Leon Turnbull Photography

Don’t pay the ferryman … until he gets you to the other side. (Chris Deburgh)

We had a boat ride and two ferries and a border crossing. We would not arrive in Seattle until 10PM at night. Best case scenario. It was not the best case scenario.

Thanks to Roger stopping for 15 minutes at the seal factory on the way back (mentioned on a prior post), we barely made it onto the first ferry in time. I was more worried about the second one because it is a bigger crossing, but we made that one easily. I was super tired so I stayed in the vehicle hoping to get a snooze. Normally BC Ferries does not allow you to stay in your vehicle for the crossing but this time they did. I thought it was because of a safety issue. So why is it not a safety issue for the crossing this time? Hmmmm … Well I could not sleep because of a dog barking and two car alarms going off and all the announcements they were making over the PA system. When my family returned to the car and tried to open the door OUR car alarm went off. It is a new car and I could not figure out how to turn the alarm off. It took a long time. Now I was thoroughly embarrassed!

Well … the ferry docked and we waited and waited and waited for our lane to start moving. Usually it is very quick. None of the lanes were moving. What the heck? We learned soon enough that a big semi truck had broken down and was blocking most of the exit lanes. Oh my gosh! They had to back us out in reverse down a very tight narrow lane so then we could exit on the second level ramp. It was pure craziness! Don’t pay the ferryman until he gets you to the other side! (I wish)

We ate dinner at Boston Pizza and then continued to the border crossing. That took a long time. They had just one lane open! This is a major crossing and only one lane is open. Oh come on for Pete’s sake. Immediately after getting across the border we got on I-5 and promptly came to a complete stand still. There was a major accident blocking all lanes of the freeway. We were stuck for almost an hour. Well this is going just great so far. Not! We would not arrive at our motel in Seattle (Issaquah) until well after midnight.

We had just four hours of sleep then we had to get up and go. We had a very long drive ahead of us, but also Tara and I both wanted to stop at Snoqualmie Falls on the way back home. We have never been to this waterfall before and have wanted to go for a long time. It is a very gorgeous 268 ft. high plunge. It was a great ending to our awesome vacation.

On the day of our planned trip to Canada for Christmas, there was a big winter storm coming in the forecast. There was supposed to be a foot of snow at Shasta and I was concerned about the road conditions by the time we would have gotten there, it really could’ve been quite bad. So I decided to go on I-80 through Reno instead. This worked very well for us a couple years ago in a similar situation.  It is a bit longer but if we get over the Donner Summit before the storm starts, it is smooth sailing from there. Or so I thought.

Since the storm was to hit Donner Summit later in the morning, we easily made it over the pass. All right I thought, smooth sailing. But when we hit Oregon, there was snow on the road and it was icy. This did not happen to us the last time we did this route. Apparently the storm caught up to us, the going from here was much slower. However, I still thought that once I hit I-84, it would be much easier from there the rest of the way. Again, not so much.

When we got to I-84 things got far worse. The freeway was closed due to the storm! I already had a very long drive and without my wife coming with us this time, I was the only driver. Now I had an even longer drive to get around this mess in Oregon. We had to go back through Idaho up towards Spokane. This section of the road was the worst yet. It was 250 miles and pretty much averaging 45 mph or less the whole way. People were driving far too slow due to the snowy conditions and it was pretty much impossible to pass anyone. After about an hour of driving and only having gone 40 miles, I figured it would have been much better to have just stayed back and hoped the freeway would open before too long. Too late now. Well it was a long drive but we finally made it to Lewiston/Clarkston where we would stay for the night.

Ew the smell! I could not believe it. It was unbearable. I honestly do not know how the people of this town can stand it to live here. The paper mill in Lewiston is a monstrosity as you drive into town. Ugly, dominating the entire river, and spewing out pollution into the air. Of course they tell you that it is not hazardous or dangerous, and I suppose it is not, but it is still pollution. I read on-line that it is only bad when the mill is going, and the people here are used to it. I seriously don’t think I would ever get used to this smell. We thought about walking from our motel one block to the restaurant we were going to, but we decided to drive instead for fear that we would drop dead before we got to the restaurant. No joke.

I grew up in a town in which just down the hill was a lead zinc smelter. Back in the 1960s before I was born, the pollution from the smelter was so great that absolutely nothing could grow in the town or in the surrounding area. They have since cleaned it up now, and the town is very nice, no more pollution. You do not even smell anything from the smelter. That is certainly not the case in Lewiston.

