I realized that most of the hikes on my list now are very difficult ones. I have done pretty much all the easy ones. All that is left are ones with cliffs, steep rocky terrain, river crossings, etc. to negotiate. Our new puppy Journey cannot do these types of hikes.
Yet I want to take Journey on many hikes to waterfalls in the future (or even without waterfalls). So I have started making a second list now. Hikes that I have done before which I know are easy enough for her to do. I will be revisiting waterfalls that I have seen before once or maybe multiple times. At the same time (not exactly the same time – ha ha) I will also be continuing the hikes by myself which are more difficult. Ch-ch-changes are in the air for me.
First on the list: American Canyon Creek Falls. I chose this one first very intentionally as I will explain shortly. It is a fairly easy hike down the trail until you get to the waterfall. There are ticks and poison oak, but in November, there is none of that. Good thing I chose November for this one, otherwise she would have picked up a bunch of the little beasts (although she still did manage to get a couple of them on her – ugh). Of course the creek is also low in November and it has not rained much yet, but I figured it would still be all right.
The first new thing I learned about Journey: She doesn’t care about horse poop or bear poop, only dog poop. There was plenty of all three on the trail and she completely ignored the first two. The second thing is this: she is quite scared of going down steep rocky terrain. Of course she has not ever done this before and hopefully she will get a lot better with it. The last part down to the creek is quite steep and she would not go down. She would also not let me carry her. She did manage to get down one steep part but then could not get back up afterwards so I had to lift her back up. Anyway there is no way she could get down to the creek level. This is what I suspected would happen and this is the big reason why I came here. I wanted to see how she would do, while waiting for me to take my photos. I tied her up in a safe spot and then went down to the creek, crossed it, and took photos. She could see me the entire time and she sat down and waited for me with perfect patience! She was absolutely very awesome. I was proud of her. I took my photos quickly and went back up to her.
You will notice that there is now a big new rock embedded in the middle of the waterfall. Well this is a big change. Ugh. This definitely has ruined the prior character that this waterfall once had but it creates a new character for it. Is it better or worse? Well I definitely liked the old character much better, but I admit it is still interesting and I think at higher flows it will even be more interesting.
We hiked back up the trail to the car and went home. I don’t even think Journey was very tired. She wanted to play fetch with mom as soon as we got back home (after she ate her hamburger, of course).
