Highway 138

After a night in Grants Pass we drove to Roseburg and then east on Highway 138.  This is a beautiful area with more than 30 waterfalls that you can hike to.  We had the most wonderful campsite right along the river.

This is Watson Falls.  It is the third highest falls in Oregon.  Very impressive.  We decided to move on after one night due to the rain.  Decided that we had had enough rain and we looking for the sun.

Rogue River 44 miles, 4 days

On Monday we started on our 40 mile hike down the Rogue River in Oregon.  The first day we hiked 11 miles to the Black Bar Lodge.  Most of today's hike was up and down the cliffs.  We has sun on and off for most of the morning and showers in the afternoon

Tuesday we started out on our 14 mile hike to Marial Lodge.  Here is Andy filling my sipper filter from one of the streams entering the river.  Showers in the morning and rain in the afternoon.

Wednesday we had a shorter rest day.  We started out with a 2.5 mile hike to the Rogue River Lodge which has been turned into a museum of the history of the river.  The rest of the hike was only 4 miles to Paradise Lodge (our nicest lodge).  We had beautiful sun all day.

Thursday was our last day of hiking.  The pressure was that we had to do 12 miles and be at the take out point by 2pm....we made it. We woke up this morning to rain and had showers most of the day.  This is Flora Dell one of the stops along the way.  We crossed over 30 plus streams on the way down the river.  44 miles is long way in 4 days but it sure was beautiful.  The scenery was constantly changing.

Sierra City Area

This is a view of Sierra Buttes.  We are in the Sierra City area and there are probably 40 plus lakes in the area.

This is one of the Tamarak Lakes that we hiked to on Friday afternoon.

In the morning we kayaked two different lakes.  This one is Goose Lake.

Reilly loves the kayaking as well as the hiking.  The weather has been terrific.  Warm almost hot days and cool nights.  We are staying in a campground right on a rushing river and we are the one ones in the campground.

Rock Creek Hike

We left on Tuesday morning and drove to Wrightwood, CA.  We moved on on Wednesday to the Rock Creek area near Bishop CA.  We have been in this area 4 years ago and love the hiking.  This year did not disappoint us. 

This is the most beautiful hiking area we have been in outside of Canada.  There are many lakes and great views.

Andy and Reilly topping a hill above one of the lakes.

Mary Poppins with Audrey

Wednesday night we took Audrey to see Mary Poppins.  It was a great play with lots of action and color.  Very enjoyable.  She made it all the way through but it was a late night for a 4 year old.  She brought M & M's for granddaddy.

Highline Trail

Friday, we went to see the Tonto Creek Fish Hachery and then hiked the Highline Trail to the Horton Creek Springs again.  We thought that we had a difficult hike on Thursday, but this one is one of the hardest hikes we have ever done.  It was only 7.5 miles round trip, but went up and down some really steep rocky hills.  We did the 8 mile round trip hike in 4 hours but this one took us 5.5 hours. In the picture below Reilly can not figure out why it takes Andy so long to cross a log bridge on Tonto Creek.

Payson, AZ

Thursday was our 37th Anniversary and we drove to Payson to pick up our trailer from the Gick's storage yard.  We celebrated by hiking to Horton Springs up the Horton Creek Trail.  It was 4 miles straight up but well worth the effort.  The spring comes right out of the mountain.  We were encouraged to hike back down by the thunder and a few raindrops.