Oregon - Silver Falls State Park

Silver Falls State Park 

It took us a half day (at our leisurely pace) to move on to our new stop - Silver Falls State Park. Located ENE of Salem, SFSP is featured in the National Geographic book on top state parks in each state. The reason will become obvious when you arrive- the place is beautiful, inspiring, well laid out and well maintained! Ten beautiful waterfalls are here for you to hike past. You can do the hike in one continuous loop taking about 8 miles (there are several that you walk behind!) or you can get to 4 or 5 of them with several hikes of less than a half mile or so. These falls are beautiful, varied and in a setting of Douglas Fir and Cedars that stretch up over 100 ft. SFSP has a nice campground for tents, RVs and also offers 1 and 2 room cabins to rent for those without such equipment. There is also a wonderful stone and log lodge built by those great guys - the CCC,  back in the 1930's. How great we are still able to benefit from their labors.

site 22 - even has a small stream beside it - very nice

Lodge at SFSP - built by the CCC and really neat

interior of SFSP Lodge. They have a fire going for us!

a bit about the park and the lodge

Our first afternoon, we came over from our campsite to check things out, grab a quick look at South Falls and the Lodge and make our plans for the next day. The weather had turned The weather remained great for the entire time we were there. We went over in the morning and found out the  lodge has a small café serving sandwiches, hot and cold beverages (including adult beverages), candy bars, muffins, etc . We planned our hike to be back by mid afternoon and hopefully grab a beer at the Lodge before the 4pm closing. Inspiration to keep hiking! I had my small Camelbak with sandwiches and water, we both had our hiking sticks and off we went for the 6 mile version of the Falls trail (Canyon Trail, Winter Trail and Rim Trail). We figured to hit the remaining two Falls with Cooper and CJ later on in our stay. Just a few hundred yards from the lodge you get to the first falls - South Falls at 177 ft and the trail goes behind the water!

South Falls - 177 ft , first one you see on your hike!

Cindy on trail behind South Falls

all the moisture creates lush vegetation 

most of the hiking is along level or slight elevation changes

behind Lower South Falls

Down the trail, along Silver Creek for another half mile or so and you get to Lower South Falls. Here you descend a serious amount of ramps and stairs to continue on , again behind the water as it drops 93 ft. On we hiked and the views are inspiring, the trails good and we met some nice people. One couple told us about a point of interest we'll get to later on in this posting.

nice women took our pic at Double Falls - 178 ft

we were told these at Fawn Lilies???

small,un-named falls

Silver Falls SP is located at about 1000', and this time of the year, the nighttime temps dropped enough to produce frost on the Jeep! But, by 8 am, things began warming up and by late morning we were in T shirts. some days even shorts.

towering firs and low humidity - pleasant hiking

Saturday, our second day at SFSP, was a much awaited day. Cindy was meeting up with her childhood best friend, Sandy, who she hadn't seen in 30 years! Sandy arrived around noon, we chatted, grabbed a lunch and hiked to South Falls and the top of Lower South Falls before returning to camp and throwing some burgers on the grill for dinner. A pleasant day was had by all. Great to see old friends reunite!

childhood friends meet after 30+ years

post hike chat will waiting on burgers

S&C with South Falls in the background

S&C hiking along Silver Creek

C&S below South Falls

Saturday ended with discussions about meeting again while we were in the area.

Sunday began with taking Cooper and CJ to the Off Leash area of the Park and time for CJ's obsession - playing Ball.

CJ loves playing ball!!

Then over to the Lodge to grab some free WiFi (quite speedy) a cup of coffee and a tasty Apple Cinnamon scone. We sat in the cushioned chairs next to the stone fireplace and wrapped up the previous weeks BLOG while enjoying a chat with some camp hosts. A great deal of info often gets exchanged during these chats and this one was no different - things to see later on in our trip. Then back to our campsite for a laid back day of reading, driving up to the top of the entrance hill to message the kids and resting.

Monday we met Sandy in Portland, about 1 and a half hours drive to the North of SFSP. We chose to take the back roads and passed nice Christmas tree farms and vinyards and also caught our first glimpse of Mt Hood.

workers planting seedlings for Christmas trees in 8-10 years

MT Hood - majestic!

