Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I began a journey down memory lane yesterday when I wrote a journal entry about how my parents never liked attending the church of their faith that was right in our neighborhood. Instead of a short walk up the hill behind our house to the local church where we might see our own neighbors, we piled in the car and drove 20 minutes each way to a church in the next town over.

As I wrote in that blog, my parents were evasive about why they preferred the one far away. My parents, especially my father, gave only vague non-answers whenever I wondered. After a while I stopped asking.

The truth about the church up the hill came out decades later, not long before my father passed away. He knew he was in his last few months of life. He told me one of his goals then was to square things with relatives who were estranged from him. I wasn't estranged by any stretch of the imagination. I was traveling coast-to-coast every few weeks to visit and support him. During one of our bedside chats he told me the story. Well, not the whole story. He gave me just the one or two missing pieces that allowed me connect up the puzzle from other things he'd told me over the years and from things I remember from as far back as my own early childhood.

The story goes back to the mid 1970s when my dad lost his job as a store manger in a retail chain.



The mid 1970s were a tough time in the US. The country was just coming out of a deep economic recession spurred by the first oil embargo. The recession was probably why his employer folded. And even though the recession was over by the way economists define it, it wasn't over by the way ordinary people might define it. Companies were failing. Those that weren't failing still weren't hiring. The unemployment rate was above 7%. So when my dad's employer shut down and sent everyone to the unemployment line, finding new work wasn't easy. It took my dad months... maybe even a year or more.

By the way, yes, I'm using AI image generation to help illustrate this story. No, I don't have real photos to share from that time. I was too young even to hold a camera then. I mean, I was still filling diapers when this shit went down. And my parents never snapped many photos during my childhood. That always struck me as weird when I was older, because my dad had been a semi-pro photographer when he was in high school and college.

I saw some of his 1960s era work decades later. It was in a box from his mother, who'd just passed away at age 101. It looked good. He could have made it a career. Why did he put his cameras down and then not pick up another one for, like, 40 years? And also, his mom kept copies his vintage work as mementos; he never did. I might've asked him "why?" about either of those facts, but as I already explained early in this story, my dad was famously loath to answer such questions. In that respect he was like a perpetual pouty teenager giving guttural one-word answers.

Anyway, AI image generation. I'm using it here because I think telling the story with some pictures improves if, even if the pics are not authentic. For one, having pictures beats walls of text. Two, I've iterated on the prompts for these pictures to have them reflect, accurately, particular elements of the story. Of course it's impossible to have them accurately reflect everything, even the spotty parts I remember in snapshot memories from my early childhood. I've got a funny story to share about some of the prompting I had to do while creating an image I'll use later in the story. I'll share that anecdote when we get there.

To be continued....

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. 😅

It's been a few weeks now since we got back from our trip to Georgia so it's time to write a retrospective. ...Actually the ideal time to do this would've been 10 days ago, but it was only Sunday that I finished clearing my backlog of trip blogs from the trip. Anyway, here are Five Things:

1. First, overall, it was a very enjoyable trip— and I attribute this to our "Not too little, not too much, but just right" approach to planning. We like to plan knowing what we can do without over-scheduling what we will do— or when. For example, in Savannah we knew there were a variety of things we could do across the span of a few days, but we purposefully didn't overplan them in advance, like, "On Sunday we do A and B; on Monday, C, D, and E; on Tuesday, etc." This left us with plenty of ideas to keep busy for several days coupled with the flexibility to choose activities day by day based on things that can't be determined far in advance, like what the weather or how much energy we have is any given day.


2. Five days was the right amount of time to spend with relatives. (Really it was more like 4⅓ since we met them for dinner Saturday.) I love my sister— and I enjoy spending time with my brother-in-law and niece, too— but saying our farewells late Wednesday evening was the right timing. We were together long enough to do everything we wanted to do together, and just short enough that we left on a high note.


