A Presidential Adventure – Part 1: Waterfalls & Movie Rentals

Another three day weekend, another flight to Portland booked! A flight that landed at 12:20am, but a flight nonetheless (even better since it was $80).

This rendition of three-day-weekend-PNW-adventures would be centered around backpacking in Crater Lake National Park over President’s Day weekend in February – new national park for me, and my first time backpacking!! But naturally the adventure couldn’t start without some good ol’ fashioned waterfall chasing.

Another morning waking up with the backyard chickens in Portland (best AirBnB ever!), and a quick trip through the Chick-fil-a drive-thru (it’s that damn Polynesian sauce addiction), and Eric and I headed south to chase waterfalls.

Silver Falls State Park was the chosen waterfall hunting grounds. Here there is the Trail of Ten Falls, which as the name suggests, has ten waterfalls (including a few you walk behind!). We wouldn’t do the whole loop, but by stringing together Canyon, Winter, and Rim Trails, we ticked off seven of the waterfalls – South Falls, Lower South Falls, Lower North Falls, Double Falls, Drake Falls, Middle North Falls, and Winter Falls.

(I only had my iPhone for the trip, so I’m not entirely happy with my photos, sadly)

The Rocky Mountains are a very brown and dry place most of the year, but especially winter. Therefore, I’m fascinated by the fact some places actually have green grass in winter, and just lots of lush, green things to begin with!

My Garmin recorded the hike as 8 miles (not entirely sure that is accurate), and I think it was one of my favorite ones I have ever done.

Up next was journeying over to Bend to meet more of the adventure crew and to reminisce in America’s last Blockbuster. We grabbed a quick lunch at the Gingerbread House to tie us over until coffee at Sisters Coffee Company. All the way I marveled at the mountains, usually shouting something about volcanoes like a 5 year old.

The waterfalls and volcanoes were great, but can they really beat the last Blockbuster Video rental store?! Wellllll… actually they can. But it was still very awesome to relive the late 1990s! I promptly found my favorite video I’d rent in 2002, The Fast and Furious and had to remind myself it was 2022. Surprisingly, it was actually really busy. People apparently still use DVDs! Take that, streaming services!

By now John and Dave arrived, and we indecisively took to not figuring out where to eat dinner. Luckily my friend came through on a Facebook post I had made about Blockbuster, and recommended Don Gabino’s Mexican Grill and we headed there.

Now it was just time to drive up to a camping spot and hopefully get to sleep. I was hitting the wall fast with my super late night and then early wake up. But of course, first the boys had to go get their trucks stuck, ha! Who needs sleep?!