Leon Turnbull Photography

Yesterday was not a particularly good day for me. I got laid off at my work. It was quite a surprise in a way. I did have a feeling this was coming, but I figured it would be in November. It is a strange situation, but because they did it now, I obtain a very excellent severance package (if they had waited until November, I would have received nothing). So I have mixed feelings. I am not particularly concerned about my future (I do trust God that He will look after us, and that He has better plans for us), but I am disappointed with my company and that this could not have worked out in a much better way.

So … change is in the air for me.

I feel this image symbolizes this change. Spring brings change. Wildflowers grow. Rivers rush from snow melt. The sun shines. New life begins.

After I was “let go” yesterday, I decided to go out hiking in the afternoon. I was actually planning to go after work anyway, but this way allowed me to leave quite a bit earlier. My destination was Codfish Creek Falls in the Weimar/Colfax area. The rain was supposed to be letting up by the afternoon, but it was not the case. When I reached the trailhead, it was raining steadily. As I began hiking down the trail, it turned into a downright crazy hailstorm, complete with thunder and lightning. I took shelter under some trees, and after about 5 minutes or so, the hail had stopped, and it looked like it had snowed about an inch on the ground! By the time I reached the falls, the rain had stopped, and the sun even came out for a peek. On the way back to the car, I found this spot along the river and stopped to take a photo. Soon after this, the sun said goodbye and the rain/hail started up again, and did not let up for the rest of the day.

The North Fork American River is my most favorite river in the world. It is normally so very green and pristine and beautiful. But today it was flowing high and fast and somewhat dirty. I think the heavy rain caused the streams flowing into the river to be dirty and muddy, and thus the river was dirty as well. But in a couple days, it will be green again and still be flowing high. Another symbol of change.

Slaughter Ravine Falls is a very tall waterfall in Colfax dropping into the North Fork American River. It only gets a lot of flow in the winter, after much rain, and it is definitely flowing well right now.

You can see it partially from across the river but it is difficult to get up close to and photograph. There is a bottom section, however, that you can get to. This section is only about 15 ft. high, but is kinda pretty.

After our family outing to Windy Pt. to see the wildflowers, I stopped here to try to get to this waterfall. Nekoda was too tired, so she stayed in the car with mommy, while Jadon and I went exploring. There is a lot of prickly brush around the bottom of the falls, and we had to trudge right through it. But it was trampled down enough from other people going there, that it wasn’t too bad, and we were able to get to the waterfall without too much difficulty. No ticks either. Jadon waited (somewhat) patiently while I climbed down to the creek to get some photos. Afterwards, we rewarded the kids by taking them to McDonalds in Colfax. It was a fun outing.

If you continue on a bit past the wildflower area (previous post), and make your way down to the river, you will come to a waterfall. Chamberlain Creek Falls. It is a very small waterfall on a very small drainage. But it is still kinda pretty if the creek is flowing well. Nonetheless, you won’t want to come here if the creek is not flowing at full tilt. As you can see from this photo, it isn’t much, and this is about maximum flow for this creek.

You also won’t want to come here if you don’t like poison oak. There is a quite a lot of it along the trail, and as you work your way down to the waterfall, you have to go right through it. Now it may be easy enough to avoid if you are careful and paying attention (which I was not). I was a bit careless, and tripped and fell, right into what? Yep, a big patch of poison oak! Even though I scrubbed myself raw with Tecnu when I got home, I still got a very bad rash this time. I can’t explain it, but sometimes Tecnu seems to work and sometimes it doesn’t. I guess if you fall right into the stuff, that is when it does not work.

This is a very cool place in Colfax overlooking the North Fork American River. It is an easy hike, and there are even some waterfalls in the area as well that I went to. I came here after work one day last week. I arrived a bit later than I wanted to though, and the sun had already gone down behind the mountains. Still though, you just can’t beat this view, and an amazing display of wildflowers here.

