Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #8
Buena Vista, VA - Mon, 2 Sep 2024. 5:30pm

Today's a two-fer of hiking and waterfalls. After a steep hike at Crabtree Falls that mostly tired us out we found we still had energy left for a short hike somewhere. And fortunately "somewhere" was close by and kind of on the way back to our hotel. We drove up the ridge to the Blue Ridge Parkway, headed south to the next crossing at US-460 above Buena Vista, then veered off on a dirt and gravel road for about 3 miles to the trailhead for Panther Falls.



As befits a two-fer trail the hike to Panther Falls was easy... -ish. The trail dropped steeply for the first minute or two then leveled off at Pedlar Creek. From there we followed the creek downstream for a bit until we climbed over rocks where it goes over a couple small falls.



Even though it was getting later in the afternoon there were still 2-3 small groups of hikers there with us. Unlike us, though, they were either there to swim in the swimming holes or smoke and drink on the rocks. We were content to stay dry and to have only nature's beauty as our natural intoxicant.



After a short while we'd had our fill of nature's beauty. It was time to get back to town and fill up on some much-welcomed dinner!

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #5
Bland, VA - Sun, 1 Sep 2024. 5:30pm

First of all, Yes, there's really a Dismal Creek Falls. It's on Dismal Creek, which is that small waterway's actual name. (Though some maps title the falls Falls of Dismal.) And also Yes, I am also not making this up, it's just outside the town of Bland, Virginia. In fact Bland is not just a bland little town, it's the county seat of Bland County. Yes, the whole dang county is bland. And from what I can tell its main industry is the state prison in Bland. I guess that's what makes Bland dismal.



Dismal falls is actually anything but dismal, even on a dismal day like today has been. Yes, it's raining. Even despite this rain there are a few carloads at Dismal Falls enjoying the water. Imagine how overrun this place would be if the weather were merely bland, let alone good! 😂

Okay, in all seriousness, I am surprised by how crowded these falls are on a shitty late afternoon, out here in the middle of freakin' nowhere. The town of Bland has a population of just 300. ...Actually it's not even a town, it's an unincorporated area. The whole of Bland County is around 6,000 people— probably not including the prison inmates. It's one of the least populated counties in the state and it contains no incorporated towns or cities. But hey, you don't have to be an incorporated town to have kids who want to do something outdoors. In fact, it probably because Bland is so... dismal... that probably every person under 25 in the town— all, like, ten of them— is out here this afternoon.

Two weekends ago we drove to northern California to enjoy hiking in the Trinity Wilderness northwest of Mt. Shasta. As I've written in several blogs recently, we had to contend with smoke from the enormous Park Fire blazing near Chico— plus smoke drifting down from fires in southern Oregon. 🥵 The latter caused us to cancel our plans to hike in the Trinity Alps Sunday, even after we hiked there comfortably on Saturday, so instead we picked a pair of shorter hikes further south.... in between the clouds of smoke from the various fires.

One of those hikes was a short walk to an old favorite, Hedge Creek Falls. It's just off I-5 in Dunsmuir, a tiny town between Mt. Shasta and Shasta Lake. In the past when we've visited it's been a hidden gem. Typically we shared the trail with just a few other groups. But on this particular Sunday two weeks ago there were more than 20 cars parked at the trailhead.



The crowds don't make the falls less pretty. Well, not until over-visitation by careless people trashes the place. 🙄 Thankfully that hasn't happened here... yet.



We stayed at the falls for a while, at least twice as long as any of the other visits. We watched two or three sets cycle in and out. I had fun making slow-exposure photos with my nice camera and tripod— even though I'd lost one of my lenses in an Alpine swamp the day before. You can see two of the motion blur pictures above. Here's a short video I made:



In beauty I walk.

This past weekend we headed up to far northern California. Friday night we drove to Redding and stayed there. Saturday morning we saw a lot of smoke to the east from the Park Fire, but then we drove almost two hours northwest toward the Trinity Alps. By the time we reached the trailhead for East Boulder Lake an hour west of Mt. Shasta there was no longer any sign of smoke in the air.



We got to the trailhead at 5,700' elevation with no problem. A combination of AllTrails user comments and Google Maps were our guides. Even the 6 miles of dirt road, which we took our 4x4 to make sure we could conquer, were mild enough that we probably could have driven them in our convertible. Still, it's better to have the certainty of a real 4x4 in case there's an obstacle on the vehicle trail.



The foot trail climbed steadily through the forest at first before leveling out and opening up a bit as it crossed the boundary into the Trinity Alps wilderness. Somehow it just seemed that everything was greener once we crossed the invisible line into the wilderness.



