Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Canada travelog #27
Back at the hotel · Thu, 28 Aug 2025. 4pm.

Today we visited one waterfalls, Felker's Falls. Well, we tried to visit others, but they were dry. Even though it's been raining today. Yeah, this is like the worst combination of conditions for waterfall hikes: the waterfalls are dry while we get soaked. 👎

Felker's Falls is in a city park in Hamilton. It's such a low key area. It's behind a children's playground in a suburban neighborhood. We parked by the trashcans, walked past the jungle gym, and to the hiking trails at the back.

"Are we in the right place?" we wondered. Then we saw fences everywhere and knew we were. 🤣



We followed once fenced path a short distance around the falls where the view was poor then doubled back to hike another fenced path on the other side.

We briefly entertained the question Can we hike to the bottom? It would be too steep going down the side of the canyon from above. The maps and a description on AllTrails imply we could partly hike an established trail, partly rock-hop up the creek from the bottom; but the weather was darkening and these falls just weren't big enough to be worth it. We decided to content ourselves with this view.



It's good we decided to be content here, because on our (short) walk back to the car it started to rain. And I don't just mean a drizzle or misty rain. We were dressed for that. No, it started to pour. We got to the car, hung our rain jackets to dry over our seat backs, and drove on to the next location.

I don't even remember now what the name of the next falls we visited was. It was out past Devil's Punchbowl— or, as I've been calling it since visiting there on Monday, Devil's Dustbowl. It was dry. We decided to pack it in for the day, ate lunch down the hill in town, then drove back out to the hotel.

Now we're back at the hotel. We figure we'll chill here for the rest of the day. We've kind of run out of things to do since dry balls cut short our list of activities. We're petered out at this point.

At least there's one more falls we can visit tomorrow before we go home, when the weather should be better again. Hawk put that falls near the bottom of the list because it charges a hefty entrance fee and has a reservation system. But we're scraping bottom here, so it's what's left on the list.

Canada travelog #24
Niagara Falls, ON · Wed, 27 Aug 2025. 11:30am.

I mentioned in my previous blog about Niagara Falls that one of my fondest memories from visiting when I was a kid was riding the Maid of the Mist boat tour down in the canyon. When Hawk and I visited her long-lost relatives in Toronto earlier in the week, and we told them about our plans to visit waterfalls in Ontario, they all told us we shouldn't miss the Maid of the Mist tour.

Funny little detail: the Maid of the Mist is a tour that operates from the US side of the border. There's an almost identical tour that operates from the Canadian side, where we are this week. It just doesn't have the catchy name "Maid of the Mist". It actually has a pretty stupid name, like "Niagara City Cruise", or something like that. I mean, WTF? It's not a city cruise. There's no city down here in the canyon. Just enormous waterfalls to look up at!

Well, either way, it was at the top of our list. We booked tickets a few nights ago for the cruise today.



One thing I remember about the Maid of the Mist cruise decades ago is that the tour operator gave us heavy-duty rain slickers, the kind you see ocean going fishermen wearing in old-timey pictures. Well, those expensive slickers are no more. Now they give passengers cheap but colorful trash bags. And no, it's not any better on the US side than here in Canada. The Americans just have blue trash bags.

As the boat neared the first falls and started to pick up a lot of spray I realized that my fancy camera wasn't going to do well. I packed it away under my trash bag poncho and relied on my iPhone for the rest of the trip. The good news is that means it was easy to record video of the falls.



Here's a 3 minute montage of the highlights of the cruise. We first go past the American side of the falls, then into the Horseshoe Falls which are split by the international border, then back past the American Falls as we return to dock.

As cheap as the trash bags were compared to the old-timey rain slickers of years ago, they got the job done. They kept our torsos dry as we got pounded with lots of spray for a few minutes. Our legs and feet took a good drenching, but that was okay as we wore quick-drying hiking clothes knowing we'd get sprayed by the mist, and it was warm out in the middle of the day anyway.

Canada travelog #21
Back at the hotel · Tue, 26 Aug 2025. 10:30pm.