Well what does this have to do with waterfalls? Certainly there are no waterfalls that can grow in Lewiston. That is actually not a lie. No waterfalls do grow in Lewiston.

Spokane does have waterfalls that grow, however.  Or are made. The next day it was another long slow drive from Lewiston on snowy, foggy roads. It was so foggy I could not see more than 50 feet in front of me. By the time we got to Spokane, I desperately needed a break, so even though I have been to these waterfalls before, we decided to stop for an hour and go down and see them again. It was fun walking around the park in the cold and snow, and a good break before the final slog up to Canada. And it didn’t smell.

My daughter and I were driving up to Canada for an unfortunately unscheduled trip to see my family because my dad just passed away. It was not an unexpected thing but my mom really appreciated the visit. Along the way we stopped at a couple waterfalls of course.

I heard horror stories about this hike to Trilbey Falls. I really wanted to try it, but I just wasn’t sure about bringing my 11-year-old daughter on this hike. I heard that it was crazy steep and crazy difficult. Almost certainly, I would not be able to get down to it. Well, it was worth a try. We could always turn back if it got too cliffy or impossible. I mean, how bad could it really be anyway? Famous last words, right?

There was supposed to be a trail. I could not find it. That meant we had to go straight down through the forest and through the brush. Nekoda said she was OK with that. Except that she wasn’t. And it was all my fault. As we descended, with me going first, I stepped right over a hornet nest (or wasp nest, or bee hive, or whatever). Whatever they were, they woke up from their afternoon nap. When she stepped over, she got stung on the leg. Ouch! Fortunately, she only got one sting. It could have been so much nastier than one sting. We quickly got further away from the nest so I could treat her leg with my first aid kit.

To her great credit, she did not want to go back up, but she wanted to keep going down to the falls. She is a trooper. So down we went.

I got the location of this waterfall from a certain site, but the location was not correct, and with no trail to follow, we ended up right at the bottom of the creek and found no waterfall there at all. Nonetheless, it was a very bizarre place, like something out of Lord of the Rings, I have not seen anything like it before. Huge mossy boulders were scattered all over the place, very old fallen trees, with big holes that you definitely did not want to walk over, quite dangerous, and it was very steep, and the creek was flowing in and out between the boulders. Thinking the falls must be behind the boulders, I carefully climbed over to the creek, but saw no waterfall. So back up the hill we went. I knew there must be a waterfall here somewhere and it must be hidden further upstream.

Hidden it was. You cannot even see it when you are right beside it but I did glimpse it from further down so I knew it was there. Somewhere. Nekoda thought I was high. There is no waterfall here she said. The only way to see it for reals is to get down to the bottom, but it was very cliffy. How would we get down?

Well, we did find a way and it really wasn’t too difficult. My daughter could even do it. I did use the rope to help with safety, but I probably didn’t really need it. Nekoda refused to use the rope. I think I may have raised a mountain goat. It was a very fun descent down to creek level, and that is where we finally saw the waterfall dropping 40 feet within a tight gorge in between two cliff edges. What a magnificent place, and what a magnificent waterfall. Nekoda said it was certainly the best waterfall we saw on our trip, despite the bee sting.

We did find the trail proper on the way back up, and it was very easy following it. No hornet nest, no steep cliffs. Nonetheless, I still could not see where the trail ended up back on the road, and the last part was still a bush whack. No wonder I did not see the trail on the way down. Oh well. We had much fun on this hike.

Because of my back I was not sure we were going to get to go on our Christmas vacation to Canada this year. On Monday of Christmas week my back hurt so much I did not go to work and I was laid up in bed all day. On Tuesday I hobbled into work, and hobbled is the key word. It was extremely uncomfortable driving. But Wednesday and Thursday the back improved immensely, and I was able to drive up to the in-laws in northern CA after work on Thursday. So at the last minute on Christmas day, I decided that we would go to Canada. My wife was not able to come this time, so it was me and the kids only, and it was me that had to drive the entire trip, all 900 miles of it. The back was quite sore after the first long day of driving, but it got much better after that.

