Oregon Trip 2012 – Day 3

 

If you missed it, you can catch day 1 and 2 here.

Day 3 we went south towards Florence.

We awoke with an absolutely beautiful sunny day. It would have been perfect for what I wanted to capture in Cannon Beach, however I know my mom wanted to do that with us. She wasn’t feeling well today so I did my south trip.

Getting a little foggy near Yaquina Head (DBP)

This (DBP) image did not quite capture the sand dunes that surround Florence as I had hoped.

My destination today was Sweet Creek Gorge. Unfortunately, I was not aware the road to get there was closed, and only open for 5 minutes an hour. We just missed the last window, so we tried to kill time in the nearby town of Mapleton.

Here is a shot I took where we turned around back to town. Mapleton did not have enough to distract us for an hour so we went back and waited (im)-patiently for the road to open up again.

Finally, we got past the construction into the canyon. Very green and pretty up here. (DBP)

After some .. issues with google maps and not being at all familiar with the area, we finally found the trail head.

WOW! this trail is absolutely amazing! And the smell, the smell! If I could bottle this and somehow make my home smell like this I would. Somewhere between the wet soil, the trees, the wet ocean air all intermingled created the most amazing scent I have ever smelled.

And look how clear the water is! The picture didn’t get it, but we could see the fish swimming here.

So green!

Occasionally the trail allowed us into the stream bed.

 

Quick panoramic

Moss covered tree

Pretty stream below.

Here the gorge gets a little tight so they built this nice bridge to cross safely.

Spider.

Pretty creek.

I just love this trail!

I still cant get over how clear the water is.

Mossy steps.

This waterfall has a name, but I forget it at the moment.

I love the moss!

Green green trail!

Pretty little cascade.

More moss.

Every turn I take I find another wonder in this gorge.

More greenery.

And we reached Sweet Creek Falls. Considering the falls we saw by Multnomah, this is not a particularly impressive waterfall, however, that is not what this hike is special for. The entire trip up trough the gorge is special, the lack of crowds, the scenery, the smells, this hike is special and probably the only hike I have done where it was all about the entire experience rather than what we are eventually going to see.

And what do I spy in the shores of this pool? A mini lobster? Well that is what I would have thought if my friend hadn’t told me about Crawdads.  Apparently these are common in Utah, although I have yet to actually see one, so it was weird to see not just 1, but 2 just chilling at the base of this waterfall.

I almost accidentally stepped on this cute little… uh.. newt? salamander? on my way across to get a different angle.

View down the gorge.

The trail went up a little further so we followed it.

First view of the upper falls, not much to it. But we waited patiently for a group of old hippies to vacate the viewing area.

View of the pool below. Looking back I kind of want to take a little dip in there.

This late in the year, the upper falls are confined to a hard to see corner.

I had a similar experience when I hiked Mill Fork D in Big Cottonwood Canyon, hiking down at a rapid pace when I see something dart across the trail and had to come to a halt to process what I saw. The photo did not capture it great, but if you look closely, you can see a snake with some sort of prey in its mouth. I managed to piss it off enough that when Landis went to look at it, it turned towards him and we decided that we did not need to find out if it was poisonous or not.

Cool old tree.

Slug!

I am really fond of this shot.

Mossy rocks.

More shots of the creek.

Mossy woods

 

even more shots of the creek.

Look at the size of this freaking slug! And I almost stepped on it which would have been really gross.

I think these photos are from the upper trail head. When I read about this trail I also read there was another trailhead that offered a different view of the falls, as well as a short trail to another waterfall. We stopped here, hiked a bit in until I was certain this went to where we already were. The road here switched to 1 lane 2 way traffic with pull outs which I am not a fan of, and it was starting to get late so we headed back.

And the trip back towards the coast.

Well, this little adventure ended up being pretty long so I am going to go ahead and break here. We continued our day exploring the Cape Perpetua area which was also pretty eventful so stay tuned for that!

Well since this post consisted of the most epic hike I have ever done I am going to go ahead and give it a squirrelly rating. A perfect 10. Yes, it was a little out of the way, yes we got stuck in a weird Oregon construction crap zone, but this trail was just amazing. Hardly any other people, it smelled amazing and it is a very pretty trail. I highly recommend it if you happen to be in the area.