Today finished on a good note, hiking-wise. We hiked two two-fers, for a total of 4 waterfalls: Albion and Buttermilk Falls, then Sherman Falls and Tiffany Falls. All was not good, though, as at the start of the day we had a problem with dry balls. And it wasn't just Ball's Falls that were dry but several others we had on our list to visit, too. While driving around during the day we decided it'd make sense to cut our visit to Canada short as we'll run out of things we want to do well before Sunday.

Tonight, after dinner and a soak in the hot tub, while Hawk was snoozing (she hasn't slept well recently) I rebooked our flights and shortened our hotel stay and car rental. The plan now is we'll go home Friday night instead of Sunday night.

What's the Cost?

Hawk agreed to leaving early provided the cost of rebooking plans wasn't significant. Cost was a major factor for me, too. If going home early is just a cost sink, we could figure out something to do in Ontario. The numbers work out such that, at worst, it's a wash, dollar-wise— but we still get two days of time back. And, best case, we save a few hundred bucks. Here's the math on the costs:

• Departing hotel 2 days earlier: $327 savings


• Returning rental car 2 days earlier: $104 savings


• Figuring the cost of rebooking flights is a bit tougher as I bought one on cash and one on points. Mine, paid with cash, cost $260 more than my original flight. Hawk's flight I got for 15,000 points, with a travel credit of $271 net she can use within the next 11 months.


• If Hawk can manage to use that credit before it expires, it's a great exchange for the 15,000 points we paid. $271 ÷ 15,000 = 1.8 cents per point (cpp), much better than the average value of 1.1cpp I value UA miles at.

Curiously, the numbers work out to a wash if Hawk's travel credit expires unused 11 months from now. If she can use it, then $271 is what we'll have saved by going home 2 days early.

Canada travelog #19
Hamilton, ON · Tue, 26 Aug 2025. 4:15pm.

This afternoon we hiked Sherman Falls in Hamilton. It's the first half of our second two-fer today. After the bust with dry balls we found plenty of wetness over at Albion Falls and Buttermilk Falls. Now we're doing another two-fer with Sherman and Tiffany Falls. Except it's not quite a two-fer because although we could park once and hike both falls— the distance between the two is reasonable— why hike when we can drive? Especially when the trail between the two mostly just follows the road. And it's starting to rain.

The first bit of fun with hiking Sherman Falls was parking at Sherman Falls. If there's one thing the Hamilton region loves even more than putting fences around waterfalls, more than growing thorny vines over fences over fences around waterfalls, it's putting No Parking signs all up and down the streets near waterfalls. The damn things were growing wild like poison ivy in the summer. We parked in a designated lot almost 1/2 mile away. And we had to pay. Thankfully not $22.50 like yesterday, but also not cheap.



Although the sun is shining in this photo (above; you can see shade under the brim of my hat) it sure was dark as we hiked through the thick forest in the canyon up to Sherman Falls. Yes, this is finally a waterfall with a trail up the bottom of the canyon! Though honestly I think the reason the city hasn't fenced it off and forced us to view it only from safety above is that the land above is all privately owned. So it's already fenced— and the Parks & Rec people aren't allowed. 🤣



There was one other small family at the falls when we arrived. We hung back a bit as they were crowding the scene vamping with duck-lipped poses for Insta or whatever. Once they were gone we had the falls to ourselves for about 15 minutes, before the next small group arrived. Doing these waterfalls hikes midweek definitely changes the crowding equation vs. our normal of hiking on Saturday and Sunday because we're working stiffs.



Curiously there are two trails to Sherman Falls, one from the left and one from the right, and they do not join near the falls. If there was a footbridge over the stream in the past there's no sign of it now. Instead I found a place where the water was shallow a bit down from the falls and rock-hopped across. Hawk didn't want to chance getting wet feet and socks (we're wearing hiking sandals today; boots might have been a better choice) so we walked out opposite trails and met back at the road.

Up next: Hiking Tiffany Falls

Canada travelog #17
Beamsville, ON · Tue, 26 Aug 2025. 1pm.

For our first hike today we drove out to Ball's Falls near Beamsville, Ontario. It's most of the way to Niagara Falls and the US border. But we figured we'd start out here and work our way back to Hamilton as the day progresses. We've got tickets booked for Niagara Falls tomorrow.



There are two balls here. There's the upper ball, and the lower ball. Sadly they're dry balls. We found that out after we entered the park. Small, handwritten signs in the windows of the elaborate park office are like, "Sorry, our balls are dry."

