Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Oregon Cascades Travelog #14
Christmas Valley, OR - Thu, 3 Jul 2025, 4pm

This afternoon we're hiking the Crack in the Ground in the dry, volcanic bluffs of eastern Oregon. This hike has been a long time coming... and I say that not just because it's taken me over two weeks to move this blog from my backlog but also because this is a hike that landed on my hiking backlog a few years ago.

"Check out this amazing volcanic crack in the ground!" and Oregonian friend texted us a few years ago.

"Looks awesome, are you planning a trip?" we asked.

And from there the conversation fizzled out. 🙁 But while our friend may have forgotten about this fascinating geologic feature, I did not. So when we planned this July 4th week trip to Oregon this hike was on my short list of things I wanted to do.



On this hike I recorded both photos and video. As I prepared this blog I thought about which to include— or both. Ultimately I decided in favor of video as it's way better at conveying the immersive experience of walking through this narrow canyon.

In beauty I walk.

And this is only part 1 of, like, four, so stay tuned for more!

Oregon Cascades Travelog #12
McKenzie Pass, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 7:25pm

After hiking Proxy Falls, Lower and Upper, we thought we were done for the day. We were tired and hungry and both ready to be home. Or at least somewhere sitting down for dinner. In moments where we had signal as we climbed up toward the McKenzie Pass we refreshed our maps to get an ETA for getting back to Bend— or at least to Sisters— where we could find a decent restaurant. It looked like it would be about 8pm for Bend. Hawk tamped down on her usual feelings of carsickness as I hurried through the curves on the twisty mountain road toward home. But then as we crested the mountain pass a strange thing happened. The floor was LAVA. We had to stop and look.


Okay, so this video doesn't show us stopping. Trust me, we did stop to visit that observatory I called out in the video— yes, the one made from LAVA. I'll share photos in another blog entry.

In beauty I walk... even when I drive! 😂

Update: continued in next blog with pics at the observatory made of lava!

Oregon Cascades Travelog #10
Blue Lake, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 5:30pm

After hiking Downing Creek Falls earlier this afternoon we drove back up toward the Santiam Pass then south down the McKenzie River canyon. We passed a few signs for waterfalls along the way and sped past them at 60mph, confident they weren't interesting. (Ironic foreshadowing: they were totally interesting. We'd have to come back for them!) We turned west, heading back uphill along Old McKenzie, and reached the trailhead for Proxy Falls.



The Proxy Falls trail is a loop with spurs off to two waterfalls, Lower and Upper Proxy Falls. We quickly found that our AllTrails.com map was out to lunch. It showed the first part of the trail as being downhill. You can see in the pic above that it's decided uphill. We huffed and puffed up a ridge of volcanic rubble.

Just as we were running out of steam the trail leveled off. Soon enough we reached the spur for the first falls.



The spur trail led to a partial view of Lower Proxy Falls. Much of the Falls, especially its base, was shrouded by dense trees down in the canyon. The trail seemed to peter out here. Keyword: seemed.

We paced back and forth a bit, peering down the little ridge we were on to see if there'd been a washout or slide that obscured the trail. Sure enough, there had been. We could see remnants of a trail at the bottom of the hill. We picked our way carefully down the hillside, then balanced on and climbed over the trunks of huge fallen trees across the bottom of the canyon until we reached the foot of Lower Proxy Falls.



To really get the best view of the falls we had to walk out into the middle of the creek. At first I hesitated as I was wearing my hiking sandals instead of my boots. Boots would let me step through a few inches of water without getting my socks wet. But I deemed that the weather was warm enough to deal with wet feet, plus what's beauty without a little discomfort? 😅 We walked into the creek and got our feet wet.



Once we were satisfied drinking in the view of the falls and soaking our feet in chilly water we scrambled across the big logs (much bigger than those you see in the photos above!) to the bottom of the hill opposite the falls. We picked a different route to the top, looking to save ourselves a few steps. I took a small spill on the way up. Again, what's beauty without a bit of discomfort. 🤣

At the top of the hill we met a pair of hikers looking for the falls. We told them about our cross-country, wet-foot expedition, and they basically said, "Yeah, no." In fact I think those were their exact words: "Yeah, no." 🤣

Fine by me if they choose to stay on the bunny trail. Me? In beauty I walk.

Keep reading: These were Lower Proxy Falls; next we visit Upper Proxy Falls!

Oregon Cascades Travelog #8
Bend, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 11:30am

I posted two blogs already about hiking Tumalo Falls and all I've shared is... Tumalo Falls (see part 1, part 2). Well, okay, not just the falls but also a bit about the art and science of photography. But, hey, there's still hiking to be done here. In beauty I walk, and all of that.



