Great Afternoon Hike
I was looking to go out on a hike before the huge storm (supposedly 5 inches of rain) expected this weekend. At first I was thinking I would go out Friday morning, but the weather forecast was saying the rain would already be started by then. Not that I do not like hiking in the rain. I do, and I am still thinking of going out in the rain this weekend (or at least, immediately after the storm). But it is difficult to photograph in the rain, so I wanted to go out before it all started. So Thursday afternoon seemed like a good choice.
I took my son Jadon along with me. Usually, he doesn’t like hiking with me, but this time he said yes. Awesome. My plan was to go to my favorite little waterfall in the greater Sacramento area: American Canyon Creek Falls. It is a moderate 4 mile hike, easy enough for Jadon as well.
As we started hiking down the trail, I could tell the creek was flowing high. Much higher than expected. This was before the big storm, which means after this weekend it will be craziness down here. But with a higher creek flow, that meant the creek crossings would be rather interesting. There are three creek crossings on this hike. The first two are in mellow sections of water, and usually you can easily rock hop across. For myself, I was able to do it without getting my feet wet, but I had to be careful because the rocks were wet and slippery. But for Jadon, it was a lot more difficult. But all this was perfectly fine for him. He just splashed through the water in his boots. I tried to help him across on the rocks so he wouldn’t need to get his feet wet, but he thought it was more fun to just splash across. The little bum.
The last creek crossing is right at the base of the falls. In order to actually see the waterfall, you need to cross the creek. But the creek was rushing a lot faster here, and it was much too dangerous for Jadon to cross here. So he had to settle for just seeing the very bottom of the waterfall, which was a bit disappointing. He waited for me while I crossed the creek to take some photos. It was very dicey for me to cross as well, and I thought about it quite awhile before picking my spot to cross extremely carefully. I made it. There is really only one vantage point and composition to shoot this waterfall, and it is a difficult position in terms of placing the tripod, and then standing up on the side of a rock outcrop on slippery rocks. My legs were shaking as I stood there taking my photos, and hoping they would not buckle under me completely. I only took two photos. I had wanted to take a longer exposure, but after two photos, I had enough.
Meanwhile, Jadon was waiting for me on the other side and yelling at me while I was taking the photos. I could not tell what he was saying over the roar of the water. When I got back to him, he told me he heard Indians, and then he heard a mountain lion sneaking up on him. How he could hear anything above the loud sound of the creek is rather interesting (especially a mountain lion!). He is such a silly boy sometimes.