Soon enough the trail started climbing more steeply again. First it was a steep climb through forest, then we broke out onto grassy hillside with a view of a waterfall ahead of us.

From here on up the trail was frequently wet. The outflows from East Boulder Lake and other lakes up above all pour down through this area, and the trail is often the path of least resistance for the water.

The trail climbing up above this falls was steep and often slow-going. I didn't mind the huffing and puffing and knee twisting because there was so much to look at. In beauty I walk.



Soon enough we were at the last bit before the lake. How could we tell? Just reading the terrain. There's obvious a huge flat spot up above us. That's where the lake is going to be.



And, yup, that's where East Boulder Lake is. 6,680' elevation. In beauty I walk.

To be continued....

Update: Keep reading in part 2 of this hike!

Alaska Travelog #25
Near Anchorage - Wed, 19 Jun 2024, 12pm

I'm glad we're almost done with our drive back to Anchorage. It's only about 125 miles from Seward but it feels like a lot longer. Partly that's because there have been a few delays for road construction and slow moving vehicles. But even delays are so scenic....



I mean, when you're in a place like this, it's like everything is scenic. I imagine Alaskans must get used to having snow-capped peaks and thick forests around them everywhere they go. I'll bet Alaskans who go almost anywhere else in the US, but especially to places like the Midwest, are like, "OMG, where are the mountains? How can you even live in a place that looks this dull?" 🤣

We've broken up the monotony of the drive this morning by parking and hopping out several times to visit roadside waterfalls.



This waterfall (photo above) is named Seward Highway Falls on one map— coincidentally Hwy 1 is named Seward Highway— and not even marked on another. It's next to a large pullout area so at least it's safe to visit. There's a steep foot trail around the left side (not pictured) that looks like it leads up to the higher tiers. We weren't interested in stopping for too long or taking risks of slipping on a primitive trail so we left it as a mystery.



Speaking of falls being safe to visit, this falls further along the route was barely safe. The small pullout is on a bend in the road and is only big enough for a few cars. To really get a good view of the falls requires standing far enough back from the falls that you're practically standing in the road.

And this falls 20 meters or so away...



There isn't even a pullout for this one. We walked along the side of the road a short distance to get to it. Traffic was whizzing past at 65mph. Fortunately there was a break in traffic (possibly some logging truck was slowing everyone down) so we stood in the road briefly to snap pictures of it.

We made two stops other than these. The photos didn't turn out as interesting. In the interest of drawing this Alaska blog series to a close less than a week after we got home, I'll pass on sharing them.

Alaska Travelog #5
Eklutna - Sat, 15 Jun 2024, 1:30pm

After hiking Barbara Falls this morning, we continued driving out from Anchorage to the northeast along state highway 1. We were going from Chugach State Park to... another part of Chugach State Park. Yes, it's a very big park. A quick map estimate is that it's 50 miles across.

The trailhead for Thunderbird Falls is way more official than Barbara Falls. First of all, there are signs on the highway for it. There's an official parking lot— with, of course, a parking fee required. But hey, at least Alaska has joined the 2020s here and installed a payment kiosk so we can pay with a credit card.

From the parking lot a steep fire-road trail leads up a ridge around the edge of the river gorge then more gently down to a viewing platform.



The views from the viewing platform are fine. Not great, but fine. To be great there'd have to be a slightly clearer view of the falls. Right now the trees are in full bloom so the view's a bit obstructed.

The trail here is shaped like the letter "h". It doubles back slightly from the upper viewing platform to switch back down the side of the gorge to the river level. Although lots of people around us on the crowded trail groaned about how steep it was, we looked forward to it for an opportunity to get a great close-up view of the falls, as we had at Barbara Falls. Plus, the steep uphill on this leg of the trail is on the return, so groaning on the way down is premature. 🤣



Alas the lower viewpoint did not provide us the vista we were hoping for. Only the very lowest part of the falls is visible from the bottom of the gorge. I tried climbing up a steep dirt slope to the right, working my way above the grassy outcropping on the right edge of the frame. The dirt felt very treacherous but I managed it in my new hiking boots. Even so, the view was no better up there. I'd have had to go even further up to see more... and as dicey as what I'd already climbed 20' up was, I was not going to go higher.

The way back up over the lip of the gorge was steep, too— though not treacherously so. I stopped to catch my breath several times.

"It harder coming up than going down, isn't it?" a stranger jibed.

"It's like going on vacation on your credit card," I responded.

In beauty I walk... and pay the bill in full at the end of the month.