The reason I was a bit late was because I was in search of another new waterfall in the Colfax area. Whenever someone tells me about a new waterfall, I really have to remember to ask this question to them: How high is it? What I found was only a small 5 foot high falls, not even worthy of mention. Argh. That little detour made me much later to this wildflower location than I wanted to be.

Well I did come back here on the weekend though, this time with my family in tow. I still need to process those pictures, so I’m not sure yet if I have anything better than this shot. The hike was sort of easy enough for my 5 year old girl, but she did complain quite a bit on the way back, so I guess it was a bit too long for her. There was also quite a bit of poison oak along the trail, so I had to keep telling her to watch out for the oak and not touch it. Nonetheless, I think both the kids and my wife all enjoyed the outing. And by the end of the day, the kids were quite good at identifying poison oak!

Well … I had plans for a very cool epic hike this weekend, and it involved my favorite of favorite trails and my favorite of favorite series of waterfalls, not to mention my favorite of favorite rivers. And did I mention a brand new waterfall to see as well?

Unfortunately, something got in the way of my epic plans. More like hundreds of things. Little things. Little annoying things. Very bad things.

My plan was to hike down my favorite trail, the Canyon Creek Trail to the North Fork American River. Canyon Creek is a waterfaller’s paradise. There are at least seven significant waterfalls on this creek, all of them are fabulous, though some are difficult and dangerous to get to. When it is rainy, this trail can be very treacherous in places. But today, the trail was dry, not so treacherous, and the creek and waterfalls were still flowing very well.

I started out hiking before sunrise. Since it was a sunny day, I wanted to be down at the Big Waterfall as early as possible. Everything was going pretty good until I got down on the Canyon Creek trail proper. That is when I noticed little black things crawling up my leg. Bad things. Ticks! We’re not talking about 1 or 2 ticks, we’re talking about hundreds of them along the trail. I could see them on the grasses along the trail. But so many I could not see. At this time of year, the grasses are quite long, overgrowing onto the trail, and it is impossible to avoid brushing against them. In the two miles or so down to the first waterfall on Canyon Creek (pictured here), I literally had to pluck AT LEAST 50 ticks off my legs and pants. I am seriously not exaggerating. I was stopping about every 30 seconds or so to check my legs for new buggers. They all seem to know exactly where to go once they get onto your leg. Up. Up to certain “softer” areas that are “juicier”. How do they all know this? Some of these ticks were HUGE too. There were some that I would say were 10 times larger than the normal tick. Dang, I’m sure glad none of those ones bit into me. Actually, none of the ticks bit me. And I am very thankful for that. My constant checking every 30 seconds seemed to work, as they did not have enough time to crawl up under my shorts (though some came rather close).

But I found all this incredibly dis-heartening. They totally ruined my hike. My favorite of favorite hikes. Indeed, this might not be my favorite hike anymore because of all the ticks I had to brush off today. And it is really making me re-think all the other grand hikes I had planned for this spring as well. One or two ticks I can handle. But 50? No way. I decided to turn around before I got down to the Big Waterfall on Canyon Creek. I knew that the lower section of this trail and where I wanted to go would be more overgrown than the top part, and that meant the tick situation would be even far worse down there. I think I made the right decision but I was quite bummed about having to turn back. Well, at least I got to see one waterfall today.

One last thought for the day though: I am indeed very thankful that I did not get any tick bites, and I thank God for this. I did get a tick bite on my hike to Stevens Creek last week, the first one I’ve had in years, and tick bites can be really bad (not to mention, darn itchy!). And interestingly, I think God was protecting me last week. I actually had intended to go to Canyon Creek last weekend instead. It was a cold and rainy day, however, and I decided to stay home instead. If I had gone, I think I would have ended up with a ton of tick bites. I would have been wearing my black rain pants on that hike, and I would not have been able to see the ticks on my legs. I’m quite sure that I would have ended up with many bites. But today it was sunny, and I was wearing my light colored shorts. It was quite easy to see all the ticks on my bare legs and shorts, and I was able to pluck them off before they did any damage. Anyway, just my thought for the day … though I still wish I could have finished my intended hike.