Chush Falls (pronounced “shoosh”) is actually nestled right up against the Sisters Mountains and Broken Top. The drive to get to this trailhead was about an hour from Tam McArthur Rim, all over gravel roads. Oh, and it was absolutely STUNNING. Honestly, even if you don’t do this hike, the drive is still well worth the effort. This was already bringing me closer to these mountains than I had yet been. Looking up at the snowy slopes, I could see every little rock and wisp of cloud clearly and was able to even capture some of this with my camera. And, miraculously, the weather really was clearer over here.
This many mountains is just insane to me. Prior to this trip, this was not what I pictured when I thought of Oregon. This was downright RUGGED! And it was gorgeous. The three mountains in closest proximity to Black Butte, and to one another are the Three Sisters for which this area is named: Middle Sister, North Sister, and South Sister. All three of these mountains are sleeping volcanoes. The North and Middle Sister last erupted ~14,000 years ago and scientists think it’s unlikely that they’ll ever erupt again. However, the South Sister erupted as recently as 2,000 years ago, and could feasibly erupt again. There have been sporadic reports of volcanic rumblings deep within South Sister since 1866, and there have been a couple of minor scares since the late 1980s. Nothing has ever happened, but there is a big pot of magma a few miles beneath the peak of South Sister. Did I mention that South Sister is also the easiest of these mountains to climb? Sign me up for that!! 😵
Making our way out of the Cascades, winding through these forests was very cool, but to really understand why this region is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous, you have to zoom out. I don’t know what I expected to find out here, but it sure as hell was not a bunch of majestic snow-capped mountains! I had heard of the “3 Sisters” mountains before, but I had no idea just how large they loom over this area. Also, they’re not alone. There are a whole bunch of other peaks around them that make Central Oregon feel like a high-altitude fortress. THIS is where the Wild West still exists. Eastern Oregon/Washington, Northern Nevada, Idaho, Montana… there’s a whole lot of empty space out here. As somebody who has never lived west of the Mississippi River, it kind of blows my mind that all of this exists in the same country I live in. In the next 2 articles, we are going to get out into these mountains, so I am not going to explain much more of this right now. For now, the following gallery will have to be as mysterious to you as it was to me when I first arrived here.
I’m going to do something a little different today. I love piecing together articles on street art wherever I can. It’s a great way to get to know a place! I had a hunch that Portland was going to have some really cool street art, but to my surprise and slight disappointment, I didn’t find quite the density of murals that I would have needed to merit a full article.
However, as I walked around the city, I began to notice that nearly half of all public surfaces that I walked past—be they street signs, telephone poles, or brick walls—were absolutely PLASTERED in stickers. And I’m not talking about some garden-variety smiley face stickers. Each of these was custom-made, artistic, and—for the most part—completely outrageous. Seriously, viewer discretion is advised. This collection of stickers would make my childhood pastor WEEP!
Portland is the southernmost major city in the Pacific Northwest, and, driving northward from Sacramento, it’s the next major slice of civilization you’ll find on the West coast. Although, I should clarify that Portland is not actually coastal. It is a “port city” because it sits at the convergence of two major rivers that are connected to the Pacific Ocean: the Willamette and Columbia rivers. It’s about a 1.5 hour drive to the Pacific coast, which leads me to another thing that I want to highlight about Portland: it’s proximity to nature. This is a common theme among cities in the Pacific Northwest—including Seattle and Vancouver. All of these places are great gateways to some incredible natural beauty. And Portland is no exception. With Portland as your “home base,” you can (for example) do day trips to 1) surf, 2) snowboard, 3) hike, 4) rock climb, and 5) sail on 5 back-to-back days. For the “outdoorsy” among us, it’s a great place to be.
You can’t actually drive all the way out to Tomales Point. There’s a parking lot and a trailhead next to the historic Pierce Ranch. From there, it’s a 9.4-mile round trip hike to get all the way out to the tip and back. Over the course of this route, there’s a total elevation gain of 1,177 feet. Honestly, it’s a pretty easy hike. I did this when I was fresh off a particularly rough COVID infection, still trying to get my mojo back, so this should give you no pause.
Point Reyes National Seashore is a prominent peninsula/cape land formation that juts out of the California coast just north of San Francisco, in Marin County. Bounded by Bolinas Lagoon on the south and Tomales Bay on the north, it’s well known as a beautiful Northern California nature destination. There’s some mildly interesting history here, but mostly it’s just gorgeous. And to raise the geological stakes a bit, the San Andreas Fault is what separates this area from mainland California. That will show up in the pictures I have coming up for you in some cool ways.
Before we head out of the city and into some nature, we’re going to take one last photo-walk through a very specific slice of San Francisco: Haight-Ashbury. Today it would be easy to pass through this area and think it’s just a pretty neighborhood, but there is actually some really cool history here from the not-so-distant past. There was a time when Haight-Ashbury was the epicenter and headquarters of a national zeitgeist whose iconic status endures to this day.
I’m talking about the Summer of Love.
I have been doing this blog for like 8 years now, so I am really only just now arriving at the point where I am running out of things to cover in certain cities. My first articles on San Fran were relatively early in the lifespan of this site, so I would probably do things differently if I were to write about those same things now, but the fact remains that—for the time being—there’s a lot that has already been “checked off the list” here. In other cities that might deter me from taking as many photos or visiting as often, but not here. In San Fransisco, I don’t need an angle. I am happy just to exist here, and walking around it always feels like I shame to leave my camera behind.
San Francisco is not a flat city. The word “hilly” doesn’t quite cover it. So it should come as no surprise that there are lots of interesting staircases (600+) scattered throughout the city, helping pedestrians scale the city’s steepest nooks and crannies. This much is to be expected. But what I did not expect was that many of these staircases have been turned into hidden works of art. I’ve been to San Francisco a few times, and I have somehow never stumbled across even one of these before. And what you’re about to see isn’t even all of them! We’re going to start in the Richmond District, but then we’re going to head south and spend the rest of this article in the Sunset District.
