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Oregon Cascades Travelog #18
Bend, OR - Fri, 4 Jul 2025, 10:45pm
We spent a lot of the day taking it easy in Bend today. Really too much of the day. I get it that sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate with outdoors adventure plans, or that we need to take an easy day when we're traveling, or both. The take-an-easy-day thing is a reality we've faced more frequently as we get older. I accept that. But as I gazed at the bright blue sky out the window of our hotel room— a blue sky that the weather forecast continued to insist did not exist, had not existing at all today, and would not exist until tomorrow— I grew frustrated that what started as "Sure, let's take it easy" had turned into frittering. Inertia. Languor.
Hawk was still feeling out of sorts. She made it clear that she was willing to hike but not in a headspace to plan things or make decisions. She knows I know what she likes and is willing and able to do, so she trusted me to do the planning. I reviewed the lists of hikes we'd collected for this trip, checking them against maps for what there was still time in the day to do. As the hour wound toward 3pm we'd already frittered away more than half the day. But surely there was something to do. Indeed, I came up with not one but two possible hiking itineraries. One was desert-y and the other waterfall-y. Knowing Hawk, I figured the one with the waterfalls would be better. And I felt more like seeing waterfalls, too.
We drove northeast from Bend over the crest of the Cascade Mountains to Willamette National Forest. First we visited Gooch Falls, then drove south to another trailhead for the two-fer of Sahalie Falls and Koosah Falls. Actually the latter was more like a three-fer or even four-fer, as the McKenzie River flowing over these big falls also cascaded over a few smaller falls in between them.
As with the past few days, I'm holding up on detailed blogs with photos to keep more on top of the chronology of the trip. I'll add links here when I'm ready to post those blogs.
You may notice that the driving route for this trip bears a lot of resemblance to our trip of two days ago, when we hiked Downing Creek Falls and Proxy Falls. Indeed we drove right past the turnoff for Downing Creek Falls on our way to Gooch Falls today, and the drive from there to Sahalie and Koosah overlapped part of our drive to Proxy Falls.
"Why didn't we combine these trips together better?" you might wonder. I wondered that, too. And I was frustrated about it. The simple answer is that we didn't plan well enough. We didn't adequately research the location of all the hikes on our various lists. On the other hand, even if we did research them better, there are the issues of time and energy. There aren't enough of either to do all the proximally located hikes in one day. So we made another trip back over the summit and hiked them today.
And you know what? These hikes were awesome. All my frustrations about doing the same drive again two days later melted away, completely disappeared, as I saw the surprisingly big Gooch Falls. And Sahalie and Koosah and all the little falls in between them made today an excellent day— even though we didn't leave the hotel until just after 3pm.
Of course, the morning wasn't wasted. Soaking in the hot tub was nice. And late this evening I went back out to the hot tub for another soak. Oh, and during this soak, at 10pm, there were fireworks— because it's July 4th! I relaxed in the hot water with hotel neighbors I'd just met, watching the fireworks show for 30 minutes.
Bend, OR - Fri, 4 Jul 2025, 10:45pm
We spent a lot of the day taking it easy in Bend today. Really too much of the day. I get it that sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate with outdoors adventure plans, or that we need to take an easy day when we're traveling, or both. The take-an-easy-day thing is a reality we've faced more frequently as we get older. I accept that. But as I gazed at the bright blue sky out the window of our hotel room— a blue sky that the weather forecast continued to insist did not exist, had not existing at all today, and would not exist until tomorrow— I grew frustrated that what started as "Sure, let's take it easy" had turned into frittering. Inertia. Languor.
Hawk was still feeling out of sorts. She made it clear that she was willing to hike but not in a headspace to plan things or make decisions. She knows I know what she likes and is willing and able to do, so she trusted me to do the planning. I reviewed the lists of hikes we'd collected for this trip, checking them against maps for what there was still time in the day to do. As the hour wound toward 3pm we'd already frittered away more than half the day. But surely there was something to do. Indeed, I came up with not one but two possible hiking itineraries. One was desert-y and the other waterfall-y. Knowing Hawk, I figured the one with the waterfalls would be better. And I felt more like seeing waterfalls, too.
We drove northeast from Bend over the crest of the Cascade Mountains to Willamette National Forest. First we visited Gooch Falls, then drove south to another trailhead for the two-fer of Sahalie Falls and Koosah Falls. Actually the latter was more like a three-fer or even four-fer, as the McKenzie River flowing over these big falls also cascaded over a few smaller falls in between them.
As with the past few days, I'm holding up on detailed blogs with photos to keep more on top of the chronology of the trip. I'll add links here when I'm ready to post those blogs.
You may notice that the driving route for this trip bears a lot of resemblance to our trip of two days ago, when we hiked Downing Creek Falls and Proxy Falls. Indeed we drove right past the turnoff for Downing Creek Falls on our way to Gooch Falls today, and the drive from there to Sahalie and Koosah overlapped part of our drive to Proxy Falls.
"Why didn't we combine these trips together better?" you might wonder. I wondered that, too. And I was frustrated about it. The simple answer is that we didn't plan well enough. We didn't adequately research the location of all the hikes on our various lists. On the other hand, even if we did research them better, there are the issues of time and energy. There aren't enough of either to do all the proximally located hikes in one day. So we made another trip back over the summit and hiked them today.
And you know what? These hikes were awesome. All my frustrations about doing the same drive again two days later melted away, completely disappeared, as I saw the surprisingly big Gooch Falls. And Sahalie and Koosah and all the little falls in between them made today an excellent day— even though we didn't leave the hotel until just after 3pm.
Of course, the morning wasn't wasted. Soaking in the hot tub was nice. And late this evening I went back out to the hot tub for another soak. Oh, and during this soak, at 10pm, there were fireworks— because it's July 4th! I relaxed in the hot water with hotel neighbors I'd just met, watching the fireworks show for 30 minutes.