Our day of driving a big loop west and north of Auckland, NZ to hike a bunch of waterfalls was fun. We finished the day aiming to see Waitangi Falls. It turned out that the park it was in, Omeru Scenic Reserve, had not one but three falls. One of them wasn't even shown on the map though it was a nice little falls and the trail led right to it. The park's namesake, Omeru Falls, was off trail and was also much bigger than user reviews led us to believe.



We bushwhacked through a bit of forest and over a slight hill to get to Omeru Falls. Possibly this fact of having to thread through the trees to see the actual Omeru Falls is why so many user reviews inaccurately referred to it as being small. The other falls was small— but nice! Omeru was taller and sublime.



After seeing the falls from the edge of basin I scrambled down a treacherous and damp path to perch on a rock just above the water level in the basin in at the foot of the falls. Here I setup my tripod and took pictures for several minutes. Why? Because the light kept changing! The sun was starting to poke out from behind the clouds— and that was bad, because it a) lit the falls unevenly and b) made it hard to capture a nice motion-blur of the falling water even with a neutral density filter. So I waited for the sun to go back behind the clouds, but just by the right amount so the scene wouldn't get too dim. 🤣



And while the sun was out? Well, while I was waiting for the sunshine to go away I took a few selfies to remind myself of how I practice my art. You can see my camera on the top of the tripod there. Yes, I carried my nice tripod on this trek. It wasn't a long trek, only about 1 mile round trip— and for photos of falls like this, it was totally worth it.

Once we'd had plenty of Omeru Falls we scrambled back up through the forest and rejoined the graveled trail. Gravel gave way to boardwalk as it took us to the back of the park and down into a basin for Waitangi Falls.



It was impressive how much we had this park to ourselves. I mean, we weren't the only people there. Well, at Omeru Falls we were. On the graded trails we saw two, maybe three, other small groups over the course of more than an hour. But for as nice as these falls are and as not-far away from the big city of Auckland (1.6 million people) as they are, the park was pratically deserted.



Because we had the park pretty much to ourselves it was enjoyable to dwell at each of the three falls. We spent time here at Waitangi Falls, the largest of three, before deciding to call it a day and hike back to the car. If nothing else we knew we'd be hungry for dinner on the 1.5 to 2 hour drive back to our hotel and didn't want to miss the ridiculously early hour most of New Zealand's restaurants close.

Update: Connecting this back up to blogs I posted from during the trip.... After this hike we made a sightseeing stop at the only Costco within 1,000 miles and ate dinner at a small Italian restaurant in Auckland... that had to unlock the doors to let us out at 7:30pm because they closed at 7pm. 🤣

Here it is over a month later and I'm still catching up on sharing photos from our trip to New Zealand in April 2024. These pics are from our hike at Karekare Falls. It was on our last full day in the country, and we went on a driving loop out to the coast west and north of Auckland.



Usually I share pics in roughly chronological order, using them to illustrate my narrative. Here I'll start instead with my favorite pic from the bunch, this photo of us in front of Karekare Falls I posed with the help of my camera tripod. Yes, I carried my tripod for this hike since it wasn't that long.

Speaking of "not that long", as we parked for this hike we thought we could see the falls from the car....



It turned out this fairly tall falls dropping in multiple tiers behind some cliff-side houses is not Karekare Falls. It's an unnamed falls, at least on any of the maps we could find. Possibly it's a seasonal falls... "seasonal" in this case as it looks like it only appears when there's rainy weather, like there was this day.

In fact the rainy weather had us wondering whether it was worth it to go hiking— and we had identified at least 4 hiking trails we wanted to visit. We figured with that much on our to-do list we'd make the best of the weather. Thus we packed sweaters and rain jackets, which you see us wearing in the first photo, and braved the elements. While we were driving between locations the rain sometimes fell heavily. We managed to time our hikes for periods when it was only drizzling or merely overcast.

Anyway, the actual trail to Karekare Falls started a bit up the road from where we parked....



You can see Karekare Falls from where the trail forks off from the narrow road. The upside of rainy weather is that the falls are flowing well.

Just below this spot I took a spill on the trail. Everything was slick from the saturating rain, and my feet slipped out from under me. In the moment I didn't think anything was wrong other than feeling slightly bruised from the fall. By the next day, though, I realized I'd torqued my back and hurt one of my arms. That was as we headed to the airport for the long flight home to the US. A week later it was still hurting. In fact that spill is why I tried drug tourism in Mexico 2.5 weeks later. Even now, almost 6 weeks later, the aches are still with me.