The trail continues past Tumalo Falls up a pretty stream canyon. Maybe a mile or so in it reaches Double Falls. These aren't as awe-inspiring as Tumalo Falls but definitely worth the extra hike.



I'm sharing here two pictures, one I took with each of the cameras I'm carrying. I won't explain this time what the differences are.... I leave that to you for homework. It'll be easy if you've actually read my past two blogs and not just looked at the pictures. (Extra credit for identifying where that quip comes from, BTW. 🤣)

At 2 miles this isn't a huge hike. It's certainly not our plan for the day. It's actually just our plan for before lunch. We'll hike back down and drive back into town for some eats, then drive up over the crest of the Cascades for more hikes this afternoon.

Oregon Cascades Travelog #7
Bend, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 10:30am

We got a bit of a late start leaving our hotel room in Bend today. As a result we put off a hike in the desert-y terrain west of here because we'd want to start early to beat the heat until later in the week. Instead we came here, to the Oregon Cascades where there's shade on most trails, and hoped we weren't starting too late for the popular Tumalo Falls trail. We weren't; we arrived in good time. And it would be the first of at least six (depending on how you count them) waterfalls we'd see today.

Fair warning: In this blog I'm going to talk tech(nique) about photography. If that makes your eyes glaze over, you're more than welcome to employ the Playboy magazine approach of just looking at the pictures and not reading the article. 🤣



If waterfalls were scored on a scale of views divided by distance or effort to get to them, Tumalo Falls would score very highly. The first viewpoint, where I make the photo above, is just steps from the trailhead. There's also an upper viewpoint that you can see above the falls to the left in the pic above. I'll get back to that in a moment.

On this trip I carried two cameras, as I often do— though less now than before. The two cameras are 1) my cell phone's built-in camera, which I virtually always have with me, and 2) my Fujifilm interchangeable lens camera that I opt to carry with me when I think the views are going to be really great... or require one of the things that camera, and the special lenses I own, are really good for. I'm selective about bringing the latter camera because it's comparatively heavy and bulky.

So, what's this heavy, bulky (comparatively) camera really good for? Let's start with the same basic picture:



One thing you can see straight away by comparing these first two photos is that, in good light, the Fuji captures way richer colors than my iPhone. "Oh, but can't you punch up the colors in Photoshop?" you might ask. I already did! The first picture is the result after fiddling a bit with saturation and contrast. The Fuji kicks the iPhone's iAss when there's good light.

BTW, why do I specify "good light"? Take look at the deep shadow to the right of the falls. The iPhone pulls out more detail in the shadow. Again, yes, I can try to fix that in Photoshop, and again, yes I've already done that in the Fuji's picture. The difference is that modern iPhone are actually doing exposure stacking, automatically combining multiple images capture immediate after each other at different exposure values to show more detail in areas of deep shadow. Doing this with a conventional camera involves a technique called HDR— high dynamic range— that requires some manual steps in addition to special software. The iPhone just does it automatically and gives you the result without you even having to think about it.

Okay, so rich colors in good light are nice, but what else can the heavy, bulky camera do? Well, I like to bring it whenever I know I'll be seeing waterfalls, because it can capture motion-blurred water.



Here's a photo from the same vantage point again but with the camera set to make an exposure lasting 0.25 sec. Relative to that speed the water is moving very fast, so it blurs into an appearance like silk sheets, while the trees' leaves move only slightly and the rocks move not at all.

Achieving this blur effect requires a few pieces of equipment and a degree of control over the camera. The key piece of equipment is a neutral density (ND) filter, a lens attachment that blocks out most of the light. This allows the camera to be set with a very slow shutter speed and not capture an image that's all washed-out white from so much light hitting the sensor. Remember, photography is the art and science of captured light. Capture too little, the picture's all black. Capture too much, the picture's all white. I'm using an ND filter that blocks 98.5% of the light. (Why 98.5%? That's an approximation. It's actually passing through 1/64, or 1/2⁶, of the light. This is called a 6 stop ND filter. Every "stop" is a factor of 1/2.)

While this extra gear is fun to use effectively it's also a minor nuisance to use. Or, more specifically, switching in and out of the gear is a nuisance. The filters screw on and off the front of my lenses, and I have a little pouch to keep them in when they're not screwed on a lens. Going back and forth between "filter is screwed on" and "filter is off, and stowed" is time consuming. And on the trail it's also a bit dangerous. What if I drop a filter? The big ones aren't cheap. And when they get dirty I have to clean them— which while hiking is also a nuisance.

