I had a pretty rough night, sleeping wise, last night. First of all, we ate immediately before bed, and I had two sandwiches, which filled my stomach completely, probably more than I should have. Secondly, I had mustard on the sandwiches, which probably wasn’t so great for the stomach acid stuff, in addition to a full stomach immediately before bed.
Oops. 😅
I woke up at like 1:30 in the morning, I think, with my stomach really unhappy with me. My mom was asleep and snoring, and I didn’t want to wake her up, but I wanted to try and find my bottle of Tums. I couldn’t find it at first, so I tried to get my body over to the front seat in the hopes that being vertical would stave off the burning and pain. I drank a little bit of water, and the hopes of washing down the stomach acid, assuming that’s what’s going on.
But no dice. 😕
So I started crawling around the van in an effort to locate my tums. I very slowly and very carefully crawled off my bed, across the top of the cooler next to where my mom was sleeping, and to the rear of the van. I looked all over, but I couldn’t find the bottle of Tums.
Ugh.
Finally, I found a box underneath my mom’s bed that I figured was probably where I had put the tums. So I reached my hand inside the box between the bed and the edge of the box, felt around, and boom!
My Tums.
🥳
So I chomped down a tums, and that managed to calm my stomach down enough that I could actually lie back down and sleep, gratefully. But by the time I got that figured out, it was something like past 3:30 in the morning. 😅
Since we were in Bear country, I had also asked my mom to Wake me up when she needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so I could turn off my sleep noise maker and watch out the back of the van toward the bathroom and make sure she was safe. Not that there would really be any problems, but tiny little mother, and not so tiny bear… Better safe than sorry? 🙃
She actually got a really good night sleep, though, so her first wake up was somewhere around I think 5:30 or 6:00 or something like that. So there was only one wake up, and that was good. I didn’t really sleep deeply, I don’t think, the rest of the night anyway, So it wasn’t any big thing to wake up and make sure she was good because I think I was mostly just dozing anyway.
When we finally got up in the morning, it was doing the Pacific Northwest Misty rain thing. Absolutely lovely and beautiful. I tat on the chili side, I think lower to mid 40s, but beautiful. And the beautiful smells of the evergreen forest and the river and waterfall just 100 yds or so from our little camp spot.
It was wonderful. Just wonderful. 😊
I think my mom and I ate a little bit of breakfast before we started to do some exploring. I think I ate some of the cocoa roo/marshmallow maties
We started our exploring by walking down to Clearwater Falls. The falls itself was beautiful. It wasn’t a huge, majestic, towering falls like many that I’ve seen in the past. This one was more of a gentle falls, perhaps 20 or 30 ft worth of vertical drop overall, but no drop more than probably a couple feet. It just went from little drop to little drop over rocks and fallen trees.
Just picture a large evergreen forest with towering trees, and moss covering most everything, including the waterfall itself (half of the falls was covered in rocks that were themselves covered in thick mats of green moss).
Then add a number of fallen trees across the falls, and you get a picture of what it was like.
It was the kind of falls that perhaps you would see in an elf forest. 😁
I helped my mom up the little slippery trail to the left of the falls, and we walked to the top where it opened up and you could see the wide, shallow, crystal clear water disappear around the bend and the distance.
So beautiful.
And for my mama… home. 😊
We stood around for a while, taking pictures, and just soaking in the beauty of the place. For most of our time there, we were the only ones. The campground was completely empty, and only one car besides our own showed up to enjoy the area while we were there.
I’m grateful to be here off season when it feels magical instead of in season when it’s crowded and feels more like a spectacle or an amusement park.
My soul loves the solitude and quiet. I love people, as you know, but I want my solitude and quiet in nature, free from the manmade things.
Anyway, the next stop on down the road was Watson Falls. This one was a little bit more of a hike, but not bad at all. We wandered up through the gorgeous evergreen forest, winding our way past mossy trees and mossy deadfall.
I just love the magnificent and massive evergreen trees. 🌲
😊
Even had there not been any waterfall, the short hike was beautiful because of the trees and moss and Creek running through. Then of course you add the waterfall on top of it, as the trees opened up so that we could see the cliff face in front of us, the thin, towering falls descending nearly 300 ft from top to bottom.
(It only looks like maybe 140 ft to me, but officially it was like 294 ft… or something like that.)
Either way, it was a beautiful falls. 😊
Mom and I took our customary pictures, and then we headed on down the road to Toketee Falls.
I enjoy falls hopping. 🙃
The little trip to Toketee Falls had some absolutely beautiful and cool little features to it. From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, it was a fun adventure. As we were pulling in, we found ourselves driving next to a massive water diversion pipe. It was probably a 12 ft diameter pipe, or something close, I would guess, and it was absolutely filled to the brim with water.
How did I know that? Because there were holes in the water pipe, and the pressure was so great that it was squirting water straight up in the air for a decent ways from the very top of the pipe, in addition to holes in the sides and what not.
What was even more surprising was that the entire water pipe was made out of wooden flats with metal rings around them like an old style barrel, except the wooden slats were maybe only a couple inches wide and really really long.
It was nutty to see a pipe that massive be made completely out of wood and have that few of leaks.
I mean, there were leaks everywhere, but heck, it was an 80-year-old pipe that could still hold water enough to be perfectly usable.
Mom and I took a few pictures of the pipe, and then we started our little hike down to the falls. There were a few places with pretty views on the way down that we stopped to take pictures at, and then of course at the very end. This particular falls didn’t have a way to walk down to the falls itself: There was just an overlook with a deck that you could stand and see it from afar.
One of the cool things about the falls was that it was carved into the side of those, gosh, what are they, basalt pillars or something like that? The hexagonal tubes that are almost like sideways honeycomb. So the waterfall was cut kind of cut through a bunch of those with the basalt pillars on each side.
On the way back up the trail, we stopped off to take pictures at a little spot in the river that was super beautiful. It was a little bit of a scramble, but my 78-year-old mother managed to scramble down with me guiding the way. We took some pictures from there, and then I scrambled down all the way to the river itself to a rock that was jetting out into the middle of the river, which allowed for an absolutely gorgeous view both up and downstream. Up a set of small rapids, and down through what almost look like a cave.
It was really cool because I was able to not only see the view myself, but find a way to get my little mother safely down to that spot as well. We both sat on the rock just taking in the view and taking pictures for a little while before heading back up.
So beautiful.
From there, we needed to start heading west to get back to the freeway, so we could head on up north to Letitia’s house for the Michaelmas festival, and we missed one really beautiful falls that I don’t remember the name of, but that’s okay.
Next on the list was to eat some lunch, which we decided to do it a little spot way way down river called Deadline Falls.
It probably should have been called deadline rapid, as there wasn’t much of a falls at all, but it was still a pretty view, and Mom and I made some food and went down and sat on the rocks overlooking the river. It was right off the road, so it wasn’t super quiet, but it was still beautiful, we enjoyed ourselves and the view and the food.
From deadline falls, we headed west until we got to I-5, traveling through some really pretty small towns that were along the river. We got gas at some point, and drove north all the way to my sister Tish’s house.
We got to tish’s house after dark, but they had waited to eat dinner for us to get there, so we chatted for a while, and then we ate dinner, enjoying each other’s company, before crashing. Me, I prefer this implicity and comfort of the van, so I went out and crashed in the van.
I guess y’all already know that. 🙃
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 