3. Torpedoing the rental car in Savannah turned out to be a great move. We saved $300 forgoing a rental that ultimately would've provided little value. I reserved the car because I hesitated to rely on my sister and BIL driving us around, but with their two cars and us in a hotel literally 2 miles from their house it was no bother.


4. Logistics-wise, I counted on doing a load of laundry at my sister's house. That enabled me to feel comfortable with fresh clothes every day without overstuffing the suitcases we carried.


5. Doing two things during the week— first visiting my sister and her family for several days, then Hawk and I going waterfall-hunting for a few days in the mountains— worked well. The equation of a one-week trip (usually 8-9 days in reality) = 2 shorter trips in the same region has worked well many times. It lets us get 2 trips in vacation without feeling like either one has been too rushed.

Oh, and +1 bonus item:

6. Forgetting my camera was a mistake. Mostly. Being forced to rely on my smartphone for pics this whole trip was enlightening. I found that for sightseeing photography in town, at the beach, at historical sites nearby, etc., I was fine using my smartphone. Would my dedicated camera have captured better pics? Yes, but in few enough situations and/or with little enough incremental value that I was fine with my recent-gen smartphone's camera. While out hiking, however, and especially while hiking to waterfalls, I missed the capabilities of my dedicated camera— and not just once or twice, but on nearly Every. Single. Hike.

Georgia Travelog #12
Amicalola Falls State Park - Thursday, 10 Apr 2025, 5:30pm

In my previous blog I remarked that hiking halfway up the canyon at Amicalola Falls was enough. We could tell that there weren't a lot of views to be gained by laboring up some 300+ more stairs, and we could get the view from the top by driving there. Indeed that's exactly what we did. We drove to the top!



And yeah, while the view from up here is nice, it's not let's-ascend-another-300-plus-stairs nice. 😅

What I Forgot This Trip

In the past I've joked that I forget one thing every trip. Of course that's not literally true, but it also seems not far from accurate. I often forget to pack something. A lot of times it turns out to be minor, something I can just as easily do without. Like forgetting to pack swim trunks when it turns out there was no hot tub at the hotel or I didn't have time to use it anyway. Other times what I forget is a doozy. On various trips I've forgotten to pack a clean shirt, clean socks, even underwear. 😱

What I forgot this trip is a doozy, though possibly not so... doozious?... as having no changes of underwear. I forgot my camera.

Now, you might be thinking, "LOL, how can you be like 'I fOrGoT mY cAmErA' when you've posted a picture in the same blog?" I mean, I'm pretty much never without a camera as there's one in my mobile phone. Actually there are four cameras in my mobile phone— and they've gotten really good thanks to onboard computational photography. But they lack some of the capabilities of my Fujifilm X-T3 interchangeable lens camera.

One of those critical capabilities is taking slow-exposure pictures with the help of screw-on filters to artistically blur the falling water at waterfalls. See for example this little explainer about waterfalls photography I wrote a year and a half ago.

In one respect forgetting my camera is even more of a doozy than forgetting a shirt, socks, or underwear. In each of those cases I simply bought what I forgot at a common local store. Buying a new camera is not something I can simply swing by Target or Best Buy for. I mean, yes, those stores literally sell cameras, but not the quality lenses and filters I carry in my camera bag on trips like this. And even if I could find such things at a specialty photography store, replacing what I left at home would cost several thousand dollars— not something to do on a whim. Or on an "Oops".

I'm still taking pictures this trip, of course. I'm just disappointed that I can't take pictures of the caliber and variety I'm accustomed to.

We got to the trailhead for Lewis Creek in Sierra National Forest a bit after 2pm on Friday. That would be plenty of time to hike to Corlieu Falls... and also Red Falls. But just as we drove up in our car and parked at the trailhead, rain started.

"We'll try waiting it out," we thought at first. Then it got worse.

The rain did get lighter again though not any lighter than when we first decided to try waiting it out. We grimaced and went about putting on our boots and zipping up our rain jackets. We've hiked in worse.



