Leon Turnbull Photography

This past weekend was a pretty cool one for us. My wife and I went whale watching in San Francisco. More on that later. First though, we went to Boulder Creek Falls up at Whiskeytown Natl. Rec. Area, in Redding. The original plan was that my wife would drive the kids up to the grandparents (in Red Bluff) on Thursday, then drive back down to pick me up at home, and then head off to SF from there. Then I had a wild and crazy thought. What if I went up to Red Bluff as well, and my wife and I go hiking to a waterfall on Friday morning before going down to SF. She always says she never gets to go hiking with me, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so sans kids. She liked that new plan. But then I broke this dandy little bit of tidings to her: we would have to get up at 4:45AM, in order to get up to the park and start hiking early enough to make it to the waterfall by around sunrise. A necessary thing if one is going to get photos of the waterfall in good light, which is what I wanted to do. Now my wife is NOT a morning person. She is about as far from a morning person as one can get. And she objected. And she protested. And she balked. But she did not revolt. In the end, she consented to get up that early to go with me. And to her great credit, she did not complain once on Friday upon waking up or during the hike. Indeed, we had a fabulous morning hiking to the waterfall and back, and didn’t see anyone else all morning. After the hike I asked her if she thought it was worth it to get up so early and get out and enjoy the glorious nature without anyone else around. She answered “absolutely”. But it didn’t really sound too convincing. We’ll see about next time.

Now Boulder Creek Falls is really a nice waterfall, dropping in three separate cascades totaling 96 ft. in height. This lower section is the largest, 46 ft. high. It is not a particularly photogenic waterfall, however. There are loads of branches and tree limbs and logs all over the place, preventing a clear view of the falls. I was hoping that somehow, I would be able to find a great, unobstructed, composition of the falls. But that is just impossible here. Nonetheless, it is still a very lovely waterfall to visit.