a waterfall & a drive
Day 5 of our oregon road trip was a wet one… rainy. misty. foggy.
it was a mood.
the plan was to make it from the interior of oregon all the way to the coast in one go. bend to coos bay. with a little waterfall stop along the way at tokette falls.
let me preface this by saying… this was a long drive. we barely saw another soul in over 6 hours of road, and i would be lying if i said there weren’t areas that were downright creepy. it probably didn’t help that all we were listening to were creepy true crime podcasts, but we won’t get into that. besides, we were getting real close to halloween by this time and to be honest it really set the mood.
as mentioned before, it was a rainy day, but we weren’t about to let that stop us from seeing this waterfall. we had only been gawking at it from afar for years, so we put on our rain gear and set out for the hike in.
when we reached the viewing platform, we realized pretty quickly that to get the vantage point we wanted of this waterfall, we were going to need to climb down a pretty steep, unmarked trail… and by steep trail i mean it was basically a cliff. A very wet, muddy, unstable cliff. with a rope to literally repel yourself down in one spot.
looking back we really kicked ourselves for not taking pictures of the trek down, but it’s probably for the best that our mothers never see the photographic evidence of that…
suffice to say the treacherous, wet cliff climb was well worth the reward at the bottom. This was without a doubt one of the coolest waterfalls we have ever seen. the rock formations alone were just unreal.
the rain made it a little tough to keep our lenses clear for photos, but in the end we were happy with just the experience alone.
we were pretty soaked to the bone by the end of the hike out so we were so happy to jump back into cas and crank the heat for the rest of the drive.
but We still had a lot of creepy road to cover…
and yet not creepy enough to stop us from getting out to take the occasional photo…
but as we slowly got closer and closer to the coast, the skies started to clear.
we rolled into coos bay just after sunset, and the starts were shining bright in the clear coastal skies. jer still had enough steam to snap a couple astro shots, and it’s one of my favourites from the trip. it’s wild how you can forget something, but then a photo can bring it all back. this one does it for me.
another incredible day.
