June 22 – Dark Hollow Falls

Another relatively easy hike to a waterfall close to the campground. The trail to Dark Hollow Falls is a 1.4 mile round trip that descends 400 vertical feet. Easy going in, tough going out. Even the guide book marked it as strenuous.

The path was nice a wide and fairly smooth but there are always stairs of some kind when you are descending that fast.

We haven’t had a mushroom picture in a while.

The pictures of the falls are lousy and are more of just a reminder to us. As it is called Dark Hollow is was a tough day with the sun blazing down causing very bright spots to contrast with the very dark shadows. I haven’t figured out what to do in this situation.

We really should be coming in the early morning (not happening) or the early evening but the forecast always seems to called for rain in the late afternoon.

The falls are about 70 feet tall in three main sections.

It was a good thing Jennie was wearing a bright shirt because even with it, she is hard to find in each of the pictures.

My brother requested this animation. The exposure is bad and looping point is not very good but it was a first try.

I climbed around trying to get different viewpoints.

Even Jennie did a bit of climbing.

We sat and had lunch here.

I noticed that you couldn’t see much of the upper section and it seemed like an easy climb.

It was so much better up close that I called down to Jennie. You can just barley see me as the shadow about 1/3 down form the top.

So she climbed up as well.

This trail is the most popular in the park and there was a constant supply of people but we did have it to ourselves for several long periods of time.

Then the invasion happened.

A summer camp for kids. I am not sure I would take them here. There were lots of slippery rocks where you could easily really hurt yourself and there were only 3 counsellors trying to keep track of all these kids.

This was our cue to head home.

On the road off of Skyline Drive to the campground we were surprised by a mama bear and her two cubs running across the road.  Unfortunately I couldn’t reach my SLR, which can take a picture almost instantly. After the point and shoot started up, the bears were in the woods and this is the best I got.

We also have a dashcam in the car but I had turned it off. The car was so hot when we got into it, I was afraid camera and the GPS would cook themselves if I tried to use them. From now on the SLR sit in the front seat.

It has been so hot inside the RV without any air conditioning that I dismantled one of the two dashboard fans, that we have never used.

I mounted it on a little pedestal so we could plug it into a 12 volt outlet. It makes a huge difference.

We will have to buy a proper one the next time we see one.