The trailhead for Lewis Creek, a National Recreation Trail, honestly looks dumpy right now. It used to be more covered in by trees. That made it harder to spot from the road but also increased the sense that, upon starting the hike, one was now "in nature" rather than near busy Highway 41 with cars rushing to and from Yosemite National Park.



It's not a long walk down to Corlieu Falls, probably less even than 1/2 mile, though on past visits I've met hikers unsure where it is. First you have to turn right when the trail reaches the creek. Next, you have to look for the trail continuation descending from the edge of a rocky plateau where there are great views of the creek and the canyon in the other direction. Then you have to carefully pick your way down a steep and loose trail to get to the bottom of the falls.



I brought my camera bag with me on this trek so I'd have my nice camera and my pack of filters— particularly my 6x neutral density filter. That let me capture the photo above with an exposure time of 1/6 (0.167) second. That slow exposure causes the water to blur like a silk curtain because it's moving. Unfortunately something else that's moving is the camera because I made this picture holding the camera free-hand. I tried to sharpen up the blurring from the camera shake, but it left artifacts in the photo as you can see above.

Ah, but I had another camera gadget with me. My hiking pole doubles as a monopod! I removed the cork cap to expose a metal screw mount and then screwed it into the mounting socket on the bottom of my camera.



This photo looks way better because there neither excessive blurring nor artifacts from post-process sharpening to attempt to solve the blurring. What there is, though, is my damn hand. Yes, that's my hand at the top of the photo above. I was covering the glass on the front of the lens because it was raining. While taking these slow-exposure photos (this latter photo is 1/5 second) I didn't want streaks or water droplets on the lens detracting from the picture. I thought my hand was out of the frame, but one challenge in working with the ND lens filter is that it makes the picture super dark in the preview. I couldn't tell my hand was still in the frame.

And the rain? Oh, it not only kept raining, it got worse. We decided to pull the plug on hiking further on the trail. We also decided to pull the plug on hiking to Red Falls in the other direction on Lewis Creek. "Maybe we'll do that tomorrow as a two-fer after Angel Falls," we agreed. And maybe I'll come back here as a three-fer to photograph Corlieu Falls without my hand!

Panama Travelog #12
El Valle, Panama - Tue, 24 Dec 2024. 11:30am.

Finally, we've done a hike in Panama. A hike on a trail that was open, accessible via our weeny rental car, and which delivered exactly what it promised (no touts or shills filling sites with fake reviews). And it only took us... 5 tries.

On the way back to town from our aborted attempt to get to Pozo Azul we stopped at Chorro Macho falls. It's part of a small eco-park, and its small parking lot was full of tourist outfitter vans. Oh, buy, just the sign we hate. Oh, and speaking of signs we hate, there was the literal sign advertising the admission fee to hike the trail. It was only a few bucks each. That's not much... but it's also a super-short trail. The cost works out to something like $25/km. Shit, a limo is way cheaper than this walk. But after the frustration with this morning's thwarted hike we said "Whatever", paid our money, and started on the hike.



I'd forgotten to bring my nice camera on the day's outing. It's sitting in a dark corner of the one closet-like shelf in our sparsely furnished hotel room. I gave thought to driving back through town to get it but at this point am so sick of wasting time not getting to hike that I decided I'll do the best I can with my iPhone camera. Which... is fairly good nowadays. The photo of Chorro Macho falls above is way better than I could have captured with my old iPhone SE 3. My new 16 Pro has a higher resolution imager, multiple lenses, and more powerful computational photography. It still doesn't achieve the richness of color than my aging Fujifilm X-T3 delivers, but it does other things well that save me time try to fix them up in post, like fixing highlights and shadows by quietly and smoothly combining multiple exposures.

I'd share more than this one picture, but it was a short hike and this falls 100m in from the trailhead was basically it. We'd definitely like to hike more today.... We'll have to go back to our plans and see what else we can pull forward to today.

