Leon Turnbull Photography

It was time to return to the Bay Area this weekend after the big storms. My wife joined Journey and myself because we would visit our daughter for lunch after our hike. It was going to be a good day.

The plan was to visit three waterfalls I have not seen before: Lower, Middle, and Upper Pensacola Falls. Thanks to friend Mike for telling me about these waterfalls. We arrived at the trailhead at sunrise. It is a residential neighborhood and the neighbor was watching me through the window as I got ready for the hike. Come on lady, it is a public trail and a public street. It is ok for us to be here. That is one excellent thing about Marin County. There are so many public open spaces for hiking, even right in residential areas.

The hike begins on a trail up a very steep incline. I was huffing in very short order. Journey had no such problem. Before long, the route leaves the nice trail and descends steeply to the creek. No more trails. It was a lot more difficult than I expected. It was brushy. It was not really that bad but it was enough that Journey decided she did not want to continue. There’s no trail this way, daddy. Let’s get back on the proper path! I encouraged her to keep going on the non-path and she followed me faithfully. There was poison oak. I tried to avoid touching it and I think I succeeded. Barely. I did not end up getting the itch when I got home. Whew. There were ticks. I plucked two or three off of my legs. The bad thing is that I knew if I had some on myself, that meant Journey would be getting quite a few as well. Should I turn back now? We were already too far committed on this hike. We had to keep going and deal with the ticks later.

We made it down to the creek and the middle falls, which was very lovely. There was not any good place for Journey to sit at any of these three waterfalls, so she just stood there while I took photos. She was very patient as always. We crossed the creek and climbed the steep slope to the upper falls, a smaller one but very pretty. From here we climbed up to the top of the ridge. Lo and behold, there was a trail! This trail is not on any of my maps but it was a pretty good one and looked to descend all the way back down to the neighborhood where we started. This would probably be a lot better than going back the way we came, through all the brush and ticks and oak. But first, we had to descend to the lower falls (off trail, again).

Lower Pensacola Falls is the biggest of the three waterfalls and is 40 ft. high (pictured here). It is a gorgeous waterfall, hidden away in an unlikely place. I went down and stood in the middle of the creek to take photos, while Journey waited patiently for me up on the steep slope with nowhere to sit.

We climbed back up the hill. When we got back to the trail I checked Journey over very thoroughly (so I thought). I plucked about 10 or so ticks off of her. I thought this would be the end of it. I did not see anything more on her. I must have gotten them all. I was pleased. The trail did go back to the neighborhood where we started and it was very easy. I should have gone up this way in the first place. It would have been a thousand times better. Well, now I know for next time. When we got back to my wife at the car we checked Journey over again, together. We must have plucked another 50 ticks off of her. They just kept appearing in her fur, a never ending nightmare. I was disheartened because there were so many. I did not think the hike was really that bad in terms of ticks but it was bad. No harm done. We got them all off of her but we still found a couple more once we got back home.

We had a good lunch with our daughter and drove home. It was a gorgeous morning in tick infested Marin County.

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