Monday, November 14, 2011

A Close to Home Waterfall Adventure Extraodinaire

It was a rainy fall day, and the great hikers bundled up and set out for Latourell Falls in the Gorge. I had never been to Latourell Falls because it is the first waterfall you come to when driving down I-84 and I always figured it was one we could do anytime. The time had come to explore it!









The lower falls is not far from the parking lot. This is a great kid friendly hike and Amy did quite a bit of walking- uphill even! It was lovely to crunch through leaves.









Amy collected some leaves to take along for part of the hike. She likes offering them to random dogs that come along, but they do not smell like food so the dogs aren't all that interested.









The view of the gorge was lovely, and upper Latourell Falls was so fun, a spiral waterfall! Quite unique! All of the moss was also quite a treat.









We headed back down the other side of the falls, enjoying the cool fall air and leaves all around us.









When we got to the bottom we took a brief side trip to Guy W. Talbot park. According to our sources, he once "owned" Latourell falls which I really do not think is possible but he did own the property. There was a pretty staircase down to the park and neat arches in the old highway above us.









We came full circle back to the lower falls, but by this time there were many more people taking pictures.









As a side note, my hiking partner Sarah, who had beautiful hair of many colors on this trip really thinks lipstick is one of the 10 Essentials of hiking for the pictures! I am trying to embrace paradox in my life but applying lipstick while hiking is just too much for me to wrap my mind around :-).









Amy had a great time and hiked about 2 of 4 miles. She has been asking for a waterfall hike every weekend, so I have a feeling we will be returning to the gorge to enjoy the ice around the falls soon, but I am hoping to hit the snow! Maybe we will find a waterfall we can snowshoe to as a compromise.

1 comment:

  1. beautiful pictures MountainMel! What a lovely adventure for you and your little girl.

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