almost stepped on this little one inch skull. Hawks and owls like to devour their prey on top of rocks sometimes so one can find parts of critters. Maybe a mouse or something like that?
I worked my way down and around the big rock hoping to find my hat. I found it on the side of the rock, luckily in a spot I could get to.
Here’s my hat, just to the left of center in this picture. I retrieved it and put it securely in my pocket, so I wouldn’t lose it again as the wind was still blowing hard.
As long as I as down at the base of the big rock I continued around the bottom of it to check it out. Things were real lush at the base of the rock.
I could hear these geese honking across the river. They are grazing on the nice green grass down there.
Checked out the turkey vulture nest area
One of the reasons I wanted to hike up to the rock today was to check out the turkey vultures nest I discovered here hast year.
I continued around the base of the rock until I came to this big crack in the rock which is the old lady’s mouth.
The vulture nested in this fern patch in the big crack in the rock. It’s too early for nesting yet, so there wasn’t any activity here, maybe in another mouth there might be.
Checked out some more trails
It was too windy to sit on the big rock so I decided to check out some more trails I could see in the grass on the ridge top which I did. I was looking for ways to get through the brush for future hikes up this way. I found a couple nice trails that the animals use and then headed back down to the river where my boat was tied up.
Tired out
When I got to the bottom of the hill, I was tired out, so I had a long break there before I could get my boat back in the water where the wind was blowing good now.
I headed down the river and passed by these ducks that were feeding in the water. You can see the wind is up.
Since the wind was really blowing, I stayed on the river’s edges to avoid it as much as possible so as not to have to paddle any harder than I had to.
Here I am just getting ready to cross over the waves to the boat ramp area. I put the camera away as when crossing these waves, one has to pay attention if one doesn’t want waves coming over the side and getting all wet, not to mention that water and cameras don’t mix well. The waves also make it hard for the camera to focus on anything anyway.
I got my boat on the car and went on home for the day where the sun was just going behind the mountains, so I stayed in the house for a nap.
Nice day out hiking around the Jenner area.
