South Falls, Silver Falls

One last (for now) photoset from Silver Falls State Park, this time from South Falls. Like North Falls at the other end of the park, a short trail winds down to the base of the falls and then continues along behind the falls.

South Falls is next to the park's main parking lot and visitor facilities, so the trail tends to be pretty busy, and you may have to be patient if you prefer photos without people in them. I realize I'm probably in the minority on that point, but there you have it. In retrospect it was nice having to slow down a bit. I was in the middle of yet another week-long photo staycation, and when I do those I tend to go charging around with an overloaded TODO list, trying to grab a comprehensive batch of photos in the least amount of time and then hightailing it off to the next destination on the list. The theory being that I don't have a lot of free time to go take photos beyond central Portland otherwise, so I need to rush around and fill up the tank then so I'll have stuff to blog about on gloomy mid-November days like today. That actually works out rather well, I think, and I'd probably just burn my whole vacation messing around on the interwebs without anything to show for it if I wasn't out taking photos. Still, it's not particularly relaxing at the time, so it was nice to have to stop and wait for people and actually enjoy the scenery a bit. I may have burned an extra ten, even fifteen minutes that way. It was nice.

North Falls, Silver Falls

A slideshow from North Falls in Silver Falls State Park, downstream from Upper North Falls and a short walk from the North Falls trailhead. I don't have a lot to add about the park beyond what I covered in the Upper North Falls and Winter Falls posts, but I should point out that this is one of a couple of Silver Falls waterfalls where the trail goes behind the waterfall. (South Falls is another, and there may be others that don't spring to mind right away.) I loved that sort of thing as a kid; it was easy to imagine you were hiding out in a secret Gondorian fortress, despite the steady stream of hikers wandering through. This was always interspersed with occasional moments of "Hey, wait, what if the whole thing gives way & collapses while I'm under here?". Actually that's still more or less my reaction, despite knowing how incredibly unlikely a cave in would be. Am I the only person who ever thinks that?

Winter Falls, Silver Falls

A few photos of Winter Falls, in Silver Falls State Park. As the name suggests, it's much more impressive in the winter and comes rather close to drying up during the summer -- which unfortunately is when I went and took these photos. Even during the winter this waterfall isn't the main event at the park; North Falls and South Falls are the main attractions any time of year. I do actually have photos of them too, but I took a lot more of them and still haven't sorted through them all yet.

If you've ever wondered why I have so many posts covering second-tier attractions like this, and like nearby Upper North Falls, it's because I usually have fewer photos to sort through, and there's generally less source material to dig through while writing the post. In short, it's just easier. I always eventually get around to posting the good stuff, but usually not on any kind of reasonable schedule.

This month will hopefully be different though; several people I know observe November as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, in which you try to write an entire novel in 30 days. I'm not feeling remotely that ambitious right now, but I've set a somewhat more modest goal for the month, that of having an empty Drafts folder on 12/1, which is a situation I'm pretty sure I haven't had in at least 5 years (considering there's one oddball draft post that's been sitting there since March 2007). I do have draft posts there for North & South Falls, so you should expect to see those within the next few weeks, and if you don't, you're entitled to make fun of me, or at least to roll your eyes a little at the failure of my modest ambitions.

Upper North Falls, Silver Falls

Couple of photos of Upper North Falls at Silver Falls State Park. It's a quarter mile upstream from the North Falls trailhead, a quick side trip after you've seen North Falls (the main event here) if you aren't doing the loop trail. By "quick side trip" I mean it turns out I only took a handful of photos of the falls, and I didn't bust out the mini-tripod for them, so no tasty long-exposure motion blur goodness. Which illustrates a problem I keep running into: Creating a post is a lot easier when you have half a dozen photos you really aren't that fond of, versus a hundred photos you love and have to choose between. I'm not sure what to do about that, since taking fewer photos doesn't appear to be a realistic option for me.

Don't get the wrong idea here; it's an attractive waterfall, and it's a short, easy, pleasant walk from the trailhead, and you already paid $5 to park there anyway. So unless you're really pressed for time, you might as well make the side trip.