Yesterday (Friday, 5/21) was spent traveling and photographing from just south of Hollister, over the San Benito Mountains into Coalinga. Looking for wildflowers to photograph, we ended up going off road, traveling about 12 miles in 4 hours.
We began going through the back country unaware of what we were going to get into. After turning off CA 25 onto New Idria Road, we stopped at the New Idria Mine to shoot some old mine buildings:
New Idria Mine building
The mine elevation is about 1,200 meters. Founded in the late 1800′s for it’s extensive deposits of cinnabar. Cinnabar is an ore rich in mercury, which was used to extract gold during the California gold rush. Later the mine produced mercury for manufacturing in the US
The above image is actually an HDR image of 4 exposures.
We continued on and the road eventually turned from gravelly dirt to a washed out, 4WD vehicle only road that switched back and forth up to an elevation of about 4,000 feet. Here’s a view from on the way to the top. The road (gullywash?) we were on can be seen carved into the hillside on the left:
Clear Creek Road (4WD Only) over the San Benito Mountain range
Further up the road near the top this image couldn’t be passed up:
This was about 5 miles into the off road journey. Heading down we followed Clear Creek. The rocks in this part of the mountains were either reddish, greenish, or very reflective like mica. This is a shot of Clear Creek with some of the rock colors:
Clear Creek off of New Idria Road
The green is serpentine and the bright reflective surfaces both on the front rock and on the hill on the left are from embedded asbestos which was also mined in the area. The red on the side of the creek and in the rocks is cinnabar ore containing mercury.
Finally, 4 hours and 12 miles later we made it over the mountains into Coalinga by the Hernandez Reservoir. It was nice to finally find some wild flowers:
Coalinga Wildflowers and Barn
Coalinga Oak
It was a really surreal day in a bizarre place. Glad to be home….