We checked with the park attendant about the dryness. "It's supposed to rain Thursday," we noted. "Would the falls run again after a rain shower?"

No, she explained. The dryness is seasonal. Usually these balls stop flowing in July.

"What about other falls in the area?" Hawk asked. She rattled off at least 4 other falls on our list.

They're dry, too, the staffer informed us. It's something about how these falls south of Hamilton are stream-fed as opposed to lake-fed, or vice-versa.

Time to Call an Audible?

Well, dang. That just crossed off about 2 days worth of plans. On the drive back to Hamilton I asked Hawk, "With that many fewer places left to hike, what do you think about us going home a few days early?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking about it," Hawk said. "It depends on the costs."

Tonight we'll look at the costs of changing our flights and going home probably Friday night instead of Sunday.

Update: Tuesday night I rebooked our flights to go home Friday evening instead of Sunday. It's a bummer to cut short a vacation, but we feel we'll find more enjoyable things to do from home— including possibly going somewhere within California for the three-day holiday weekend— instead of staying in Canada.

Canada travelog #12
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 2pm.

It disappoints me when I start a hike, the weather's nice, then it turns sour by the time I get to the payoff vista. That's what happened when I hiked Webster Falls this morning— it got gloomy and rainy. It burns me even more when I deal with poor weather while I'm on the hike, decide to leave, then the weather gets better after I've gone. That's what happened while I was over at Tew Falls— the sun came out. Most of the time stuff like this happens there's nothing to do but accept it. Today, because the hikes were short and close together, I said I'm going back. And that's what I've done. I went back to Webster Falls.



I parked in the lot a second time, paying nothing extra thanks to the good-at-all-local-parks-for-the-day $22.50 toll I already paid. And I walked to the falls on the short trail. And I climbed around the fence and scrambled down to the perch where I could actually see the falls, because fuck this town and its put-a-fence-around-everything-even-slightly-dangerous risk aversion.



I sat there on my perch for a while, making motion-blue pictures with my fancy camera (first frame above) and even a quick video with my iPhone (second frame). This time I even had the place to myself (plus Hawk). It's like the rain earlier in the hour chased off the riffraff. 😅

Canada travelog #10
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 1pm.

Our first hiking stop today, after various snacking stops such as getting a box of Timbits, is Webster Falls. It's in the bucolic small town of Dundas outside of Hamilton.

We'd picked out a route that travels up from below to the bottom of the falls, but it turns out it's closed. Not only is it closed, the entry is full of all kids of "GTFO". Like, there's locked gate across the trail, there's no-parking signs all around the gate, "Maximum enforcement area" signs below the no-parking signs, and poison ivy all over the gate. Yes, seriously, it's like the town hired an evil druid NPC to cast a spell on the gate. So we went around to the top of the falls, where there's an official entrance.



Ah, here's the other half of why the entrance below is closed off and cursed. Here there's room for a gatehouse to collect money. Build a gravel parking lot, put a couple of electronic gate arms on it, then plop down a tool shed and put a teenager with a credit card reader in it (no cash accepted). $22.50 for the two of us to enter. For a trail that's not even 1/2 mile long. Oh, but it's good at all the parks around Hamilton for today, the teenager assured us.



We decided to get our $22.50 worth we'd hike to all the viewpoints for Webster Falls. They're not very far. The trail still works out to soemething like $25/km per person. And for that we only get partial views of the falls (see photo above) at some of these vista points.

For a partial falls view, it's pretty nice. I'll bet the full falls is amazing. Will we get to see that next? We walked around the other side, and...



...Nope!

Oh, this vista definitely reveals more of the falls. It just doesn't reveal all of the falls.

One more to go and... also nope. The third viewpoint shows less of the falls than the first two. It's a straight-on view of the falls.... but there's, like, 20 feet of forest between the edge of canyon and the fenced off trail. It's such a disappointment I didn't even bother to take a picture.

Ah, but I mentioned a fence. It's fenced off. You know what you can do with fences? You can go around them. Or over them. Or even under them.

Today I decided that going around this fence was easiest. Not that they made it easy. I had to do some balancing and hold onto the fencepost to get around the end of it. But I got around the fence. And once around the fence I could backtrack, on the opposite side of the fence, to where an old and steep but clearly visible path led down to a perch at the rim of the canyon. Would that perch offer a better view of the falls?



