Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Oregon Cascades Travelog #9
Detroit, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 4pm

After an enjoyable hike at Tumalo Falls near Bend this morning we drove back near town to get some lunch. By then it was already noon. We picked a frou-frou burger restaurant on the west side of town because it meant not having to drive all the way into town. Plus, their menu had a few not-so-frou-frou options so we felt we'd be covered. It was decent; maybe decent-plus.

After lunch we hit the road again and drove over Cascade crest to the west and halfway down toward the Willamette Valley. There, in the Western Cascades, was our next hiking destination, Downing Creek Falls. I'll start you with a video of the falls while I explain a bit more about the hike.



Finding this hike was hard. It was hard even with a good trail description and GPS maps on our phones. That's because the trail is up an unmarked dirt road. At a fork in the road where the trail notes suggested we park and start hiking, we pushed further in our car, confident of its 4x4 capabilities and my ability to use them. Our boldness in that respect was rewarded; we cut about half the length off the hike just by driving up the two-track until we reached a natural blockade where the two-track turned to an overgrown single track. We pulled on our packs and hiked the rest of the way.



The foot trail was faint and overgrown in many places. It took some wilderness skill on our part to keep heading in the correct direction. Before we reached the main falls (pictured) we saw some small cascades and a weeping wall. From there we could hear the main even slightly further up the canyon so we pressed on.



Once we reached the falls we lingered for a while at the back of the canyon, climbing around on the slick, steep ground to view the falls from different angles.



This whole time we had the falls entirely to ourselves. That's one of the pluses of sticking through to find a remote, poorly signed falls. Though as beautiful as these falls are I'm surprised the Forest Service hasn't marked or maintained the trail.

Update: on the drive back out to the road we did pass another hiker coming in. Our two vehicles could barely pass on the two-track! He deftly wedged his crossover as close to the side as he could, while I plowed our SUV about a foot into the undergrowth on the right. We passed with just inches to spare.

Georgia Travelog #16
Turner's Corner - Friday, 11 Apr 2025, 6:45pm

It was a long, strange trip to get to our last hike of the day today, Desoto Falls. The trip didn't need to be long; it just was. It was long because there was a lot of rain this afternoon, and we drove around trying to find different places we could visit in the rain. We even drove past the trailhead for Desoto Falls once. It was foggy and still drizzling, so we tried something else first and came back. I'm glad we did that because when we came back around 5pm the rain had abated and the sky had cleared just enough to make the hiking pleasurable again.

The trail at Desoto Falls is an out-and-back-twice affair. The trail forks at a T-junction just across the creek from the trailhead. Half a mile to the right is Upper Desoto Falls; a quarter mile to the left is Lower Desoto Falls. We hiked to the upper falls first.



Owing most likely to the hours of rain earlier today we had the trail and the falls to ourselves. We almost had the whole area to ourselves. The trail starts at a campground, and it was seemingly deserted except for the campground host when we started hiking. It reminds me of a trip years ago when I friend and I were arriving at a campground just as rain was starting. Everyone else was leaving. By the time we set up our tent we had the whole place to ourselves. Then it poured for two hours, which was no fun. But after that the sky cleared and we enjoyed a great nighttime view of the stars from the vista point on the ridge.



Next we doubled back and hiked the left fork of the trail, to Lower Desoto Falls. The lower falls were smaller but also more intimate. And there are two drops on the lower falls.



The lower drop on the lower falls is kind of off the trail. I say kind of because the trail has wooden railings that guide hikers away from this spot. But we saw the falls below us and saw a faint trail beyond the railing leading down to it.

As we explored further we found this was not just a "social trail" created by people climbing around the fence but was actually the old trail up to both sets of falls. The nice, wide trail we hiked in was a new route, likely built to avoid a narrow section near the creek that's slippery when wet. We could tell it used to be the official trail because there's still a bench on the trail down here.

The old trail got even fainter as we explored it further. We weren't worried about getting lost because we're skilled enough with wilderness to handle it. Plus, it's not like we were remote; we knew the maintained trail was at worst 50 meters away. Indeed the now almost-invisible footpath led back to it, and we followed the wide path the rest of the way back to the trailhead.

