Le maître de mon destin. Le capitaine de mon âme

Hopping back on my own bandwagon of trying to see every single Oregon waterfall before the year is out… which is proving difficult since some times it’s just nasty outside and I prefer to not contract pneumonia.

However, yesterday, since we needed a short little guy because we:

• A: Had work to get done. Silly busy season… working 7 days a week is a poopsicle.
• B: Got a late start because I am crazy and went to bed at 4am for no specific reason.
• C: I desperately wanted to re-do my apartment so we had to make a stop at Ikea and brave the children and the general blackhole of the whole place.

…so we chose, well, I chose, Dry Creek Falls. Sweet little spot. Here is the remainder of the pictures…

The crest of the trail before you descrend into the wilderness again. You can see the river from this spot. It’s pretty sweet.

Right about here is where I was too busy taking pictures to read the map and naturally assumed that if there is a bridge that it is meant to be crossed and sent us about a mile and a half in the wrong direction…. my bad.

Nan on the bridge that got us lost.

Dry Creek Falls!

YAY! I made it finally!

Pre-Superbowl, crack of dawn, sunrise watching, life reflecting, hike planned.

Why is it whenever you are delicately crossing a river on the rocks sticking out of the water, the most sturdy looking ones are just not?

Wet. I got wet. And I stayed wet for the remainder of the hike. Bare in mind this was only 1.5 miles into our 9-miler… Or more. We think we might have gone 10.

(You can’t really tell, but we are in the middle of the river.)

Sunday proved to be extra productive. SC, AC, and I hiked close to ten miles. At least 9, and I think it’s fair to round up. Right?

Metlako is the first waterfall, you can barely see it from the main trail and we didn’t hike down to it. But it was pretty. Trust.

Punchbowl is next. My absolute favorite hike in general. It just has that certain majesty that only mother nature can provide to us. It’s gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous.

Then Loowit. Loowit looks across the canyon from you. It falls into a pool and is completely calm in that pool. It is the strangest thing to look at.

Tunnel & Twister come next. And while I’m POSITIVE we saw Twister just after crossing the mile high bridge we had to turn around before we got to Tunnel in order to get back before dark… And get to Saburos on time. (Sushi… It runs our life.)

Only at one point did I make my friends risk their life’s for the sake of adventure. I had them traverse an 100ft cliff with no ropes and only tree roots to hang onto. (Our hands at the end - see below.) More than once they started cursing my name. But we survived and made it safely to the top of the cliff and back on the trail where we were rewarded with PB&J sandwiches.

…and then SC licked hoovered the peanut butter off the wax paper.

Absolutely wonderful Sunday.

Last year, me and one of my best friends shared three New Years resolutions:

1. Get outside more.
2. Eat healthy and change our lifestyle [eating/exercising habits] choices for the better.
3. Stay away from douchebags.

And while, for the most part, we achieved all three… we have decided that this year we will be doing something a bit different - and another one of our dear friends is joining in:

Hit all the waterfall hikes as outlined by the Portland Hikers Field Guide.