Waterfall Wander

Today I spent about fours hours at the local state park. This time I actually got as far down as the lower waterfalls there. I have been before with that intent and then got distracted photographing other things along the way and not making it.'

After a lot of recent rain and some massive thunderstorms last night the river was running wildly with brown water as it washed the a little more of the mountain off to the valley below.

First I did the falls just beyond the weir off the lake. After taking many shots here with both my wide and telephoto lenses I moved on to new ground for me. What could only be loosly be called a path or trail anyway soon becomes more of a clamber down a series of rocky gullies. When you spend more time climbing down by sliding down rocks on your butt so you dnt slip then I guess its not really a trail any more.

I got down to the much larger sets of falls and started to setup the tripod only to find it start to rain... The other day I ordered a rain sleeve for my dslr... a great day to try it out! Except it hasnt been delivered yet. Recently I have taken a lot of shots under the trees using an umbrella to shield the camera, and myself I suppose, from the rain... The umbrella was in the SUV about 2 miles away. Today as it was sunny I was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. So I setup the tripod and got some shots from under the trees until the canopy got full up with rain and decided to share some with me. I love the smell of water in the forest... however, I do not smell so good when already dirty jeans and t-shirt get a bit of a soak in same water...

Knowing there was no way I could back up the rocks I had come down I headed further along to where you can get a trail up to where the rocky outcrop viewpoint is and from there I trudged back round that trail to the car... by which time it was sunny again...

The shots I got from the lower falls werent from the angles I would have liked, so I guess I'll be going back soon. Todays blip is from the small upper falls, I think I have blipped those before at the end of the winter in the snow.

A few more from today on Picasa.