The Dale's Trails: Waterfall Hunt

We are leaving the Crater Lake area today and moving onward toward the Oregon coast. We will be on a scenic by way noted as one of Americas best drives. We stopped at the Diamond Lake view point and I mean stopped. There was still so much snow in the road we could not get the RV up the hill and through it. So we unhooked Hooptie and took the RV to back down the mountain to a “sno-park” , a parking lot where you can leave your vehicles to access snow trails for snowmobiling or cross country skiing. When we got back to where we unhooked Hooptie, we found out we only had to go the length of 2 blocks further to the view point. We could have just walked up the hill. Oh well, this unhooking of Hooptie will be the first of several today.

Diamond Lake, another creation of Mount Mazamas’ blow is much more shallow that Crater Lake and in time will fill in from the sediment that streams feeding the lake brings. I thought the sides of these hills that we were seeing in this area had coating of concrete on them to shore up the sides since there are so many rock slides. It isn’t concrete, it is the soil. This soil was made up from the sediment and ash from the eruption all of those years ago.

We are making a day of finding as many waterfalls as we can. We found Clearwater Falls, a small fall with crystal clear frigid water cascading over moss covered logs and rocks. Yes another unhooking and rehooking of Hooptie was required to get us out of that area. We missed the turn for Watson Falls and this meant … yes another unhooking. We tried to “bang a U-ie” but could not make the full turn. I love it when we get to block the road for oncoming traffic close to a hill and a sharp turn to unhook. Watson Falls, one of Oregon’s tallest at 272 feet is beautiful. The mist from the crashing water gave you the shivers.

Falls Creeks Falls – now these are fantastic. They should have been named Boulder Falls. To see the falls you need to hike up 1 mile, with a 1300 foot climb in elevation, around and through these gigantic boulders and lush vegetation. Can you see Tommy in the center of the picture One boulder actually split into and the path to the falls continued through the crevice. Going through the broken boulders crevice The double tiered falls created a cool mist which was needed after the climb. I felt like I was in a tropical place with all of the moss and fern. By far these were my favorite falls, in part due to the beauty of the falls and the environment of which we walked. One of the few “friends” we met along the way We smartened up at these falls, we parked on the main road and walked into the hiking area, so there was no unhooking. Anyone who has hooked and unhooked a vehicle knows it is a PITA and we got the technique down with the 3 1/2 times we did it today.