Thursday, March 5. It's still raining, but the forecast is looking up a bit. I head out of Monterey, aiming for the valley that represents the San Andreas Fault in this part of California. While I'm not actually looking to explore the fault, we'll get to that in the next post.
After passing through Salinas, I head northeast to pick up California Route 25, which goes south, up the San Benito River valley, toward the eastern entrance of Pinnacles National Monument. In addition to some fairly nice scenery, Pinnacles is one of the areas where California condors are released, and they are frequently seen there.
Arriving early in the afternoon, I chose a campsite in the otherwise-empty campground, and headed up into the pinnacle area. My way up was via Bear Gulch, so my traveling companion insisted on being photographed there.
When I reached the highest sections of the trail, I had some views to the wilder western side of the monument, and also apparently spooked some condors. They were apparently shy, and I was not able to get any good in-flight pictures.
Taking pictures was also affected by the weather, which turned intermittently rainy. This did not stop me from getting some really nice relatively-close-up pictures of one fellow who parked himself on a rock about 105 feet off the trail on the way down.
By the time I got back to the campground, another two spots (out of about 50) were occupied -- we were all well separated, and serenaded by a flock of wild turkey, who eluded effective photography.
The next morning I hiked out again, this time to explore an area known as The Balcony, so named because the discolored runoff trenches on the rockface sort of make it look like a giant balcony. Along the way I saw some Steller's jays. The trail took me through areas undergoing ecological restoration. It turns out that when the Civilian Conservation Corps worked on the park in the 1930s, some of their roadworks interfered with the floodplains of one stream, resulting in changes to the ecosystem that are now slowly being remedied.
That afternoon I headed off and drove south, still parallelling the San Andreas Fault.