Now we're ready to drive home— where "home" is our home base in Dawsonville— and OMG, how far is it? Because we're really hungry. ...Oh, only 45 minutes? Whew, that's way better than the hour and a half I was afraid it might be. We can be having dinner by 7:30 tonight.

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #3
Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 12:15pm

What's there to do in Las Vegas if you don't like gambling, shows, or fancy restaurants? There's hiking! And while it's not in Las Vegas it's also not far out of it.

Saturday morning we drove out to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the trailhead for Owl Canyon. Although we got a later start on the day than I wanted to I knew there was plenty of time left in the day— especially if this hike was all we wanted to do. And even at the trailhead I could tell we were in for an enjoyable time.



I mean, anytime a sign warns the trail is tough... that's generally code for, "Really fun for even moderately experienced hkers." It's scare-words for "Weak-sauce city folk STAY OUT." 🤣



The trail starts with a steep descent down from the the top of the bluff where the parking area and some picnic tables are. Ugh, that's going to be not-fun as the last part of the trail when we're coming back tired. At least it's not a huge climb out. I don't think it's more than about 100' ascent back up.



Across the wash at the bottom of the canyon the trail climbs over another bluff. This one's not so vertical as the one the trail starts from. It's prettier, though, with orange-red rocks and views across to the Las Vegas Wash.

Hawk and I took a detour to explore the top of the bluff instead of following the trail that quickly descended from a saddle point. Curiously there are lots of seashells up here.

How did all the shells get here? Our first thought was that birds dropped them after fishing the waters of the lake. But quickly we saw that there are thousands of shells up here. That's too many for birds dropping them after eating. This spot must've been underwater at some point in the past. ...But the water level in Lake Mead, which you can see in the pic above, looks to be at least 100' below us. How long ago would it have been high enough to cover this ground? It can't have been too many years ago as otherwise there wouldn't be so many shells in such good condition due to weathering. Also, the Hoover Dam that created Lake Mead only finished construction in 1935.



We walked along the bluff top, exploring the views from different angles. The views up here were just so beautiful we kept going instead of doubling back, hoping there might be an exit down the far side. Plus, it was special being up here because while we saw occasional small groups of hikers on the trail below, nobody else thought to explore up here atop this butte. Hooray, solitude!

Update: I learned in visiting the Hoover Dam the following day that the last time the lake level rose to a high of 1,225' elevation above sea level in 1983. The bluff we were standing on was at about 1,200' elevation. So possibly the seashells we were seeing atop this bluff have sat there undisturbed for 40 years. Now that is some solitude!



In this panoramic photo (above) you can see the trail winding around beneath the bluffs. In the distance is the actual Owl Canyon. We'll hike a loop that has us going up another canyon and then coming down Owl Canyon, exiting it in this area. Then we'll hike over the saddle point halfway up this bluff and climb the first bluff back up to the trailhead. But that could be hours from now, and now is now....



On the far side of the bluff we found this odd mineral deposit. It looks like snow! It's actually gypsum. We scrambled over a bunch of large gypsum boulders to climb down the bluff. We had to be careful on them as gypsum is a soft mineral. If we stepped on a thin deposit, it could crumble under our feet and send us tumbling.

We got down the rough backside of the bluff okay. Then we bushwhacked through a bunch of dead bushes in the wash where the lake level had been higher recently, and climbed back up the slope on the far side to rejoin the trail.

To be continued!

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #8
Linden, VA - Tue, 26 Nov 2024, 4:30pm

After visiting my niece Mattie and her boyfriend Kai over lunch in Front Royal today we refined our plans for the rest of the day. We already had plans to meet my cousin Matt and his family for dinner 30-45 minutes east, but Mattie needed to leave for work by 1:30 so several hours of the afternoon were unexpected free. I called and texted my middle sister, R.— yes, the one who's now grandma— to see if we could visit briefly or meet her for ice cream or whatever while we were in town. She didn't answer either one (typical) so we decided we'd visit a rock shop 30-45 minutes south while giving her more opportunity to respond.

No answer had come by 90 minutes later. We still had a 90 minute gap in our schedule, even factoring in travel time to Matt's place. We decided instead of arriving at Matt's 90 minutes early (which he said was okay) we'd take a scenic drive roughly in the direction of his place along the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.