Thus I decided after doing the screw-it-on/screw-it-off thing at the viewpoint near the trailhead I would just leave the ND filters on the lenses on my Fujifilm camera. I'd use my iPhone for standard snaps and my Fuji for the specialized blur shots. BTW, that's how pro photographers roll. When you see them juggling multiple cameras at an event, it's because the camera are set up to do different things really well, and it's easier to swap cameras between shots than to reconfigure the gear. So, for the rest of the hike I rolled like a pro. 😅

Oregon Cascades Travelog #22
Misery Ridge, OR - Sat, 5 Jul 2025, 3pm

We're hiking the Misery Ridge trail. You know we had to take pictures like this.



But really we weren't miserable. At least not yet, while we were at the top of the ridge. 🤣 There were so many beautiful sights up there!

I already wrote about the hike around the river and the climb to Monkey Face (previous blog entry). Here's another view of Monkey Face:



This one's with anonymous hiker standing where I posed for my selfie in the previous blog.

That snow capped peak in the distance is Mt. Jefferson, BTW. It's one of seven volcanic peaks in the Oregon Cascades you can see from up here, including all three of the Three Sisters.



There are other views from atop Misery Ridge beside the Monkey Face. This is that forbiddingly steep dark ridge that looms over the river. From here it looks like I could hike down to it and skip along its top.

But I didn't. Because, while the hike up here wasn't exactly miserable it also wasn't... a walk in the park. 🤣 It was hard. And I wanted to rest.



Hawk sat down on a bench with a view over Monkey Face while I hiked down to it. When I came back I didn't want to sit, exactly. I was concerned if I sat I might not want to stand back up... and hike all the way down the mountain. So I stood. In the shade. And used this tree as my dressing stand to take the weight off my pack off my back while I stretched.

Soon enough it was time to start down. This being the Misery Ridge loop route we selected, we didn't have to double back the way we came. There was still more trail ahead of us.



That trail ahead of us was the steep part of the trail. The part that does countless switchbacks up the front face of Smith Rock. From the top it's no less steep... though it is at least down.

Going down still doesn't make it "a walk in the park". Going down a steep trail is a toe-jamming, knee-jarring, try-not-to-slip affair. Hawk and I did it mostly in silence.



The last bit down the steep switchbacks reminds of playing Donkey Kong. This is what it would have looked like from the ape's point of view. Maybe that's why the rock at the top looks like a monkey face!

When we crossed the bridge at the bottom of the canyon I rested up at that round oasis for a bit. This time I did sit... because I needed to regain strength for the 200' climb up and out of the canyon. While sitting there I chatted with some climbers about the day's beautiful weather. "It's hot out here, is it 90°?" one asked the other. "No, it's only 75," the second answered. I chimed in that 75 was correct, adding that it certainly feels like 90 because of the sun exposure. "And I'm so glad we hiked today when it's not actually 90, like it was a few days ago," I quipped. Yeah, it would've been a lot tougher on us if we'd done this hike on Tuesday like we'd originally planned.

Hawk caught up to me at the oasis. I didn't realized how far she'd fallen behind. She was in bad shape from the steep descent. I took her pack for the climb out. I think for her this was the Misery Ridge part of the trek. For me it was... well, I chose not to form an opinion of it. It was just the last thing we had to do to finish an otherwise amazing hike. In beauty I walk... even if I'm hobbling at the end 

I'm jotting down these notes as we're stopped just outside the park. There's an ice cream store here! Middle of nowhere, and someone has the bright idea to build an ice cream shop right next to desert-y park where everyone comes out hot and tired and hungry from hiking. Brilliant!

After two days of feeling like a slug, mostly staying at home on my four-day weekend I had a definite not-slug day today. Hawk and I drove out to the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline park in Richmond, California for a hike. Mind you, Hawk is still getting over a bout of bronchitis, so doing this hike today was a big deal for her.

Point Pinole is not the kind of place you see on a map and say, "Ooh, let's go there!" That's mostly because it's not the kind of place you see on a map. It's an out-of-the-way park in in Richmond, California, a suburb of Oakland and San Francisco. It's behind a county juvenile detention facility, on the site of a former dynamite factory that closed up 65 years ago.

The fact that it's out of the way is kind of cool. That means it's not thronged with visitors even on a beautiful Saturday on a holiday weekend. Oh, there were plenty of people at the park with us today. But the ample parking lots were not full.

We started from the parking lot up a hill on a paved road and then over a bridge across train tracks. This was easily the worst part of the 5 or so miles we hiked. Fortunately it was also short. Once across the bridge we left the paved road and ambled down to a shoreline trail tracing around the west side of Point Pinole.



After the paved road being the worst part of the hike, this stroll along the western shore and then the bluffs above it was the best. From here we could see clear across the bay to the hillside of Marin County, including Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.