BOOM! Much better view. Hawk even kept watch for me in case a park ranger came along to bust me for going around the fence. Though I think the only "ranger" in the park was the bored teenager at the gate playing on his phone in between bilking visitors for $22.50 apiece.

There was only one problem. It was starting to rain.

Goddammit. In the time it took me to get down to this perfect picture-taking spot the sun had gone away, the clouds had come in, and it was starting to sprinkle.

I waited 10 minutes or so to see if the sky would clear, or at least if the dark clouds would shift away. Neither seemed to be happening. Thus since we had plans to visit multiple other falls today I packed it in on Webster Falls. I picked my way back up the steep path, followed the fence to its end near the edge of the canyon and swung around the last fence post, and walked the short distance back to the car.

Up next: Getting our $22.50 worth of parking with a two-fer at Tew Falls!

Kaiser Pass travelog #6
Back Home · Sun, 10 Aug 2025, 8:30am

We're back from our quick weekend trip to the Kaiser Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. How quick? Well, it started with our Friday Night Halfway in Fresno and finished when we got home late Saturday night. We were out for just over 29 hours. Here's a recap:

Friday night we arrived at our hotel. It's in Clovis, a smaller town adjacent to/a suburb of Fresno. Despite leaving later than I wanted, due to work going long, we got in earlier than I expected, due to traffic surprisingly not being shit on a summer Friday. Maybe it's because school started in many districts this past week and parents aren't taking their kids on weekend trips again yet? Anyway, despite arriving early enough to use the hotel's pool and hot tub we decided we'd rather just stretch out in our room. Partly that's because we used our pool and hot tub, at home, this afternoon.

Saturday morning I awoke with my 7am alarm then just puttered until 8. We didn't leave the hotel until almost 9. I'd have been frustrated about that but we didn't need to hurry. That's the point of Friday Night Halfway: to buy us more time to do things— and not have to rush— on Saturday. I noted as I checked the weather forecast that the high for the day in Fresno would be 106° F. 🥵 (That's 41° C for the rest of the world.) Well, it's a good thing we're not here for Fresno but to drive up into the high mountains. As a rule of thumb the temperature drops 3° per 1,000 feet of elevation, so at 7,000' it should be a warm but not stifling 85°.

Leaving town we stopped at Costco for gas then Del Taco for breakfast. As we got up into the mountains we stopped at a general store in Shaver Lake for snacks.

Our first activity was a drive up a 4x4 road to Kaiser Ridge. We'd already driven to the Kaiser Pass via California 168 and forest road 80. Now we left the pavement behind for another 1.5 miles on a dirt road to the top of the ridge. Up here we were at 10,000 feet with great views down across the Mono Valley of the San Joaquin River and the mountains beyond— or what would have been great views except that there was a lot of smoke in the air.  I joked some time back that when traveling in the West now we need to check not just the weather report but the fire report. It's turning out to be less a joke and more a prophesy. 🤦

Saturday afternoon we drove down the Kaiser Ridge to its far side, the Mono Valley. Why? Because buried deep in there are Mono Hot Springs, a cluster of natural hot springs fed by geothermal activity. There's a small resort there but also a handful of pools that are on Forest Service ground. We hiked a short trail to them and Hawk took a dip.

Late afternoon we stopped to hike Rancheria Falls on our way back down the west side of Kaiser Ridge. We've visited there once before, a few years ago. It was definitely worth visiting again. It was mellow in the late afternoon hours, and the light was perfect.

We got back to Clovis a bit after 7pm. We weren't staying another night, just stopping through for dinner and gas. We'd tried for dinner at a small pizza shop in Shaver Lake, but the staff there warned us the wait was 90 minutes to cook a pizza. We figured we could drive 60 minutes to the Fresno area and still eat sooner than that, plus be 60 minutes closer to home.

The last part of the drive home was late. We finished with dinner and getting gas around 8:15, but then it was over 2 hours home. We were both fading hard. I drove for an hour and a half, then Hawk took the last 45 minutes as I nodded in and out. We got home around 11, unpacked the car, then I took a shower and tumbled into bed.

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.