The Skyline Drive is part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road that traces the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains for nearly 500 miles through Virgina and North Carolina. We drove stretches of it a lot a few months ago in North Carolina just as a convenient— and beautiful— way of getting from hither to yon. And we drove parts of Skyline Drive that brought back childhood memories.

Late Autumn isn't the best time to see the mountains. The trees that had colorful leaves a month ago now have dead brown leaves or bare branches. And it's a bit chilly out to enjoy hiking. But that's okay; we took it mostly as a scenic drive. In beauty I walk... even when by 'walk' I mean drive. 😅



We stopped at a few of the roadside pullouts along the Skyline Drive. That's part of the beauty of the road. The road is so peaceful, and every two miles or so there's a tranquil pullout to see something. We nearly had the park to ourselves. That's the upside of visiting late in the Fall and late in the day: no crowds.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #23
Linville, NC - Thu, 5 Sep 2024. 5:30pm

After finishing our hike at Upper Creek Falls this afternoon we called an audible and chose to drive to Linville Gorge next. Somehow it wasn't on our itinerary as browsing through AllTrails earlier in the week didn't turn up any obviously rewarding waterfalls trails we could hike. I knew in the back of my head that was a mistake because I've known about Linville Falls at Linville Gorge for... oh, about 30 years. I visited this park, twice, when I was a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill. I don't know that I ever got a really great view of the falls back then, but that's all the more reason to go for it now. Plus, Hawk has never been here before.



There's an easy trail about 0.5 mile from the visitor center off the Blue Ridge Parkway to the top of Linville Falls. Up here there's a viewing platform on the slickrock looking down over the falls. This rock get especially slick during storms, as water from the river can surge right over it. And I've got to say, the view of the falls from upstream is particularly unsatisfying. I mean, you can get a sense of what's below: a river that crashes around a goose-neck slot and falls a great distance into the canyon below. But you can't see it.

Fortunately there are other things to see up here.



The upper part of the canyon is quietly beautiful. Especially coming late in the day on a gloomy mid-week afternoon like we did, we had the place largely to ourselves. The huuuuge parking lot 1/2 mile back hinted at how much different it could be on a sunny summer weekend.



The other fortunate thing about this spot is that it's not the end of the trail. The trail continues around the side of the gorge to 2 or 3 lookout points with views down into the gorge. We could even see one of them, opposite the big falls (first photo) in the distance.

Update: the adventure continues! Keep reading in part 2.

Alaska Travelog #23
Outside Seward - Tue, 18 Jun 2024, 4:30pm

Today's been a day of shorter hikes and visits around Seward. We started with a milder hike to an overlook of the Exit Glacier ("milder" being in comparison to our butt-kicker of a hike partway above the glacier on Monday), followed by a bit of gentle 4x4ing on the river bed. Now we've driven around the far side of the bay to Fourth of July Beach.



From here we're actually looking across Resurrection Bay to Seward on the opposite shore. We're technically still in Seward, though. In Alaska city limits seem to stretch miles away. For example, when we were in Anchorage we stopped in places 100 miles apart that were all called "Anchorage".

But hey, it's a beach! Er, gravelly shoreline. And the high temperature today is... 57° F. And there's a blustery wind. So, not exactly what you think of when you think "beach" in the summer. Oh, and it's next to an industrial site. In fact I had to employ some creative direction-finding to find public roads around the industrial complex and its many "No Trespassing" and "No Parking Beyond This Sign" signs to get to this public beach.

Back on the road— "road" being generous here, as named streets in this part of the city are gravel—I drove inland a bit to try seeing Fourth of July Creek. There's a gravel road that parallels it for a bit. When I saw a dirt two-track going off through the hedges toward the creek I tried exploring it in our SUV.

I marveled to myself at how there was such solitude here... until I rounded a bend and saw a truck parked in the path ahead of us. Then, as we got closer, I noticed that the truck was abandoned... and wrecked. 😰 "Well, that's a little bit scary," I said aloud.

We didn't let the wreck deter us from exploring further on foot. ...Yeah, that's exactly how horror movies start. 🤣



The wreck was about as far as we'd have been able to drive on the trail anyway, so it didn't cost us anything in terms of access. We picked our way around it then across the tumbled river rocks. If this creek looks like the glacial outflow from Exit Glacier it's because it is a glacial outflow. Above us in those mountains is Godwin Glacier.

