June 27…. First of many

We drove inland yesterday to a place called Golden and Silver Falls State Natural Area. Some of the signs said “state park”, but it wasn’t much more than a parking area and a couple trails to the falls. Driving out to it was an adventure of its own. The road was very narrow, and dropped off steeply only an inch from the edge of the pavement. I was chugging along at 30-40 mph, but I swear the locals were all going 60. And then the lines on the road disappeared and it narrowed. It narrowed again, and then the pavement disappeared. Finally down to a single lane pot-holed gravel road. A real experience when several cars met us face to face, deciding how to get around each other.

Oregon is just dotted with water falls. Big ones, small ones, just everywhere. Susy is a big waterfall fan, so I expect to visit a lot more of them, and these were just the first.

About a half mile out and back to Golden Falls. Easy flat trail to a TALL waterfall. We couldn’t get super close to the falls without some scrambling, so we just took pictures from the base of the rocks.

Returning back to the trail junction, it’s another mile round trip to Silver Falls. Not quite as tall, but we were able to get much closer. Two women and some kids scrambled past us and gave some tips on how to get all the way up, and we started. If a bunch of kids can do it, surely two intelligent adults can manage.

Hmmm. Maybe that intelligence was working against us after all. Scrambling across muddy, slippery, algae coated boulders, all tilted down towards the Crevice of Doom did not seem like such a smart move for us. So we stopped part way up, called it Good, and took our photos. Getting back down was even more hair raising, but some muddy hands and slow and steady and down we went.

The trails are all lined with something we were calling poison oak. I can recognize poison ivy, seen it a million times back home, but poison oak is rare for me. So as we walked, we dodged the plants crowding in from either side of the trail, doing our best not to touch anything. After returning to civilization (cell service), we did better research and reached the conclusion that what we had been dodging was not poison oak.

This is what we dodged…. Virginia Creeper maybe??

We definitely did see textbook poison oak on the trail, but only a bit, and just a few places. In any case, “leaflets three, let it be”. If you don’t know, don’t touch. Words of wisdom from my days with Troop 211.