Waterfalls & Wine

Our Willamette destination was Silver Falls State Park (approx. 100 km's south of Portland) which is known for their Trail of Ten Falls, an 11 km hike that included 10 different waterfalls. It was a very enjoyable hike which would probably be even more spectacular during the run-off in the spring. It didn't quite qualify however for our Top 10 hikes which we discussed along the way.

At the top of our list would be:

Angel's Landing in Zion National Park, Utah & Crypt Lake in Waterton, Alberta.

After that in no particular order would be:

- Joffrey Lakes, Pemberton, B.C.

- Bryce Canyon, Utah

- Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, Big Island

- Na Pali Coast / Hanakapiai Falls, Kauai

- Waimea Canyon, Kauai

- Mussolini House trail, Rhodes, Greece

- Oia to Fira cliff hike, Santorini, Greece

- Hike to monastery and seaside cove, Crete, Greece

- Plain of Six Glaciers / Lake Agnes, Lake Louise, Alberta

OK, if you are counting that is 11, so the list needs a little work but we are not done yet.

After Silver Falls we remained in the Willamette Valley to taste some of their world class Pinot Noir's. Acutally, Rhonda did most of the tasting and I was the designated driver (for a change!). Cristom, Sokol-Blosser (Evolution) and Bergstrom were the favourites. During the drive we came across hundreds of acres of christmas tree farms (Noble Fir) which were perfectly manicured. Locals told us that 75% were exported to other states, including Arizona where they were being sold for $100 each.......a very lucrative business if you can wait 7 years for your investment to mature.

From there we headed to Cannon Beach (NW Oregon, 100 km's west of Portland) where we re-started the beautiful coast views, including Haystack Rock which rises 235 feet from beside the shore. From there we drove south to Tillamook and visited their famous cheese factory, a co-op owned by the local milk producers.......110 families who deliver 1.7M gallons of milk per day to produce 168K pounds of cheese every day. They have over 1 million visitors a year who probably consume a portion of that with their free tastings but we did stock up our fridge with some of our favourites.

The next day we did a short walk out to Cape Mears and a tour of the lighthouse followed by a much longer hike today to Cape Lookout (8 km's) and a couple of geocache finds later in the day along the beach at Netarts Bay where we have been staying for a few days.

Looks like rain for the couple of days so we will start driving slowly down the coast.