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. 🤣

This past Sunday we broke our spell of being stay-home slugs over the weekend and got out hiking. We'd been saying for a few weeks, "Let's go hiking this weekend." Yesterday was the day we finally did it.

Ironically yesterday was also the first day of Daylight Wasting Time, i.e. the first day after ending Daylight Saving Time. That's ironic because usually once the clocks change we get depressed with how it gets dark early and that becomes a disincentive to being active outdoors. But yesterday we were both up early so we started pulling things together to go hiking at 9am.

We headed up into the Santa Cruz Mountains to one of our favorite hiking haunts, Russian Ridge Open Space. It's one of actually several dozen open spaces and county parks up in these mountains. Yes, we've been to almost all of them if not actually all of them! (You know we're avid hikers, right?) But we visit Russian Ridge more than any other because of its great network of ridge-top or near-ridge top trails offering views of the SF Bay to one side and the Pacific Ocean to the other. On clear days, downtown San Francisco, Mount Diablo, and other landmarks come into view.



This time we mixed it up a bit by going to a different trailhead within the park than we usually start at. It's actually the main trailhead, with an actual parking lot, instead of us parking on the roadside next to the Stanford Point overlook that is still stupidly closed "for the pandemic". (My bet is Caltrans just keeps choosing not to budget $10,000 to remove the barricades and reopen it.) Anyway, the trail from this spot starts with an uphill hump, but then you reach the ridgeline and the views really open up, as in the photo above.

A large, noisy group was nipping at our heels on the ascent, so we decided we'd wait at the first fork and go whichever way they didn't. 😅 That fork was at the base of the knob seen above. The fork is on the right edge of the frame, halfway up. The group loudly announced they were going left, so we went right. 🤣 Then as we got halfway up toward the next hill we saw they changed their minds and were loudly ascending to the right, behind us. What to do? Emergency bail-out trail FTW! 😆



Many foot trails such this worn into the hillsides from years of use are marked "Stay out" to allow the natural grasses and other plants to recover. Not this one. The sign marked it closed to horses and bicycles, but not foot travel. We gladly escaped up to the top of the knob to avoid the noisy other hikers. Up atop the knob we actually avoided all other hikers. It't was great enjoying some solitude on a nice day.

The trek over the knob was serendipitous, too. It's rarely we walk little used side trails such as this. And it was the first of two meaningful changes of direction we took.



The side trek over the knob was a fun little diversion of about 0.5 km. Then we were back to one the main trails in the park, winding around just below the ridge to its west side. In the photo above you'd see the Pacific Ocean over at the far left, except it was completely socked in with heavy fog on Sunday.

This long stretch of trail looks pretty empty because it's on the backside of the ridge and further away from the main trailheads. As relatively easy as it is to get back here, few people bother to do it. We hiked for over a mile in near solitude, only sharing this stretch of trail with a few cyclists rolling through.

Update: Continued in part 2!

West Virginia Travelog #10
Hillsborough, WV - Sun, 17 Sep 2023. 4pm

To cap off our "The weather's crummy... let's go hiking anyway!" day today we visited the Falls of Hills Creek out in a remote part of West Virginia. It's quite a haul from our hotel in Beckley, but what else are we going to do on a rainy day?

It was actively raining as we started the hike. We considered not hiking, but again, what else are we going to do today? We pulled on our rain jackets and set off down the trail. At least the rain keeps out the riffraff. We had the trail almost entirely to ourselves for the 2 hours or so we were here.



Hills Creek features three waterfalls, upper, middle, and lower. The falls in my photo above are Middle Falls. The total drop at this tier is 45 feet. We passed upper falls but there was no good vantage point for photos. Here, with Middle Falls on Hills Creek, an elaborate set of stairs leads visitors safely down into the canyon.



These stairs are going to involve some huffing and puffing going back up.

But wait, there's more...



...More stairs to climb down to see Lower Falls. You pay on the return, but the views are worth it.



