We’re coming to the end of our stay here, so answers to the question “What do you want to do today?” are getting harder to find. When Deb asked me that today, I told her I wanted to go walking. She found a trail in “The Creaky Knee Hiking Guide” at Tamawanas Falls. Our Golden Age national pass would cover parking at the trail head. We decided to get there a little indirectly by going through the town of Dufur and then west through the Mt. Hood national forest.
Dufur is a town that grew up around dry land wheat farming. The town was having its summer Threshing Bee, so there were lots of people in town. The Bee includes a parade; an arts market; lots of antique cars and farm machinery; and a quilt competition. Photos at https://www.facebook.com/dufurthreshingbee.
While we only drove through and didn’t stop, we might go back to see Dufur’s two or three well known buildings, like Kramer’s Market and the Balch Hotel. Fifteenmile Creek flows through the town and proceeds west. Its tributaries roughly parallel Dufur Valley Road, along which we proceeded. This road is closed during winter; the valley with its views of Mt. Hood is absolutely beautiful. Nearly through the forest, we changed to NF-44 and then intersected with OR-35. North a mile or so and we got to the Tamanawas trailhead.
We got our kit together (camera/ binocular harness, backpack with water, Deb’s walking sticks) and proceeded. It’s a typical mountain stream coming down from the mountain. For the first mile or so, the trail was narrow, but easy enough. Don’t slip, as there’s no shoulder and the descent is straight down through trees and rocks! This is a busy trail, so we constantly had to wait for people to pass us one direction or another. We crossed two log bridges, first over the E. Fork of the Mt Hood river, then over Cold Spring creek. After a while, the trail got very rocky and very steep. Lots of scree from previous rock falls/ slides. Passable for young goats, but too much for us old geezers. We turned around before we actually got to the falls.
Getting back to the car, we hit another bucket list place: Big Jim’s Hamburgers on the east side of The Dalles. Darn good burger, thin buns and we didn’t run out of bun before we finished the goodies inside!
