Leon Turnbull Photography

It is a very long drive down from Monterey to Salmon Creek Falls. I have been down there a few times now, and it always takes much longer than I think it will. You would think I’d have learned by now. I have to say I hate that highway. All the twists and turns just drive me psycho by the end of the day. It is a beautiful drive I suppose. Mostly though I wouldn’t know about that because I have my eyes on the road all the time, going bonkers. Ah well.

I was not planning to go to this waterfall, actually. I wanted to go to a couple waterfalls upstream from this one. Yes there is indeed an Upper Salmon Creek Falls. However things did not turn out as planned of course. Firstly, Tara’s knee was on the fritz again from the hike the previous day. I wanted her to come with me on this hike, but she could not. She insisted it was ok for her to wait in the car while I hiked. I hesitated. But she insisted again. And again. Well, ok then … I started up the trail but I did not get very far. The trail seemed to be going in completely the wrong direction from my map, up and far away from the creek. This could not possibly be the right way! I went back and tried a different route, going up beside the top of the lower falls, however that route eventually just fizzled out and it got too difficult to continue. Well I did not feel right about going on a very long hike anyway so I just went back and photographed this lower falls again. As I found out later, the first route was the correct one after all, but my map was wrong. It was completely my fault. Ugh. I will know better next time! If I can brave that crazy drive one more time, that is.

Since we were all the way down the coast we continued further down to Hearst Castle, a place I had never been to before. It definitely was a very interesting place, and I do recommend going if you have not been there. It was an extremely hot day; it is supposed to be winter, but it felt like summer. It was totally nuts. Up at the castle, however (1000 ft. higher in elevation), it was very chilly (and of course I left my jacket back in the car, brilliant!). I was hoping to see one of the zebras that run freely on their land, but instead we saw some of the very interesting aoudads (barbary sheep). The dumb bus driver only stopped for a grand total of three seconds to let us see them (and try to photograph them in that time). Geez is it really that important to keep to your stupid timing schedule so Alex Trebec doesn’t get off track on your useless voice audio (if you have been there, you know what I am talking about). I did get a somewhat ok kinda crappy photo of one of them in those three seconds. If you would like to see it click here.

My wife and I headed over to the coast for the weekend, sans kids, to celebrate our birthdays this month. Both of our happy days are at the end of January (well as happy as you can be at my age). My wife loves the ocean and beach, and I was hoping to see some waterfalls of course. The bad news though is that it has not rained in January. Why is it that whenever I plan a big waterfall vacation to the CA coast, I always pick dry times of the year! It happened last year and the year before as well. It was going to be interesting to see if the falls were all completely dry or not, I did not have my hopes too high.

We arrived very early at this waterfall, called Andrew Molera Falls after the state park that it is in. It is very easy to get to but I had never been here before so thus I was anxious to remedy this silly faux pas.

Andrew Molera Falls is an ugly waterfall. Seriously. There are fallen logs all over the place at this waterfall. I can think of other waterfalls where fallen logs across the falls actually enhance the waterfall’s beauty and character (Russian Gulch Falls, Lion Slide Falls). But the fallen logs across Andrew Molera Falls do no such thing. Ah well, what can you do? Well, you can look for alternative viewpoints. And that is what I did. My wife stayed at the overlook while I scally wagged down the hill to the creek, crossed it, then made my way up and around fallen logs, and down to the base of the falls. Whew. Once down I realized I would have to get my feet wet, getting into the creek and climbing up a mini cascade where I could get the view point I wanted. My wife, watching me from afar, said I looked like a hobbit with bare feet and rolled up pants, scampering in the creek. It was fun though and pretty cool standing under the fallen logs and looking up at the 35 ft. high waterfall. Did I make this ugly waterfall look pretty? You be the judge.

As for the flow … well it was not dry! It was actually flowing better than I expected and it was the same thing at our next stop (Pfeiffer Falls). So this gave me some hope for the rest of the weekend.

