Thursday, June 6, 2013, Jenner, CA.
I could of called this hiking in the poison oak
I started off the day by going to Monte Rio and taking the trailer hitch I made for a little four wheeler up to the guy that had me make it. When I got there, they said they just mentioned my name just before I got there. They were sitting around trying to get his sisters computer to work, with no luck.
I gave it a quick look and it looked pretty sick all right. I will take it home and work on it and I am now, without much luck so far.
After that, I went on down to Jenner to kayak for the day. It was fairly warm for Jenner with a light breeze blowing, with a little high fog.
I had a plan for the day and that was to hike up the the Indian lady head rock, as the last time I tried to hike up there, the trail was overgrown and I didn’t have time to find a way around it, but this time I have the time, so I was going to get to that big rock up on the hill.
So I headed up the river right away about a mile and put ashore on the south side of the river.
The rock up on the hill in the middle of this picture is where I planned to hike to today.
This is a closer view of the rock, called the old Indian ladies head, she is looking up out of the ground.
There used to be a lot of Indians in this area for over twelve thousand years. I bet this big rock played some roll on and off with them as it’s one of the larger ones around. I looked all around it and didn’t detect any Indian sign though. The surface erodes quite a bit being so near the ocean and all.
I put my boat ashore just below the rock area. It’s only a few hundred yards to hike up to it, but it is though thick brush, with lots of poison oak, so it takes awhile finding the right trail to get though it all.
The part of the hike that goes up under the bigger trees is real interesting. More open with big ferns, as can be seen below.
When I got up near the big rock about a half dozen deer hot footed it out of he immediate area, just ahead of me.
This is what the big rock looked like from up above and in back of it.
And the river view from this rock looking up river to the highway 1 bridge.
And looking down the river toward Jenner from the rock.
There were lots of wild flowers out as I walked around. Here is a small sample of some. Note the rattle snake grass just to the right of these flowers.
At first I was only going to go as far as the rock, but that mound out in the field sure is a good vantage point to see the ocean, so I had to hike over to the top of it.
The mound I hiked to from the rock is on the horizon, which puts me at a even higher vantage point.
As I walked over to the mound, fog was waffling in around me, coming and going.
This is a view from the mound I hiked to out in the field. This is looking south toward Bodega Bay head, as far as you can see in this pic.
While I was on the mound a helicopter came by and dropped down in front of me out of sight at the ocean, then came back up and continued south. I thought he was going to do a rescue, but he was only there for a moment and left.
From the mound, I headed back to the big rock. I was headed down off the rock, but stopped to check out some flowers and spent another hour just sitting there, before finally heading back down the trail. When I got back to the waters edge, it was very nice out, so I sat down on the shoreline for about another hour, just taking it easy. It started to cool down a bit as it was almost five PM, so I put some more shirts on and headed back toward the Jenner take out at a leisurely pace.
Did I mention that there is a lot of poison oak in the area, so it’s not a recommended hike for most. There was plenty of it up there and one had to walk though a lot of it in the grass and could not be avoided. This area is just an extension of an area below it that I call Poison oak alley. I guess I should call this Poison oak hill?
That was a real nice day down there.