Adventures!

Q: Is there anything better than a piping hot cup of tea beside a roaring waterfall?
A: No. No there is not.

Yesterday self and boyfriend packed a thermos of English breakfast, a bag of tortilla chips, and a bowl of raspberries and hit the road, with the vague idea of dithering away an afternoon in Champoeg Park. The road itself, with its wide open vistas and clusters of happy cows and hop farms, berry farms, orchards, nurseries, and fallow fields seeded with retina scorching swaths of California Poppies, proved to be so captivating that we just kept going, detouring through Butteville and along the Willamette river, stopping at a gas station for a hot dog and a road map, which led us, eventually, to Silver Falls. After hiking down to the North falls, we clambered/slid down a rocky little trail and bummed around on the river bed for a bit, then clambered back up a ways and perched on a sunny outcropping just above the plunge pool. With the late afternoon sun dappling the rockface and the mist from the falls drifting onto our faces, sharing a little metal cup of still steaming black tea, it was about as perfect as life gets. Too bad neither of us had a camera...then again, sometimes a picture just can't do justice to the image it was meant to capture.