Saturday, August 23, 2014

Gifford Pinchot National Forest

Nice Saturday morning stroll led us to this cool tree

Playing with Opie - the mushrooms could be stairs for the Keebler people.

The leaves reminded Mary of the Land Before Time.

The newest furry kid around, Mariposa ("butterfly" in Spanish). She's a ball of energy, but sits so politely.

Sam and Opie were messing around
Tawyna, Mari, Megan, Finley, Sam and I found a hike nearby to Falls Creek Falls.
Bridges in the forest are fun!


Beautiful, big trees saved us from the heat.

Falls Creek Falls was one of the BEST waterfalls we've seen in the Northwest! Completely unexpected and what an amazing surprise for our morning hike.

Hard to see from this angle, but there are actually 3 tiers to the waterfall - it was spectacular!


SO fun!

Sam found his way to the top of the first tier and pretended to dive in.

SO big!

SO magical!

Love the contrasting greens with the fast-flowing water.


 

Mary trying to use focusing techniques on Opie.

This mushroom is sweaty.

Fading colors. Fall is right around the corner!

Sam found the bridge, too.

The pups and humans needed to cool off a bit in the river.



The Goplins impressed us all with their campside mini-donuts!

Finally got the oil temp juuuust right

Adam was our expert donut-maker for the morning.

SO tastey!


Our Home away from Home this summer,

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Tunnel Falls Hike

Sunday morning we got up and headed to Eagle Creek Trail to hike back in to see some more waterfalls.  We met a couple that were taking three weeks to drive from Colorado to San Francisco where they would ship their truck and move to Hawaii.  While Darrel was out kite surfing Chelsea and Archer came hiking with us.  It was a nice 12 mile day.


We headed out for Tunnel Falls.




The first set of falls we made it to are called punch bowl falls.  Both falls dropped into big round pools.


The other larger Upper Punch Bowl Falls


This hike had a little of everything from trails carved into canyon walls to rock slides and thick lush forests with giant trees.

Loowit Falls

Steep cliff walls down to the river.

High Bridge

Skoonichuk Falls

Crystal Clear waters

Lunch Break

Ferns

This thing was working on growing a new tail

Mary at tunnel falls



Archer


Beautiful 

This spider knows what its doing.

You can see people down on the bank of the river at the bottom of the pic.