Leon Turnbull Photography

What better waterfall photo to post on Valentine’s Day than Love’s Falls? I was up here in Sierra City a few weeks ago, and hiked a half mile through the snow to reach the falls. I had snowshoes with me, but in my great wisdom, I decided to leave them in the car and hike on foot. The snow was hard enough, but snowshoes probably would have made things a bit easier. I sank through a few times on the hike. It is a bit difficult to see with all the snow on it, but if you look closely, you can see that the big rock to the left is heart shaped. Pretty neat. I wouldn’t have known that had a friend not pointed it out to me. I was snow-blind, I guess. I used to think this waterfall was named after someone whose name was “Love”. I really have no idea where I got that. A drug-induced hallucination perhaps. No, actually I thought I had read it somewhere, but I have no clue where. What the culprit could have been is that darn apostrophe in the name: “Love’s”. That is what probably made me initially think it was named after someone. Why would there be an apostrophe otherwise? Indeed, I have seen this waterfall spelled before without an apostrophe. Anyway, I now believe the name actually comes from the heart shaped rock. Makes more sense, no?