Christmas Day. The family was up at my mother-in-law’s place for the festivities. These days that means everyone sleeps in til noon before opening presents. It is especially hard getting my daughter out of bed. The problem: I wanted to take Journey on a hike in the afternoon. Normally I would go on the 26th or something and take it easy on Christmas Day. That would not work this year, however. A storm was on its way and it was going to rain every day for the rest of the week. The 25th was the only possible day to hike. Somehow I got my daughter out of bed. I bribed her with coffee from Starbucks. (why is Starbucks open on Christmas Day anyway?) We opened all our presents and were finished by 12:30PM. It was a Christmas miracle.
I’m not so sure Journey even wanted to go on a hike. She got a lot of cool presents which she was really happy about and just wanted to play with them all morning. Once we got to the trail though she was excited about the hike. Of course she was.
I have never been to this waterfall in Red Bluff before although I have known about it for some time. It is dry most of the year so the conditions need to be just right but we had quite a bit of rain recently. I was pretty sure it would be flowing and it seemed like a perfect day to try it.
There was water out-flowing from Hog Lake and quite a bit of it. Another Christmas miracle. The Madman was happy. Journey was happy. She got to be off leash for the entire hike. We saw no one else around (except for one other couple). There were bugs on the beginning section near the lake. Why were there bugs? It is winter! I thought it was a bit strange, it must be horrible here in summer.
It is an easy trail down to the waterfall. At the end the trail is a bit rougher and hard to follow but it’s not bad. Journey had no troubles. Once at the waterfall it is a bit dicey. You cannot see the waterfall unless you get right to the edge of the cliff but that is suicide. The cliff seemed very unstable. I did not want to get too close to it and I kept Journey well back from it as well. Fortunately there is a big rock that you can climb up and get a better perspective looking down on the falls. Journey waited patiently as usual while I climbed up to take photos. Turtle Creek Falls is 30 ft. high exactly. It is a pretty little waterfall in a very unlikely location. We had a wonderful Christmas Day hike in Red Bluff.