But hey, back to the falls— I mean, the waterfalls— where it didn't yet hurt so bad. 😅



I took pictures from a few vantage points but mostly settled on this spot (photo above), up a slight rise from the edge of the pool at the base of Karekare Falls. This is also where I made the photo with us in the picture (top of this blog) using the tripod and timer.



Along the short trail to Karekare Falls we passed this smaller, unnamed falls. It's no more than 10-12' tall but falls nicely over a rocky apron. Again, I could make this photo with both of us in it because I carried my tripod on this trek.

Could I have gotten a similar photo by asking another visitor hiking the trail to use my camera? Almost certainly not. I'm circumspect about my skill in photography but I know I know enough about the art to know that nearly everyone else out there is a rank amateur at it. They'd have messed up the composition, likely centering the picture on us in our rain jackets and cutting off half the falls, as if we really traveled halfway around the world to get yet-another picture of us in our rain jackets. And there's almost no way they'd have gotten the exposure time I used without using my tripod anyway, so yay for carrying the tripod!

Saturday we made a day out of visiting Zim Zim Falls. It's a fairly tall waterfalls in a fairly remote corner of the Bay Area. It's technically in Napa County, but not the part you think of when you think "Napa Valley". It's out in the wilderness.

We set our alarms early for Saturday morning, thinking optimistically that we might actually get up at 6:30am. We hit the snooze button several times and got up closer to 7:30. Then we puttered around the house for more than an hour, continuing to wake ourselves up before packing for the trip. We left the house a bit after 9am, but that was okay.... With the long days this time of year we knew we'd have plenty of time, even with the round-trip drive being 5 hours.

We even had time for brunch along the way. We stopped at the Cordelia junction where I-680 ends and merges into I-80 and grabbed a fast-food quickie at Del Taco. Remember, eating at Del Taco is one of our guilty pleasures. We only get to do it on road trips, though. This one 73 miles away is practically the closest one to us!

The brunch stop was good because it split the drive roughly in half, time-wise. It also marked the shift from hammering along interstate highways at 70-80 mph to cruising winding country roads at 35-50.

The last bit— well, the next-to-last bit— of the drive to Zim Zim winds around the shore of Lake Berryessa. It's always a beautiful sight in the mornings not just because of the lake, which is beautiful, but because along the road are several nesting platforms for ospreys built by conservationists. And the ospreys have obliged by building nests in them. As we passed by this morning we saw an osprey in or near almost every one of them, their large, white heads and brown-and-white bodies poking up from their massive stick nests. Plus we saw a few of these birds on the wing.

The actual last part of the drive to the trail is where the adventure begins. The road up into the mountains from Lake Berryessa narrows and becomes rough. As it climbs higher it passes several water crossings. Here's a short video I made:



When we visited last year there was water in all the crossings. And it was deep enough that people who tried fording carelessly in ordinary passenger cars had trouble. I got through just fine in my sports car. That was in March 2023, so it was earlier in the season, and it was after a winter of record rainfall. Thus it was only slightly surprising that this year most of water crossings were dry. Only the last crossing had water, and it was maybe 2 inches deep.

Really the biggest "offroading" challenge this year was all the potholes in the road. I had to steer carefully around them to avoid bursting a sports-car tire. It wasn't so bad last year. The condition of the road clearly has deteriorated. I don't know how much longer it'll be before the county does repairs. Maybe next time we do this drive we'll take our 4x4 SUV— just to get past the potholes!

Our day in Tongariro National Park last month was a very packed day. I keep writing that over and over— because it's true. This is the tenth blog I've posted about our visit park and the twelfth from the whole day.

You might wonder with so much to write about, and especially with me still catching up on it over a month later, how I remember what I did. It's three things.

• First, I have a strong memory for things I've done and places I've gone.
• Second, the act of making photos helps— and sorting them into folders on my computer named with the location and date - e.g., 📁 Tawhai Falls Tongariro NP NZ 4-16-2024 - helps even more.
• Third, I try to start each batch of photos with a pic like this:

💡🧐🤣

We saved the Tawhai Falls Walk for last because it's a short hike, only about 1/2 mile round trip. And it's relatively easy.

About 1/4 mile down the trail we found a viewpoint of Tawhai Falls from above.



The trail continues past here, winding around and down to river level a bit downstream.



Here the trail ends abruptly at the river's edge to the right. Hawk and I hopped out onto a big rock in the middle of the water. That's where I made the photo above.

In the photo you can see a bit of a trail around the edge to the right. Well, "trail" may be a strong word. If you're a hiker you can definitely see a way that one might walk along the rocky bank, scramble over those big rocks about 20' upstream, and climb over the far side to get a better view of the falls.

Yeah, that's where I went next. Stay tuned for more photos!