Silver Falls State Park - Oregon

June 8, 2023

This is one of my favorite state parks. If you love falls, this is waterfall bliss. The most popular thing to do is hike the Trail of Ten Falls which brings you past 10 waterfalls. Including the short side trails, it is about 7.5 miles and takes you on trails behind four of the falls which is really cool but makes me a teensy bit claustrophobic. I had to duck under the overhanging rocks when going behind South Falls. The trail gets rather crowded in the summer, so I showed up early in the day. Drake Falls is the shortest of the falls but appropriately there was a Merganser drake diving in the pool at the bottom of the falls. It was cool to see how deep he could swim. I am not sure if he found any breakfast but after he came to the surface, he floated downstream. Along the hike there were lots of berry bushes (huckle, salmon, black, thimble and salal) but none were ripe yet. This hike was a good test for my injured calf muscle. It started to let me know it was still there about 5 miles in but never caused any serious pain. I am considering today a victory over the pulled muscle.