The lower falls are the tallest of the trio, at 63 feet. Here the water pours over a rocky lip, and there's a hollow underneath the ledge and behind the water. In drier weather we would have scrambled down from the wooden walkway to the path below and walked behind the falls. In today's soaking rain that's too dangerous.

This past Saturday morning we headed up to Bassi Falls up in the Sierra Nevada. The drive was pleasantly short at about 60 miles. We knocked out the majority of the driving from home with our “Friday Night Halfway” to Folsom.

While Bassi Falls was the main event for the day, getting there was part of the fun. The journey is part of the adventure. This journey included three fun things: US 50, a waterfall (yes, a waterfall on the way to see a waterfall!), and 4x4 driving.

US 50: Far from the Loneliest Road

Most of our driving Saturday morning was on US 50. It's dubbed "The Loneliest Road" for its path through the middle of nowhere in the Great Basin desert of Nevada. Having driven across Nevada four times now I can attest that it's a very lonely road. Here in California, though, it's anything but lonely. Crowded is more like it.

Our journey on US 50 actually began Friday evening, when we exited from eastbound Interstate 80 onto US 50 in West Sacramento. That's where US 50 begins— or ends, depending on which end you're starting from. That other end, by the way, is Ocean City, Maryland, a whopping 3,073 miles away. (Interesting note: this isn't even the longest road in the US. Four others are longer!)

Thankfully traffic on US 50 Saturday morning wasn't too bad. By leaving Folsom before 9am we managed to get out ahead of the road-clogging people driving motor homes and towing boats over the mountain pass to Lake Tahoe. It helped, too, that almost all of the route up to our turnoff at Icehouse Road has at least 2 lanes in each direction— so there's no getting stuck single file behind a slow moving vehicle.

A Waterfall on the Way to a Waterfall!

While getting stuck behind a slow moving vehicle on mountain roads is no fun, there are things you'll miss if you go too fast. One of those things is Bridalveil Falls. It's tucked in a blind corner on the side of the road, and the one small road sign announcing it's ahead doesn't give you enough warning to slow down and be prepared to pull off. I imagine most people zoom past it least twice, saying "Wow! What was that waterfall?" before making a plan to stop and visit it.

This trip, like our last one 6 weeks ago, I drove at a gentle pace through this stretch of the mountain pass. I watched for that small brown sign. As soon as I saw it I eased off the throttle and began signalling a turn so everyone trying to rush up the mountain could go around me instead of impatiently riding my tail.

When we pulled off we had the spot to ourselves for a while. Indeed, the road was pretty busy, but almost everyone was passing by these falls, seeing them too late to stop. I took advantage of the quiet to set up my tripod to take some timed exposures and a picture with the two of us in it. It didn't turn out so well... We were squinting in the bright morning sun, so I'm not including it here. But it was still closer to a keeper than almost any picture I get when I hand my camera to a rando to take a picture of us, which is why I carry the tripod and take the time to set it up when reasonable.

I note the water flow is much lower here than six weeks earlier.

Back on the road it wasn't much further until we reached our turnoff at Icehouse Road. From there we ascend steeply into the Sierra Nevada, heading toward the Crystal Basin.

A Bit of 4x4 Driving

Icehouse Road is paved all the way and in good shape, even if it is steep and winding in parts. From Icehouse we turn onto a dirt road for the last 2 miles to the Bassi Falls upper trailhead. Yes, upper trailhead. There are actually at least 3 trailheads it's reasonable to hike Bassi Falls from. We usually do the upper trailhead because it's the closest to the falls, leaving us more time and energy to spend at the falls. The upper trailhead isn't for everybody, though. You need a 4x4 to get there.



The dirt road is actually pretty easy for the first 1.8 miles or so. Then there's a hill climb that's slightly rough. That filters out the passenger cars. Then right near the end there's a tougher hill climb, with "tank trap" ruts. The video above shows us going over it.

You'll see I actually had to try it twice— the first time with 4-hi and choosing a tougher line I got stuck. I backed up, engaged 4-lo and my rear locker, and walked it.

This obstacle was tougher this Saturday than 6 weeks earlier. It looks like vehicle traffic in the intervening time with dry weather has dug the ruts deeper. But there's a plus to the road getting tougher: fewer people make it to the trailhead! We had the trailhead all to ourselves on Saturday morning.