Tim and I decided to give this hike a try last Saturday and I'm glad we did. We weren't sure that there would be much water at the waterfalls, but it was supposed to be one of the best hikes in the Bay area. It was about an hour and a half's drive from San Francisco, unfortunately kind of a curvy road a lot of the way, and Tim doesn't like that! I had him drive because he says that if he's driving he's too busy to throw up...
We started off on the hike from the park headquarters. The trail was supposed to be about an 11 and half mile loop, which the guidebook said took most people about 6 hours, though some could do it in four hours and some might take all day. We wondered which we were! You are in the Redwood forest immediately on a winding path that goes relatively slowly uphill for quite a ways. The trail became more uphill sometimes, and then would do some roller coasting (up and down, up and down), which I always hate.
Eventually, after several miles, we started a downhill into waterfall country. The first one came up pretty quickly and we stopped at its base and had our one snack for the trip. After we left that one, we discovered that there were several more in pretty quick succession, really one better than the next. We differed on which one was the prettiest. I liked the last one, which cascaded against the rocks as it went down. Tim like the one that is a straight drop into a small pool with fallen redwoods. They were both good!
Continued on the trail, which now took us up and up and up. We were both getting really tired of UP. But we knew it had to come, obviously water flows downhill and all those waterfalls took us far down the mountain, so we had to go back up. We had almost made it back to the park headquarters when I took a header after tripping over a tree root on the path. Eleven miles and I trip 10 minutes from the end! Got a good bloody knee and a dirt bath, but got right up and continued to the first bathroom where I cleaned up. Excellent hike! Oh yeah...the camel you will see in the pics...we don't know what it was doing there, but as we left the park a woman was leading the camel down the middle of the road, don't have any idea why! It was odd.
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