Forest, McDowell Creek

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Here's a slideshow from Linn County's McDowell Creek Falls County Park, near Sweet Home, OR. The park's waterfalls have appeared here already:

• Majestic Falls
• Royal Terrace Falls
• Crystal Pool Falls
• Lower McDowell Creek Falls

I'm not sure if this area is technically part of the Cascades or not, but the moss-covered trees tell us the park gets a lot of precipitation. It's not quite as rainforesty as the Olympic Peninsula, say, but it still makes for some interesting photos. Or at least I thought they were interesting.

Majestic Falls

Today's adventure takes us to another waterfall in McDowell Creek County Park, near Lebanon, Oregon. Majestic Falls is the main event in the park; it turns out to be only 39 feet high, but it's quite attractive, and it's my clear favorite of the four in the park (the others being Royal Terrace Falls, Crystal Pool Falls, and Lower McDowell Creek Falls). Royal Terrace Falls is substantially taller, but had nearly run dry when I was there, so it's possible I might think more highly of it if I ever go back on a rainy day in mid-March, say.

My opinion is also colored by the fact that these photos came out better than the ones at the other falls. That's partly due to not having a lot of direct sun messing up exposure, and partly due to the nice, stable observation deck that made it easy to take longer-exposure photos. I would have posted these right away, but after I got home I noticed there were a couple of very conspicuous specks of sensor dust right on several of the photos, such that I would have to retouch them before posting. That's an annoying bit of drudgery, and I ended up dropping the photos in a To Retouch folder, and a post in Drafts, and a new item on my humble blog TODO list, and dropped the matter, um, temporarily. That was back in October, 2010. I wouldn't last long in the internet breaking news business, I guess that's what I'm trying to say here.

I've mentioned this over on Twitter before but I'm not sure I've done so here: A lot of people I know set aside the month of November to try to write a novel in 30 days. Others are growing moustaches for prostate awareness. My goal is simply to end the month with an empty blog Drafts folder. The last time I had that was many moons ago, so it does feel like sort of an ambitious goal. Maybe not as ambitious as writing a novel, but I like to think it's a somewhat more intellectual goal than growing facial hair would be. Although some readers (or former readers) might dispute that assessment. In any case, there are 10 days left in the month and I'm down to single digits in Drafts, so I just might hit the goal yet. Wish me luck.

Lower McDowell Creek Falls

And here are a few photos of Lower McDowell Creek Falls, part of Linn County's McDowell Creek Falls County Park, east of Lebanon, OR. As you can see, it's really pretty small, not something you'd really go out of your way to see. But it's right next to the trail through the park, so you'll pass it on your way to Royal Terrace Falls, Crystal Pool Falls, and Majestic Falls, and the rest of the park. So if you're there to look at waterfalls, you might as well stop by so you've collected the whole set, so to speak.

The one tip I have to offer about the park as a whole is that if you go during the summer, there may not be a lot of water going over the falls. Most of the photos of this waterfall you'll see out on the net show much more water going over it, like this one, this one, and this one. You might also enjoy this 360 degree VR panorama at the falls at Whole Reality Photography.

Crystal Pool Falls

So here's another set of waterfall photos from McDowell Creek County Park, down in Linn County near Sweet Home. Crystal Pool Falls is not the main event at the park; I think it's about third highest of the four in the park, and there wasn't a well-maintained path to get close to the falls, nor was there a good place to set up my mini-tripod. And as I mentioned in my Royal Terrace Falls post, I visited at the wrong time of year and at the wrong time of day, so there wasn't enough water and the light was all wrong. In short, yeah, I already know these photos aren't so fabulous.

So, as before, I'll be happy to point you at a few quality photos of the falls, from pdxrose, Jeff Fennell, Just Peachy!, Konejita, and LiefPhotos. Enjoy!

Apples, Howell Territorial Park

Hydrangeas, Howell Territorial Park

Royal Terrace Falls

A few photos of Royal Terrace Falls, in Linn County's McDowell Creek County Park, a few miles NNE of Sweet Home, OR. It's a rather attractive waterfall, and these are far from the best photos of it you'll see on the interwebs. The key problem is that in mid-July there just isn't a lot of water flowing over the falls, even in a cool wet year like this. The light was a problem too. Noon is rarely a good time to take photos, period, and when noon means bright sunlight from directly above and behind the waterfall, that tends to be a rather bad thing.

So we've established that I went at the wrong time of year, and the wrong time of day. But I'm just happy I finally managed to get to McDowell Creek at all. The park had been on my TODO list for a couple of years, and it's far enough away that I can't just go and do it on a whim before work some morning. So places like this are what staycations are for, assuming you define "stay" somewhat loosely.

A miscellany of useful links:

• Photos & info at OregonWaterfalls.net
• The Waterfall Lover's Guide to the Pacific Northwest gives it 3 stars.
• The Waterfall Companion also gives it 3 stars.
• A blog post about the falls at Greyhound Gardens
• and one at Sullivan's Trails

And some of those better photos I mentioned earlier: On Flickr: Photosets by Lhtnup & Cliff Zener, individual photos by Dave Putzier, Michael Karr and Ed Hodney. You'll quickly note that all of these photos show vastly more water going over the falls than mine do.

Elsewhere on the interwebs, you might also enjoy Some photos from Cee's Photo Art, A PBase gallery by fotabug, A 2007 photo from the State Archives, and a photo from nuffer.name

Ralph Friedman's "In Search of Western Oregon" mentions the falls, and includes a vintage (or now-vintage) photo. I'm embedding that page here instead of just linking to it, merely because I've never done that before:

an eternal constant

As seen near NE 33rd & Sandy. I'm not really a historian of commercial art, or a historian of any kind really, but I'd guess this "Cocktails" sign was created somewhere on the far side of 1960, maybe 1950, maybe even earlier. Since the sign doesn't appear to have moved between then and now, I'd imagine the adjacent building has been home to one bar after another for at least half a century if not more. All of them presumably offering cocktails.