As I mentioned already this past weekend was a mostly stay-at-home weekend. I hate just being a homebody, though, so we mixed it up with having a friend over on Sunday— and going on an easy hike together. "Easy" was the speed because Hawk is still recovering from foot surgery a few weeks ago.

We picked Byxbee Park in Palo Alto for an easy hike. Byxbee is local spot we've visited at least a few times a year recently. The views it offers across the southern end of the San Francisco Bay aren't super awesome, particularly as the park is built atop covered landfill, though they are still bay views. And it's interesting how wilderness-y feeling it gets here on the edge of high tech-y Palo Alto. Plus, the park has a network of trails that make it easy to stitch together a shorter or longer trek. We chose a meandering route over the top of the hill and back around the sloughs that added up to almost 3 miles. Along the way we saw a few white pelicans and a red-tail hawk.



Here's a slough view with a white pelican in the foreground. Yes, the pelican is the big bird. You can see how it towers over the ducks in the water. White pelicans have a 9' wingspan. Yes, they're huge. And I was fascinated to see not just one but 3 or 4 on our walk as I don't think I've seen white pelicans before in this area. Brown pelicans, yes, but not white. From a distance I thought the first one I saw was a great heron. Then I saw the pelican's scoop-like beak.

Another interesting bird appeared as we rounded the last corner to the home stretch of our hike. We spotted a red-tail hawk perching atop a wood post.



As we approached the bird from behind we weren't sure what type of hawk it was. Once even partway around the bend we could see its features and colors, and it was obvious it's a red-tail hawk. Some other hikers who'd stopped to look were wondering if maybe it's a Cooper's hawk or a sharp-shin falcon.

I explained that size alone could rule out either of those species. The hawk was perched only about 10' above the ground, so we could make out its size fairly well. The brown and white checkered pattern across the bird's underside is typical of a red-tail, as are the darker brown color across its back and on its head. It's probably a juvenile as it doesn't yet have the characteristic red tail; the tail feathers come in red at about age 2 years. The shape and color of the beak (gray) also indicate for this being a red-tail.

It was cool that the bird was patient with a bunch of us hairless apes gawking at it from 25' away. Wild animals all have a threat radius at which they'll flee potential danger. Predators like hawks may have a smaller threat radius. Plus, this hawk is a flyer and was already perched 10' off the ground, so it was probably less afraid for that reason, too.

BTW, I made this close-up picture with my new iPhone. The iPhone 16 Pro has a 3 lens/camera system. One of them is a 5x telephoto (120mm equivalent) with a 12MP imager. That's what I used for this photo.

I'm pleased with how this photo turned out. It's vastly better than I was able to capture with the single lens on my iPhone SE 3rd gen. It's the kind of result I was looking for as I reconsider how often to carry around my dedicated interchangeable lens camera. Would I have gotten a better picture with my dedicated camera and my "bird shooter" telephoto lens? Yes. Was the iPhone in my pocket way easier to carry than that dedicate camera with my "bird shooter" telephone lens? Also Yes.

It's been a few weeks since I lost a camera lens in an Alpine swamp. It was a bummer since it's a general purpose, mid-range zoom lens, a Fujifilm 15-45mm lens that I used for a lot of my photos. After losing it I delayed for a few weeks in replacing it as I considered whether I wanted to replace my whole camera— which I could order with an equal or better lens at a discounted kit price. I even considered whether I'm just done with dedicated cameras and willing to rely simply on my iPhone. 🫨 After giving it a few weeks thought I decided to go ahead and just replace the lens, not update the whole camera.



As I'd bought my original copy of this lens lightly used, I looked for used copies again. It's good I was open to used as there really aren't new copies anymore. It seems Fujifilm has stopped making this lens. ...Or if they do still make it, they only sell it in kits. One reputable online store had it listed for $300 but backordered. Amazon had a variety of used copies for sale from about $200. I bought my last one through Amazon for a bit over $200. But this time I checked eBay, too, and got one for just $150 plus tax. I bought on Friday night, and it arrived today (Wednesday).

