Silver Falls

Last week we went camping at Silver Falls State Park.

One word, three syllables.

AMAZING.

When we first got there we started the Trail of Ten Falls hike, which is a loop of close to 9 miles of hiking and 10 beautiful waterfalls.
The first one, South Falls:

As usual we found some awesome trees along the way.
#2 Lower South Falls

#3 Lower North Falls

#4 Double Falls

(hard to see but there is a tiny one up top)

#5 Drake Falls

#6 Middle North Falls

#7 Winter Falls

(It should also be called Summer Trickle)

Our cute little tent that we rented (it stunk like rotten salt).

We had to rent a few things to go camping since our small apartment and budget won't really allow us to buy everything we need.

We had forgotten to get roasting sticks so we had to buy one for $9.50 at the Silver Falls Lodge.

 Outrageous!

We were both pretty mad about the price but figured it could be our souvenir for the trip. 

When we were buying it the cashier told us that "everybody swears by these."

After we left we laughed and wondered how a roasting stick could be so superior to another...little did we know that this one was WORSE than any we had ever used.

The prongs were way too short and close together and made for a difficult time roasting weenies and mallows.

Oh well!

The next day we packed up our campsite and headed out to hike the rest of the trail.
#8 Twin Falls

#9 North Falls

I'm thinking of changing our blog to "The Lowe-Down: On Trees In Oregon" since I put up more pictures of trees than of us.

(You might be wondering where #10 is...well, we got home and I started numbering all the falls and realized the 10th was missing. Somehow we missed the offshoot to the 10th waterfall...oops!)

Catching Up.

Where does the time go?

I'm a little behind on our adventures...but here's a little catch up.

We checked out the World Forestry Center in Portland awhile ago.

Ginormous tree!

We learned a bunch about trees and forests and preserving them.

(We also learned about tree hugging)

Some lovely petrified wood.

This is the machine they use now-a-days instead of chopping trees down with axes.

Afterwards we took a little stroll through the Hoyt Arboretum.

We found the weirdest/coolest tree and my new fave, called Monkey Puzzle.

 Crazy crazy stuff!

The next day we went to Ecola State Park at the coast and walked in the footsteps of William Clark (of Lewis & Clark).

It was a much easier hike than Saddle Mountain and was beautiful!

LOTS of big crazy trees.

An overcast but windless day at the coast.

Looks can be decieving!

Windy day?

Not at all.

It was perma-windblown.

I also turned 22, which I thought sounded really old for awhile, until I realized it wasn't...for multiple reasons.
One of them being that my widdle (shorter than me) sister turned 30 this year. Wow.
I don't really feel like we can relate to each other anymore.
(just kidding)
Another reason being that I remembered how much younger I am than all the wives out here.
Story of my life=being the younger one.
So I'm glad to be turning one year older, and I have a feeling it's going to be a GREAT year.
Anywho...around my birthday but not necessarily for my birthday I got a new laptop!
Mine was old and feeble and stopped working at an acceptable pace, and since I am going back to school in a month I needed something that actually worked.

(Someone else in the household has gotten a little bit jealous of my super fast, cool computer and is now planning on getting a new one too).

Don't mind the mess, we had just gotten back from camping. 

More on that in the next post.

P.S. Here is a little more of Oregon for you.

This is how you get an emissions test done here.

Saddle Mountain

Welcome to the longest post about the coolest hike ever.

(I like superlatives. More on that later.)

Seriously, hiking in Oregon is like hiking in Pandora (planet in Avatar if you didn't know).

No really, it was like a completely different world in the beginning.

See for yourself:

"Chris, I don't think we're in Utah anymore."

In Utah when we hiked it felt like the color of everything was desaturated. Hiking in Oregon feels like the color of everything is super saturated.

Too bad pictures don't do it justice. (and the fog ruined some of them)

You should click on this picture for maximum viewing pleasure. 

We were in awe when we first saw all this and loved it. Chris kept saying "Heath, look at my face, I can't wipe this grin off my face!"

What a cutie! :)

When we first started hiking it was freezing and foggy. There was a lookout point that we decided to climb to see Saddle Mountain and this is what we found:

Fog completely surrounded the lookout point.

It was the most disorienting feeling. I felt like I was going to tumble off the edge with every step I took... even being 15 feet from the edge.

We eventually climbed high enough to be out of the fog and see the sun.

It felt like we had just hiked into heaven in Ireland.

Getting ready to conquer the hardest part of the mountain.

Yes, I am flexing. Hard to tell, I know.

Despite the clouds blocking our view of the coast, it was still an incredible sight at the top.

Apparently there are a lot of rare flowers on the hike.

I have no idea if this is one of them, but it was pretty cool.

Welcome to the jungle.

If you ever visit northern Oregon, make sure you do a hike.

It will change your life!

For reals.