A couple of years ago this spot was home to a Mexican restaurant & nightclub, but a fatal shooting in January 2008 seems to have put an end to that. More recently -- and controversially -- the building reopened as an upscale (by Portland standards) gentlemens club. So I can't help but wonder what some of its previous incarnations were like. Perhaps an outrageous 60's tiki bar, with ridiculously strong cocktails in ceramic moai mugs, and a house orchestra covering Martin Denny's greatest hits. In the 50's it could have featured an ooky racist theme, trying to compete with the infamous Coon Chicken Inn 20 blocks to the east. Could be there's an authentic vintage 70's disco ball gathering dust in the attic, next to a crate full of 45 singles and long-expired Quaaludes. NE Sandy was kind of a dump in the 80's, so I doubt this spot ever featured ferns and wine coolers and Nagel prints and cokehead stockbrokers. Unless they were slumming, which is possible of course.

We may never know for sure, as "real" historians aren't overly interested in this sort of thing. Perhaps if it gets turned into a McMenamins someday we'll get the full story. Generously embellished, of course, and presented as a wacky psychedelic mural. But hey.

Summer, Oregon Park

Taken earlier today. Contrast these with an earlier post that featured rather grim & wintry photos of the same spot, taken April '09.

timaria

Not sure what a "timaria" is, but their website is here. Sounds like a weird tropical fish to me, but I'm probably thinking "tilapia". FWIW.

domiplants

A few test shots of cherry tomato & cayenne pepper plants, taken with a 70's-era Domiplan lens I got recently. Conventional wisdom is that Domiplans are pretty much bottom of the barrel, but mine seems rather decent so far. Reviews on MFLenses and Lens Bubbles come to essentially the same conclusion. So it's not just my puny eyes smoking crack here.



The latter review mentions, as one of its pluses, that it has the Meyer-Optik "look", and I'd agree that's a good thing. I have a couple of other Meyer lenses, and the Oreston (their more expensive, faster, closer focusing offering) is one of my all-time favorites (check out this Flickr slideshow for a few of my examples). Also have an ancient Primoplan, which gives a rather zany retro effect (see slideshow).

Wapato Greenway, Sauvie Island

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Today's adventure takes us to Sauvie Island, just north of Portland, and an obscure spot variously known as "Wapato State Park", "Wapato Access Greenway", "Wapato State Access Area" and probably other variants I haven't encountered yet. The park, whatever it's called, surrounds marshy Virginia Lake, on the Multnomah Channel side of the island. Apparently it's a great birdwatching spot, so naturally I dropped by in July. Nothing's migrating now, and the lake's close to drying up, and there are mosquitoes all over the place, but at least the weather's better. And more to the point, I had a bit of free time to check the place out right now. Even if I'd been inclined to brave the cold and rain and mud over the winter and early spring, there were meetings to attend and there was code to write and it simply wasn't possible.

If you'd like a bit more comprehensive, and seasonally-appropriate treatment of the place, you might want to check here. Plenty of photos (grey skies and all), GPS waypoints if you need 'em, the whole works.

The park also has a boat dock, which I didn't run across while I was there. Obviously you can only launch boats here that you're able to lug from the parking lot. Maybe you can also dock larger boats here coming from somewhere else. I didn't see the dock, so I'm just guessing about that part.



If (like me) you aren't a boater or an avid birdwatcher, the list of what else there is to do here seems rather slim. The park's on an official list of state parks where metal detecting is allowed, I suppose if you aren't cool or sociable enough for birdwatching. The only hitch is that you can only do it in "developed" areas, which I think means the parking lot, the boat dock, the picnic area, and maybe the viewing platform at the lake. And if you find anything of archeological, historical, or substantial monetary value, you can't keep it. So I didn't see anyone taking the state up on these generous terms while I was there. Which is fine with me. Metal detector guys and their creepy white vans and molesty little moustaches always make me nervous for some reason.



If you'd rather do something useful and non-skeezy, there's always pulling invasive weeds. The local Soil & Water Conservation District organizes volunteer parties to do this in various places, including here. I like to imagine these things are total meat markets, full of earnest, do-gooding, highly attractive single folk, evenly mixed between genders. I have no evidence for this, so you may just want to sign up and check it out for yourself, assuming you meet the aforementioned criteria (so as to not lower the tone). And pull some nasty invasive weeds while you're at it, that being the ostensible point of the whole thing. Oh, and tell them I sent you. Maybe if they get enough volunteers they'll finally forgive me for voting against their tax base measure back in October '06. (It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.)



Fireworks are strictly verboten here, although judging by the size and prominence of the no-fireworks signs, it's possible not everyone plays strictly by the rules. So there's that, I guess, but fireworks aren't going on the list we're putting together. My attitude about fireworks varies: Sometimes I want to tell people to leave it to the pros, who have vastly better fireworks anyway. Other times I want to encourage them to be as reckless as they can, maybe play a fireworks drinking game or something, and to generally just hurry up and blow their hands off already. I think it just depends on what sort of mood I'm in at the time.



There seems to be at least one other thing to do here. When I arrived, there were a surprising number of cars in the parking lot. Two more arrived just after I did -- one of them a VW bus -- and the passengers looked roughly college age. While I wandered around the park I didn't encounter a single soul anywhere, and when I got back to the car the college kids were gone... somewhere, doing... something. I have no idea where they went or what they were up to. And even if I did know, I don't think I'd rat them out anyway.