A sweet adventure

With a rare Sunday sans football, John and I decided to make it special. We woke up early, went out to breakfast (Pancake Mill!), and drove past Florence to this great little web of hiking trails. We discovered them with the South Coast Striders many months ago, and I wanted to go back, just us, for more exploring.

We stopped off a Beaver Creek Falls first (and for some reason, my photos loaded out of order a bit, so there's another photo of Beaver Creek Falls later).

If you climb out onto this huge tree that fell across the creek, you get a great vantage point. The view was worth the bushwhacking we had to do to get here — the trail was a bit overgrown.

Then we drove down to the Homestead trailhead of Sweet Creek Falls, which takes you through this gorgeous canyon for about a mile, ending at Sweet Creek Falls itself. The last time we were there, the water flow was much higher, as it was late spring. Right now, the creek had to deal with a very dry summer, and will soon be up and at 'em. 

Low water flow, we discovered allowed us to sneak down by the creek and wander around much more.

More mini waterfalls along the way.

This stop off was my favorite little side excursion. There were three waterfall tiers (which I couldn't quite get into one photo, as the lower one was quite a bit lower), and how beautiful is this? We were right on the water after a little climbing off the trail.

Here's the random photo of Beaver Creek Falls that got stuck in the middle. Ha.

And back to the off-trail excursion. We found this crawdad wandering about aimlessly. We watched him for about five minutes as he decided where he should re-enter the water — it's a treacherous area for such a little guy, and he eventually (and cautiously) tumbled into a pool.

Here's the lower portion of Sweet Creek Falls. There's a small trail that leads you to the upper viewpoint and upper tier of the falls, but it's running awfully low this time of year, so no photo of that. But this little area was quite pretty. We sat on some rocks in a quiet pool of water right below the falls; this area hadn't been touched by the hot sun, so it cooled us off from the 70-plus-degree day.

And here are a few more photos on the hike back, when the light was better to capture all the beautiful falls along the way. A few of these looks quite impressive with higher water flow, but look delicate at summer's end.

Silver Falls State Park camping

Silver Falls State Park quickly became one of my favorite places in Oregon in a single weekend. Fall colors were bright, cool temperatures kept most tourists away and the campground was nearly empty.

Here's South Falls, a highly-photographed area, as you can see. It's actually really tall, but it's difficult to see that without some perspective. So trust me, it's huge.

You could walk behind it! I love when you can do that. If you click on the photo and look really close to the right of the waterfall, you can see little people on the trail, which should offer some size perspective.

Stopped for lunch on a bridge overlooking the creek, where we had Empire Cafe sourdough bread with homemade blackberry jam (courtesy of the Gunthers).

Gratuitous moss shot, just for Mom.

North Falls from an overlook just off the road. I think you can walk to it, but we were kinda tired by this point.

So we drove to Upper North Falls, which was just a short stroll from the parking lot.

This was such an awesome weekend away. We ate at the best little bakery in Elkton to pick up breakfast for our camping trip, and tried out a new restaurant in Salem on the way home (http://wordofsalem.com/). Just check out that menu, and get the creme brulee french toast — it was incredible, as was their corned beef hash. Might have changed my life. Might have to stop there anytime I'm driving past Salem. Or near Salem at all.