Leon Turnbull Photography

Too hot in the valley. Let’s head up into the mountains, I say to my son. Okay, he says reluctantly. As if he had a choice.

It is a short hike to this waterfall, if you have a four wheel drive. You can almost drive to it, but the road is quite rough, so we walked more than I expected to. I have not been to this falls before, but I’ve been wanting to go for quite awhile now, and it seemed a good one to do since I did not want to do much of a hike in the hot weather. The mosquitoes were out so we quickly lathered ourselves in juice. That kept them away for a short time, but they kept coming back to munch on us. I might need to get some better repellent.

We climbed up on an open rocky area in front of the falls where I took my photos. The mosquitoes were not at this spot, thanks to a little breeze. Good thing.

After this I suggested we climb to the top of the falls. I thought there might be more falls above this. I said to Jadon we will need to go around, it is too steep and cliffy right beside the waterfall. He said, what are you talking about. It is easier to go straight up. And so he did. I followed him up. He was right, of course, it was no problem to go straight up. We found a couple smaller cascades, then continued up to Crater Lake. Not the one in Oregon. Obviously.

I have never been to this lake before. I will be back. Probably within a week. What a marvelous and pretty lake, and the surrounding area is spectacular. We did not have enough time to explore it all, and that is why I need to come back here soon. You will see why later.

We proceeded to the outlet of the lake, where we found a family on the other side of the creek with a OHV. Did you cross that creek in your OHV, I asked one of the kids there. Yes, my dad did. He is coming back now. We watched as he crossed back through the stream. The water here was more than 2 feet in depth, possibly close to 3 feet. Another kid was in the backseat screaming in excitement. After he crossed, I said to him, I gotta get me one of those things. What fun!

There was a strong breeze at the outlet stream. It felt so darn nice and kept the mosquitoes away. I was thinking very strongly that I could just stay right there all night long with that awesome breeze. But alas, we had to hike back down to our car before it got dark.

Along the way we passed a campsite with a dog. The dog came out to greet us, and he was about the friendliest dog I’ve ever seen. Its entire body wagged, not just its tail. It gave new meaning to the term “wag the dog”. He followed us up the road for about a half mile, and had no intention of going back to its owners. I’m sure it would have followed us all the way to our car. I told the dog to “go back”, “go home”, “sit”, “stay”. Nothing doing. He kept following us. Finally I told Jadon to go on ahead, and I would walk back to the campsite with the dog. But he kept following Jadon up the road, and would not come with me. Finally I enticed it to come with me (with a bit of cold meat perhaps?). When we got back to the campsite, the owners were nowhere to be seen. I yelled out “hello!”. Where were they all? I waited for awhile, then I heard someone chopping wood and yelled out again “can you please call back your dog?”. No wonder the dog wanted so badly to come with us, having owners that did not care one iota about him or where he was. I think we should have let the dog follow us back to our car, and took it home with us. Yes, my wife would have really liked that. Seriously.