We arrived in Portland and made our way to Sandy's House. We chatted a bit, I walked Cooper and CJ and we opted to drive a mile or so to a nice dog friendly Dots Café to get lunch and take in the sunshine.(I had a delicious chicken sandwich, C&S opted for burgers).

enjoying our lunch at Dots

 We wrapped up our lunch with Sandy and she steered us to the quick way to reach the famous Columbia River Gorge. Only a half hour away, it offers spectacular views and numerous waterfalls, plus some Lewis and Clark sites. In preparation for our visit to the Pacific Northwest, I re-read Stephen Ambrose - Undaunted Courage - the story of Lewis and Clark. We quickly got out of Portland to get I 84 East. On the way we spotted Mount St Helens.

Mount St Helens in the background, notice the top

Twenty odd miles later, we took the exit to Historic Rt 30 and Vista House at Crown Point. Built in the early 1900's, I offers a spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge and offers a small museum and gift shop. (Note, it can get quite windy there as you are in a gorge - it was blowing at 40 mph while we were on site) Off in the distance, the docents pointed out the rock where Lewis and Clark saw seals, indicating they were nearing the Pacific after many, many months!

Vista House is on bluff on right

Rt 30 was built to make use of scenery

Seal Island just above orange bouys

We continued on Rt 30 and observed several waterfalls, made the now necessary detour to get to 611 ft Multnomah Falls (named on of the top 10 in the US)  the detour is necessary due to a carelessly caused fire in the Fall of 2017 which burned thousands of acres in this area. Most sad. Many Oregonians have quickly related their sadness at the fire in the Gorge. The Falls are beautiful and approachable to within 100 yds off I 84. The Restaurant a the site is open and functioning. Farther up the Gorge is Bonneville Dam. We were told is is a neat place to tour, but we were too late in the day to include it in our sites.

We made our way back to SFSP and after dinner took Cooper and CJ over to the Lodge for an outing and some WiFi time for us! While there, a Steller's Jay kept landing on the empty chairs in our area, probably looking for a handout. Quite striking, they are closely related to our Blue Jays.

Steller's Jay - black head, blue body!

Our next day included a scheduled tour off a local house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - The Gordon House. The house now sits outside Silverton, Or, but originally sat on a farm with a direct view of Mt Hood and the Willamette River. A very interesting place to tour. We had toured another Wright home  - Falling Water in Western Pa a few years ago and this house was just as fascinating. It is a shame it no longer occupies the  site which inspired its' design.

Gordon House, built 1963

these windows were designed to look upon Mt Hood!!!!

guest bedroom and balcony

great room and music room

Our final day at SFSP found us taking Cooper and CJ to the North Falls parking lot and walking to Upper North Falls with them. This is a nice, flat, 300 yd trail to a 65 ft falls.

nice walking out to Upper North Falls

Upper North Falls - 65 ft

Then we dropped the dogs off at the Jeep and headed to North Falls. No dogs allowed on this portion of the trail. This is a more of a hike in that the are about 80 steps to descend before you go back to and behind North Falls. This is a narrow, cutting through the rock , 136 ft falls with a deep cavern behind it. Very impressive and worth the walk.

North Falls - notice the large trees growing above

behind North Falls - one big cavern, probably 150 ft across

This wrapped up our stay in the area and SFSP specifically. We cleaned that night, put most things away and in the morning, disconnected, pulled the slides in and headed to the RV dump station. then on to Silverton to fuel up the rig, fill the propane, grab groceries and be on our way!

notice the diameter of the trunk!

As we were departing SFSP, we grabbed a few pics of a local industry - growing Christmas Trees. The weather with abundant rain, sunshine and moderate temps affords a nice environment for such pursuits!

seedlings going in the soil!

We would highly recommend a stay at Silver Falls State Park. I would think a minimum of 4 nights. More if you want to use it as a base to explore Portland and the Columbia River Gorge.

that's all for now folks!

Take care

Cooper and CJ