A Ride, Hunting For Cinnabar and Checking Out Springs

Wednesday May 10, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Trains

In the olden days the train used to come here and turn around on the turn around table as it was the end of the line. The place, Duncan’s Mill where there was obviously a lumber mill here too, thus the name, Duncan’s Mill.

Park headquarters

I drove down to Duncan’s Mill to see if I could find the head guy in so I could visit with him a bit about our family property, but he wasn’t in.

Instead, I shot the bull with the receptionist for a bit.

Jenner overlook

I was thinking about going kayaking, so I drove on down to the Jenner overlook to see how things looked.

River’s mouth

This is where the river runs into the ocean and a lot of seals hang out down there on the sand.

All that white stuff on the river means it’s really windy.

I hung out there for a bit talking with some seal counting people viewing the seals from the overlook.

Headed on home

The main reason I decided to drive down this way today was to burn up some of the gas in my older car as I’m retiring it to the yard for parts and it had a lot of gas in the tank.

Exploring

Anyway, with the wind up, I headed on home where I had some exploring to do up in the hills.

I wanted to look for ore in the creeks up in the hills so, I wanted to walk up and down in the creek beds. I spotted some ore the other day and I was wondering which creek it might of come down from.

I walked up and down several creeks following where the few ore pieces I did see, took me.

There where places in the creeks where it was hard for me to get through, so I had to go around some stuff.

I went through a lot of stuff like this one.

I followed what ore I could find, but in the end, the ore pieces ended where the creeks split and I didn’t find any more ore in either of the split creeks.

The ore

See that red rock laying there.

The ore looked like this which I think is Cinnabar, the ore mercury comes from.

This is what the internet says about it.

Mercury is obtained from its chief ore mineral- cinnabar which is basically a soft, reddish-brown mercury sulfide. This mineral is found almost everywhere and generally occurs in all types of rocks, also in combination with gold, iron and zinc.

This was the piece I found the other day.

Even though I didn’t find a vane of it, it was interesting to explore around those forest creeks.

Springs

There were a couple springs I wanted to check out to possibly tab in the future. I rode the bike up to this spot to check one out here.

The water is coming out of that hole and it’s a good place to tap it, so I may do so in the future.

And this was the other spring I checked out, another nice hole in the ground with water coming out of the hillside. I don’t need the water from these but it would make nice spots to get a fresh drink of water for us and the animals.