Silver Falls State Park
Silver Falls is a beautiful state park that's at the very west edge of the Cascade Mountains. It is one of the best-maintained parks I've ever seen. It's in the middle of nowhere and has no cell service (unless you have AT&T) and no Internet service (except at South Lodge). There are no phones in any of the public areas, so if there is an emergency, you're pretty much out of luck unless you can find a ranger. We were quickly reminded how much we rely on Internet service to get weather reports and maps; as well as for our photography apps. It seems a little strange to be so out-of-touch. Today, we had to leave the park and drive 12 miles to Sublimity just to mail our cards.
This afternoon, we hiked to the bottom of South Falls. This is the main visitor area, and we had lots of company. Even in the late afternoon, the lighting was very harsh. The contrast between light and dark was far beyond what our cameras could handle--even using HDR. It's not often we hope for overcast skies, but it's what we needed to shoot the falls down in the canyon. We stopped at South Falls Lodge on the way back to the car for our ice cream reward for hiking out of the canyon.
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