We traced along this side of the promontory for maybe two miles until we reached the tip of Point Pinole.



Here there's a fishing pier. It wasn't too busy with fishers today as, presumably, a) it's far from the nearest place where one can park, and b) it was very windy out on the pier when we walked even 50 feet out from the shore. Beyond the fishing pier, to the right in the photo above, are the remnants of an older pier. It was used by the Giant Company, the dynamite manufacturer previously located here. Cases of dynamite were transported on local rail out to the tip of the point, then on conveyor belts to small ships docked at the pier. The small ships would transport it to freighters out in the San Francisco Bay, from where it would be shipped to places around the Pacific Rim, from Mexico to Chile to the Philippines and beyond.

From here we hiked back on the other side of the triangular peninsula. The west side has saltwater marshes (i.e., swamps) along the coast, which are protected— and frankly wouldn't be fun to hike through anyway— so we didn't enjoy views from as close to the water.

Today we took advantage of spring weather getting a bit warmer and journeyed out to Zim Zim Falls. It's a surprisingly tall waterfalls, over 100' tall, in remote Napa County on the edge of the Bay Area. And I say again because we've turned it into an annual right of spring passage. We hiked Zim Zim last year in late May and in late March 2023. One of the standout things about the hike to Zim Zim is that in addition to seeing a tall falls, the hike to/from it involves 9 water crossings each way. ...And that's just the hike! The drive to the trailhead involves a few water crossings, too, though today only one had water in it.

I'll post photos and video this coming week when I have time to work on them.

Georgia Travelog #21
Vogel State Park - Saturday, 12 Apr 2025, 5:30pm

It's getting late. It's 5:30pm already, an hour at which I've become accustomed to thinking, "Welp, that's the last of the useful light for the day." But that's the great thing about the post-Daylight Saving Time spring.... Sunset isn't 'til just after 8pm today! And use the saved daylight we will. We've just finished our fourth outdoors activity today, and we've still got one more short hike to go.

The one we've just finished is Trahlyta Falls in Vogel State Park.



There's a trail from the park's lake (above the falls) down to that viewing platform near the bottom. The park's kind of a mess right now with construction, though, and we realized we could save ourselves some huffing and puffing, too, by checking out the falls from here— from a roadside pull-out on US 19. That's right: this "hike" was a matter of simply stopping the car on the side of the highway, hopping out, and walking about 20 meters back to find the best vantage point.

In beauty I walk... even when all I do is hop out of the car. 😂

Georgia Travelog #19
Helen - Saturday, 12 Apr 2025, 3:30pm

Our second hike today was Horse Trough Falls a bit outside of Helen, GA. Geez, the day's more than half over, and we've only done two hikes out of four planned. We're not even that far— as the crow flies— from our previous hike, the amazing Anna Ruby Falls. Where did all the time go? Well, for one, we drove back down to Helen to enjoy a sit-down lunch after Anna Ruby. And two, on the way back out here we took a... um, scenic route... through the forest.

Yeah, Apple Maps gave us a bum steer getting to the trailhead. I refuse to say we got lost— because I always knew where we were. We just weren't where we wanted to be and weren't always 100% sure which route would get us there. 🤣 The difference between the mapped directions and the route I ended up driving was over 9 miles of Forest Service road.

"Only 9 miles?" you may ask. "What's the big deal?" The big deal is it's 9 miles of dirt road. Eight miles of dirt road with extremely spotty cell service to figure out where we are on a map. Fortunately my wilderness and 4x4 skill that got us across the dirt roads with no worries also gave me enough confidence with reading the (rarely there) map and the lay of the land to get to the right place.



The right place? That's the Upper Chattahoochee River Campground. And while the... scenic route... we took to get there was often deserted, there were two other cars at the trailhead when we arrived. A few more had arrived by the time we returned. I'm virtually certain they all came in the easier way. It's only 2 miles of dirt road that way.



Most of the hiking trail is a gated off road that goes through the campground. A small paper sign at the front indicates that the campground "will" open in late March, 2025. And here it is, two weeks later, still chained shut. Oops. Probably the people responsible for opening the campground were fired by DOGE. 🤬

As much of an adventure driving here was, the walk to Horse Trough Falls was easy.  The gravel road through the campground was actually a better driving route than the route we actually drove to get here. But it was a pleasant walk in the woods with a brilliant blue sky overhead. I'd say the blue sky is because we're up in the mountains... except we're not "up" that much by California standards. The trailhead's at 2,200' elevation.



Horse Trough Falls was bigger than I was expecting. What was I expecting? I dunno; but with a name like horse trough I guess I was prepared for it being like someone spitting in a bucket. Instead it's easily 30' high and with plenty of water flowing.



In beauty I walk.