Left the RV dealer yesterday and headed east to Silver Falls State Park for the night and a planned day hike in the morning. Got to the park, and they had one site left. It was a tent site with no utilities, but that is no problem in the new rig. Would not have been much of a challenge in the Fleetwood either. Probably the biggest inconvenience was the lack of cell service. That might be an issue.
Overnight it rained. Hard. All night. I was concerned that this would put my day hike in jeopardy. Fortunately, the weather broke about daylight, and so I moved out early to hit the trail. I was the first one in the parking lot, and the first one on the trail.
This was a good hard hike, that had some physical challenges but was not strenuous. The key feature of this trail is that there are ten (10) waterfalls along the major portion of the trail. Two of these fall on some very short side trails. The really neat part about these falls, is that you can walk under about half of them. I got some great shots of these as you can get up close and personal.
I started at the South Falls, and worked my way north on the Canyon Trail, slowing down long enough to take photos along the way. The trail drops down into the canyon below South Falls and gradually descends about 500 feet or so as you hike along South Fork Silver Creek for the first couple of miles. Then you begin a slow 500+ ascent up North Fork Silver Creek where the majority of the waterfalls are, all the way out to the top of the canyon. From there, I stayed on the canyon ridge line on the Canyon Rim Trail and hiked back to the parking area. All total I hiked about nine (9) miles in less than five (5) hours. Saw just a handful of people along the way, except for the Cleveland (Portland OR) High School Cross Country team who were there running the trails for training camp.
The no cell services turned out to be an issue, as I had not yet heard from Liz and she was supposed to be flying back to Tampa from Long Island NY today, and TS Fay was making her presence known in Florida. It turned out that she was fine and had already landed in Tampa when I stepped off of the trail, but it took me a little while to confirm that for sure.
South Falls, Lower South Falls and Lower North Falls
Double Falls, Drake Falls and Middle North Falls
Twin Falls, North Falls and Upper North Falls
Winter Falls