{"id":2698,"date":"2008-07-07T20:45:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T20:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2019-03-21T18:04:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T18:04:30","slug":"alsea-falls-recreation-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/2008\/07\/07\/alsea-falls-recreation-area\/","title":{"rendered":"Alsea Falls Recreation Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Greg and I celebrated the 4th of July by hiking around the BLM-managed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blm.gov\/visit\/alsea-falls-recreation-site\">Alsea Falls Recreation Area<\/a> in the Coast Range. This was also a celebration of a different kind: my first hike in two months! The stress fracture in my right foot has healed enough for me to start off on some short easy hikes like this and I was absolutely thrilled to be tramping through the forest again! I never want to go two whole months without hiking again.<\/p>\n<p>We started off by visiting lovely Alsea Falls. Downstream from the falls you see in the photo below, the water slides down a rock face into a big green pool below. With the lower summer water flow, there is plenty of exposed rock surface next to the stream on which to stretch out and enjoy the scenery and have a picnic. The pool looks great for swimming, and in fact there were several women doing just that on Friday, although it didn\u2019t seem like a warm enough day for that.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cheryl_hill\/2642703724\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3116\/2642703724_1c6298811c.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We saw plenty of tiger lilies blooming in the area near Alsea Falls. Beautiful!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cheryl_hill\/2646421584\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3271\/2646421584_218076cbe3.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We saved the loop along the creek for later and headed over to Green Peak Falls. There\u2019s a section where the trail dumps you out on a gravel road for a short ways, and camped at the end of that road was a family who seemed to have brought everything but the kitchen sink. As we hiked by, they were setting up camp while they listened to rock music that blared from two four-foot-high speakers that were set up by their big old-school Suburban. (On the way back, the father announced proudly to us that he had forgotten the key to his kids\u2019 dirt bike and had just spent two hours hotwiring it.) I don\u2019t understand what people like that get out of the camping experience. They\u2019re clearly not out there to commune with nature.<\/p>\n<p>The trail to Green Peak Falls goes up and down through a lovely forest, paralleling the creek.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cheryl_hill\/2645593389\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3076\/2645593389_7295555eac.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The trail ends at the base of the waterfall. It\u2019s difficult to get good pictures from the shore because of the angle and the trees, but there were some large exposed rocks in the creek from where I took the photo below.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cheryl_hill\/2648043117\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3098\/2648043117_54e2face34.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also a nice pebbly beach just downstream from the waterfall where you can see a second little drop in the creek.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cheryl_hill\/2648042929\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3072\/2648042929_c3a99723f4.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Greg demonstrated how it\u2019s possible to get an even better shot by wading out into the creek.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cheryl_hill\/2648872842\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3081\/2648872842_df8e08fbae.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We headed back then, passing the McBee Park campground where we witnessed more camping insanity. A group of people with several RVs and vehicles were running a generator to power their electric chainsaw which was being used to cut up a very thick log, presumably so they could add to their already enormous pile of firewood.<\/p>\n<p>By the time we got back to the Alsea Falls area, it was getting late. We hadn\u2019t had dinner and wanted to go to the fireworks in Corvallis that night. So we didn\u2019t end up doing the loop. Another day, perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greg and I celebrated the 4th of July by hiking around the BLM-managed Alsea Falls Recreation Area in the Coast<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/2008\/07\/07\/alsea-falls-recreation-area\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Alsea Falls Recreation Area<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699,"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}