PLEASANT PHEASANT?
We arrived in Tillamook in good time. The weather was extremely pleasant. Indeed, the beach was on the chilly side. I actually wanted my jacket. My wife thought I was lame to want my jacket, but I was cold while we sat on the beach and watched our kids play. She is convinced that I must be from Mexico, not Canada, because I am always so cold. Meanwhile, it was 110 degrees back in northern California. Ha! (sorry).
After play time on the beach, we got to the campground and started to put up the tent. Our tent is a large and complicated affair, and we had a devil of a time putting on the fly. Well, forget the stupid fly anyway. There was no rain in the forecast. So I started to make dinner, then realized I forgot the hot dogs back at home. Doh! Tara even left me a big note on the fridge of what I needed to bring, and hot dogs was the first thing on the list. Double Doh! Plan B was spaghetti so let’s do that instead. That is when the valve on the propane canister broke, filling up the immediate vicinity with propane smell. Geepers, that has never happened before. Triple doh! Time to get new camping cookware, I think. Fortunately, I had a backup canister and it did not break, so I was able to muster up some spaghetti for everyone to eat.
The next morning I got up bright and early to go find some waterfalls. The rest of the family was not much into getting up at the crack of dawn, so I left them all sleeping. My first stop was Niagara Falls (pictured here) and Pheasant Creek Falls. It was extremely humid and muggy but the hike is very easy, and fortunately the mosquitoes were still sleeping. These two waterfalls are side by side and both of them are about 115 ft. high, but there has been a lot of confusion about which of the two is the one called Niagara. After much investigation and consternation, I do believe that this one is called Niagara Falls, and the other is Pheasant Creek Falls, even though this is the one that is on Pheasant Creek. Confused? I am still not really convinced, but whatever the name, I was quite disappointed in the flow of these two waterfalls. I was really expecting a lot more umph out of them because the area had seen quite a bit of rain this spring, and yet these two were barely on the flow-o-meter. Nonetheless, it is certainly a beautiful waterfall, a marvelous plunge of 115 ft.
I spent a bit more time here than I wanted to, but eventually retreated back to the car, and then on to see a couple more waterfalls before heading back. As I drove back to the campground, I got a text from my wife saying that it was raining there! There was no rain where I was, but apparently it was spitting big time at the campground. It was all that dang humidity. We should have put on that stupid fly after all, an error that I rectified when I got back. Things got a wee bit on the wet side in the tent that morning.