bluekat's Journeys

Warning: Long post alert! A week or so ago Ron and I took a hike at Silver Falls State Park . Warm summer afternoons will find hundreds of people hiking at the park. It's a constant battle of passing slow hikers...usually in groups, and bumping past oncoming hikers. Not exactly a peaceful forest experience. Take a hike on a cool, wet afternoon, and you'll find far fewer hikers. The hike is called the Trail of Ten Falls . On this day we will visit 6 of the 10 falls, and be treated to a number of unofficial falls running off the slopes of the canyon. South Falls is probably the most visited of all the falls. It's close to the day use area, and can be viewed without hiking down the canyon. The trail goes behind the falls, but we opt to take the foot bridge for the better view. An aside, my co-worker claims to have repelled over South Falls (and came up short on rope).  South Falls, 177 ft. Canyon Trail Off we go down the trail and to a series of stairs taking ...

We have it all planned out. It will be a car day. We do an errand in Salem, then we were going to drive up to Beaverton to deliver some fabric to our daughter. Afterwords I'd spend some time with the camera. We make it to Salem. What does Salem have? Blue skies. It's lovely out. We see a few other riders...tempting. But the one that pushed me over the top was the rider who came into the parking lot. It wasn't too bad at first. He parked an aisle over. I could admire the bike from afar. But then he pulled forward and came to park in our aisle. So, blue skies and lovely bikes...what's a rider supposed to do with that? We never make it to Beaverton. We turned around, went home and got out the bikes. Of course in Lebanon the skies were back to grey. Oh well, we'll go North. And we did. North into more grey skies! Where did the blue go? We ride to Silver Creek Falls and just beat the hale by ducking into the lodge for lunch. It figures.