The roads were quite icy most of the trip, especially driving through Oregon and Washington. The low temperature we encountered was -14°F, somewhere near Mount Shasta. We did not get out of the car to test it (it was even colder on the return trip). The second day was cloudy and overcast, perfect for waterfalling and I had plans to make some stops on the way up to Canada. We did not drive through Spokane as we usually do, but instead drove up Highway 213 North. That highway was particularly bad for driving, and thus quite slow going.

So finally, way out in the middle of nowhere land, we arrived at Chamokane Falls, which I have never been to before (mostly because it is way out in the middle of nowhere land). There was a lot of snow and I did not want to get stuck way out here where no one would find us for a couple months, so we hiked down the last part of the road to the falls. Along the way, we encountered a large splotch of blood in the snow. It was a very big splotch. Human? Animal? Sasquatch? I suppose it was an animal, I would guess a deer that was shot, but who knows. We got to the falls without further incident. Plumb indicates in his book that this waterfall is 25 to 35 feet high, but I only found this small 13 foot waterfall. It was pretty yes, but still disappointing. I did not have proper maps with me, and I was not positive about the waterfall location. In fact, I was so sure the waterfall should be bigger than this, that I looked around trying to find another bigger one. Much to the chagrin of my children, I went much further upstream trying to locate another waterfall. But alas, there was no other. This was it. How Plumb could think this was 25 feet high is a mystery to me, but I suppose if you included the lower small cascade, it would be 20 ft. high.

Ah well, onto the next one. We did make one more stop on the way at Douglas Falls in Colville but it was so late and getting dark so that was all we could do. We arrived in Canada after dark, my back was still intact, and my mom had her specialty lasagna dinner on the table just waiting for us. Sweet.

First stop on our trip to Canada for Christmas vacation: Palouse Falls in eastern Washington. Nothing really special about this photo. The light was not great when we arrived, and so I did not take much time here and I did not seek out great compositions of the waterfall. I already have some really good shots of this waterfall with amazing light, so mainly I just wanted to come here to see this 186 ft high beauty again. It is only about 20 miles out of our way on our trip to BC.

Our trip to Canada this year started out with a bang. A bang of a winter storm, I mean. Usually we would travel up I-5 through the Mt. Shasta area and then through central Oregon. However, this year our trip co-incided with a whopper of a winter storm coming through northern California. The Shasta area was forecast to receive 13 feet of snow over a 3 day period, and we would be traveling right through it. Yes I did say 13 feet! I am not sure how much they actually received, but I know the Tahoe area got about 8 feet over that same weekend. I figured I-5 would be closed for sure and it would be pointless or suicide to attempt to drive up there that weekend. I decided on an alternate route, driving through Reno NV instead. It was only about 70 miles longer, but actually it probably took the exact same amount of time to travel this route then it would to go the other way due to the conditions. The only difficult spot would be traveling over the Donner Summit on the I-80, but we did receive a bit of help from God as well, as He delayed the storm hitting the Tahoe area (just for us, I am sure).

The storm did not start to barrage the Tahoe area until Friday afternoon, though it was scheduled to start much earlier Friday morning. We got up at 2AM on Saturday morning, I checked the road conditions, and we headed out. There was chain control over I-80 as expected, but we had no troubles making it over the Donner pass with our four wheel drive vehicle. There was lots of snow to be sure, but the sailing was smooth as silver. Yet we found out later, only a few hours after we passed, they closed the I-80 for the rest of that day. If that storm had started on time as scheduled, we would not have made it through.

The rest of that day was only slightly eventful, and it did involve driving through a sand storm in eastern Oregon. I must say, I have never experienced anything like that before. My wife Tara was driving at the time, and visibility was extremely low. It was interesting to say the least, but we made it through, driving through five states that day before stopping to rest at Richland WA for the night. Order of business in Richland is always to hit Chuck E Cheese for dinner. Not my choice of course. Not my wife’s choice. I guess you can figure out who picks dinner in our family when we are in Richland WA.

The next morning we drive through eastern Washington and on up to British Columbia. It is a much shorter day, and we have time to take it easy. For my wife, that means stopping to shop in Spokane. For me, it means stopping at Palouse Falls. The weather forecast called for cloudy skies, but it was rather sunny when we arrived. We walked around the park a bit, and finally the clouds came in slightly to cover the sun somewhat, allowing me to get at least a halfway decent shot of this amazing waterfall. Ok, Leon is happy. Now let’s get to Spokane to make Tara happy as well. It was a good start to our trip.