I checked the lens out visually as I opened the box. First, I noted it was securely packed in a box with two layers of foam padding. Props to the seller for that. The last seller I bought this model of lens from simply tucked it in a padded envelope.

Cosmetically, the lens is in excellent shape. All the parts are present (front and back caps) and show no signs of wear. The seller advertised it as "very good, lightly used". I was a bit skeptical when I bought it as there are no defined grading standards for camera equipment like there are for various kinds of collectibles. "Very good, lightly used" could have meant almost anything. And the listing included only manufacturer's pictures, no photos of the actual item. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to receive a lens that, in another item category, could realistically be graded "near mint" or even "mint".



Next I attached the lens to my camera for a few test shots. The focus is accurate, with good detail (as expected) at the focus point, and rich, contrast-y color rendition across the frame. It's just a cursory test, but so far this copy of the lens appears to be everything I enjoyed about the one I left somewhere in a swamp at 6,700' in the Trinity Alps wilderness.

Part of what I enjoy about this lens is its small size and light weight. It's a bit hard to tell from the photo above, where the perspective makes this lens seem bulbous, but it's actually relatively compact. See the photos I took when I bought my previous copy 2 years ago. Ultimately this lens's quality for the low price and compact size were what won the decision in favor of doing it again vs. punting with a new camera— or no camera at all.

On our hike into the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness last Saturday I made what was, for me, a big choice. I left my camera behind.

"But wait," you might object, "What about those photos you shared in your first blog from this hike?"

Ah, what happened is I left my dedicated camera behind. My really nice, expensive, and unfortunately somewhat heavy camera. I still the type of camera roughly 7 billion people globally carry in our pockets every day— my smartphone camera.



My choice to leave behind my dedicated camera on this hike was a calculated one. The biggest knock against it is that currently I don't have a midrange zoom lens for it. I lost it a week earlier in an alpine swamp. I figured since that's the lens I'd want to make a lot of pictures with, not having it would mean I'd mostly be using my smartphone camera anyway— as in the photo of First Dinkey Lake, above. So why not take only my smartphone and leave the weight of the dedicated camera behind.

It would've been nice to have my dedicate camera even for photos like this. My smartphone took a nice picture.... My dedicated camera would've taken a nicer one. There'd be richer color rendition, more control of depth-of-field, and the ability to zoom out wider. My iPhone SE 2022's camera has a 28mm equivalent focal length. That was considered wide angle in the late 1990s. Since the mid 00s I've been using cameras with 24mm or even 21mm as wide angle. I wish I could have zoomed out a bit wider in the photo above.

"Oh, but there's panorama mode with smartphones...." Sure.



It's fun to shoot panoramas. Like the one above. And smartphones make it a snap to make such pictures, while dedicated cameras still often leave it as something you have to stitch together with software later. But the problem with panos is that they look fake. The perspectives are off. I like making ultra-wide pictures with the ultra-wide lens I have for my dedicated camera. I could have carried the camera with me, and that lens— since it currently isn't broken, despite living a rough life— but it seemed like too much extra weight in my pack on a long trek for what I estimated would be a small number of unique photos captured with it.



As we relaxed at First Dinkey Lake, sitting on a log overlooking the lake, I was both happy and sad for leaving my dedicated camera back down in the car. Happy, because that camera felt so heavy when I lifted it by the strap, deciding whether to add it to my pack. The hike up the mountain was strenuous, mostly because of the high altitude. This lake is at almost 9,300' (over 2,800 meters) above sea level. But also I was sad, because I knew I was missing out on better pictures. As I made the photo above, again I wished that I could zoom out a bit for a wider perspective from our lunchtime perch.

Still, though, I approached the situation with a positive attitude. I had chosen not to take my big camera. Thus, with smartphone camera in hand, I was asking myself, "What nice pictures can I make?"



In beauty I walk.

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. 🤣