The one bad thing that happened here though? Tara somehow picked up a tick while sitting here waiting for me. She did not notice the thing biting her until the next day and it was bad by then. I don’t understand how she could not notice a tick biting her that long but this was the only possible place she could have picked it up. When we got home she went to see the doctor and is on antibiotics to be on the safe side and we pray this will keep her from getting any nasty disease. Other than this (oh and the hotel reservation mess up – sigh) we had a great time at the coast.

Just a short distance above stunning McWay Falls lies a lovely little tiered waterfall which I call Upper McWay Falls. It is fairly easy to get to and flows on the same creek as the lower McWay Falls. In other words, it also flows year-round.

After shooting McWay Falls at sunrise, I took the short hike up to the upper falls. It is an easy hike to the bottom of the 3 tiered waterfall, but it is a bit tricky scrambling up to the upper tier, which is the prettiest section. It drops 32 ft. into a hidden alcove. It reminds me a lot of Hole In The Wall Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon because of how it curves around inside the alcove. I spent quite a lot of time here shooting this one, and I may or may not have removed a lot of ugly logs and debris that may or may not have been at the base of the waterfall. I can’t really remember. Photographers have a very short memory when it comes to things like that.

Anyhow, it was a fun morning. I grabbed some coffee in Big Sur on my way back to Monterey to meet my family, and we spent the rest of the day enjoying the beach, playgrounds, and touring the Carmel mission (which was quite interesting), and then enjoying a big pizza dinner, followed by a walk on the fisherman’s wharf where we saw a cute baby sea otter from up close.

With my new job starting this week we decided to make a quick trip over to the ocean at Monterey Bay to celebrate the new job and get a last vacation before the new job started.

We went over on Saturday morning and spent the day at the aquarium. Lots of fun of course for the kiddos. Lots of fun for me too because we saw quite a lot of wildlife this trip: dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters (including a very cute baby). The next morning I got up super early to drive down to McWay Falls. It is the only waterfall flowing at the coast right now so I wanted to get down to see it even though I have been here many times before and already have good photos of it. I know this is a sunset place not a sunrise place but this was the only time I had to go there. I wanted to do something a bit different here so I decided to arrive well before sunrise and try photographing the waterfall in the pre-dawn hour. This was my result. The exposure is F/8, 30 seconds, and was taken 25 minutes before sunrise. It was fun being at the overlook in the dark and being the only one there. It is such an amazing place. There were no clouds and no interesting sunrise but I did hike up to the upper falls before going back to the hotel to meet up with the family.

I did see some writing on the beach made by some idiots who went down there in recent days. It is not legal to go down to the beach here. The cliffs are crumbly and delicate and even one person going down would cause a lot of environmental damage. I do not think it would be too difficult, however, to get down. I would never do it but I do (rather often) think about doing it. I think though that if I ever did go down here it would forever ruin the location for me afterwards. From the overlook the waterfall and beach seem so pristine, so stunning, and so out of reach. It would not be so after going down to it.

This one was surprisingly a nice little waterfall. I was not expecting to find very much of anything here. The trail from the road is really short, but it is not exactly easy. I had to literally take off my backpack and crawl under a big log across the trail on my belly, right beside a steep dropoff. Then after this, there is a very steep descent to get down to the creek level (short, but difficult). Once down at the creek, I just worked my way up to the falls. There was a second creek coming in here which had a pretty nice cascade on it as well, and with a bit more water it would be a nice photo opportunity as well. But I headed up the bottom of the falls on Redwood Gulch Creek. I quickly realized that I needed to get right in the middle of the creek to photograph it. I did not have my water shoes with me, so I went barefoot, but it was not too difficult and not too cold. My wife thought the water at Salmon Creek was freezing. I laughed at her (sorry, dear), because it definitely was NOT cold. I have been in freezing cold water before from snow melt, but the creeks here at the coast were downright balmy in comparison. Anyway, I enjoyed my time here at Redwood Gulch. The waterfall is not a big one, but it is a pretty one.

More info on Redwood Gulch Falls:
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=1515