Written 2018
Day 1
Our adventure kicked off at around 9 am on Saturday morning, as we made our way down south. We made a quick stop in Eugene to fill up on gas, and pick up a couple subs to pack as lunches for the middle of our hiking adventures the next 2 days, before continuing down to see the covered bridges. This is where we would start our rock ‘tripod’ selfie shooting. It was a little rough going at first, but Norina really got good at positioning as the weekend progressed!
Lowell Covered Bridge (Oregon’s widest)
Office Covered Bridge (Oregon’s longest)
We were starting to get hungry now, so decided to find a place to eat in Westfir, where the Office Bridge was. It’s a pretty small town, but had a decent amount of options… we opted for a little place called Cedar Creek Cafe & BBQ, where their specialties were smoked meats! We decided to share a delicious Reuben sandwich and 3 sides of macaroni and cheese – they were a bit slow on the service, so threw in an extra one for us 🙂
From there, we made our way over to Salt Creek Falls, Oregon’s 2nd highest single drop waterfall! We just needed to walk a few hundred yards before we were able to see the beautiful waterfall, but we decided to go about a 1/2 mile further down to get down to the bottom of the falls. Unfortunately, because of a rockslide, we weren’t able to make our way all the way down…but was still able to get a much better and unobstructed view of the falls from where we got to.
Salt Creek Falls
After we made our way back to the top, we continued the trail in the other direction to check out Diamond Creek Falls. It was a 2.5 mile loop trail, but I forgot that, and thought it was an out and back. So we probably went about halfway to what seemed like the highest point of the loop…where we were able to see the falls from afar… they were nice, but nothing spectacular. As we made our way back down, we took a little side trail detour to check out the bottom of the falls. Aside from the mosquitoes, this was really nice, as we got a really nice view of the falls and freshened up with the nice cool water!
Diamond Creek Falls
After that, it was time to head over to Broken Arrow Campgrounds at Diamond Lake…we got there probably around 5:30-6…a little later than we hoped, but still had plenty of light to set everything up and get settled. Just as I had read…there were PLENTY of mosquitoes and little gnats all around us. We got our tent set up first, then walked around the area for a little firewood, as we started a small fire to try and ward the mosquitoes off. We grilled up a few burgers…and tried to eat outside, but the gnats were surrounding us, so we had to retreat into our tent to have our dinner.
Campsite
We finished up a little after 8, and decided to head over to the lake to check out sunset. Here’s where we (I) made the first mistake of the evening… we didn’t bring or even look at any sort of map, and just assumed which direction the lake was in. Also…we didn’t bring a flashlight for getting back. At least I had my phone on me though, so I just at least point us in the right direction….but this wasn’t always on a road…and we’d have to walk through other campsites and wooded areas to get there. But..we made it to the lake for sunset…success!!
Sunset at Diamond Lake
On our way back, we found a spot with a lot of good pieces of wood we could use for our fire later that night…and carried them the rest of the way back. This is where the night got a little bit long… We started heading up the road to where we thought would lead us back to our campsite… but after a few hundred yards… I had us turn back around, as I thought that wasn’t the right direction. So we went back through the woods…and through some of the campsites we originally went through. It was getting pretty dark now though, and even though we felt like we knew where we were going…we were also taking some shortcuts…which would be our downfall as they would lead us to areas we definitely weren’t familiar with…especially in the dark.
Well, after at least an hour of trying to find our way back, I was finally able to get enough service on my phone to pull up a map, and we eventually made our way back to our campsite! We were much too tired to kick up the fire again and make s’mores though, so decided to juts call it a night and get a good night’s rest for our adventure in the morning. Overall, a great day….with just a little hiccup at the end!
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The Dating Life of Norina and Jonathan 