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An Interlude

We’ve been doing a lot around the house in Depoe Bay, and Cy and Amanda have been doing a WHOLE lot, so around mid-July we all took a break. Amanda and Cy headed to Redmond for a friend’s wedding, and we went to an Oregon state park east of Salem that folks said was really something to see.


Oregon grapes near the entrance to Silver Falls Park

It’s called Silver Falls, and though it’s not a huge park, there are 10 different waterfalls within its boundaries. We came in from the south and the south entrance to the Ten Falls Trail is, to say the least, a little busy. Far busier than we expected on a Monday morning. The parking lot was close to full and there were people everywhere. It wasn’t terrible weather, but it was gray and cool, but that didn’t stop the visitors, I guess.

We had a picnic lunch—surprisingly, we found an empty picnic table—and then we headed down the Canyon Trail which leads to the Ten Falls Trail. It was kind of crazy—more like a line into a New York subway station than most wilderness trails. We followed it down, surrounded by other hikers, until we could see South Falls in the distance. Then we decided to head back up; it was just too crowded to be enjoyable.


South Falls, near the start
 of the Ten Falls trail

At the head of the trail, we saw another trail leading off to the left. No one was on it. We walked along it for quite a while, running into two people who asked us if they were on the right trail to get back to the parking area. They were, and they were happy to hear it. Other than that we didn’t see anyone during our hike, which was lovely, along the canyon’s rim. We did hear some waterfalls, but we didn’t see any. However, we saw lots of nice big pine trees and we could hear the birds, which would not have been possible on the Busiest Trail Ever where we had started.


Some pretty digitalis along
the trail in Silver Falls State Park

We came back into what they call the historic district of the park. There were several buildings built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, including a restaurant and a “Nature Store.” We went in the Nature Store; I wanted some postcards, and I was also looking for a map of the park—we had not found one yet. The person at the cash register told me they were out of park maps, but a nice person in line gave me one, and we saw there was another section with a parking lot and trailheads at the north end of the park. Cy had told us that Silver Falls might have been a national park, although it is not as large as many of them, the natural wonders of all the falls made it up for contention, but Oregon would not give up control of the park. So now it is a state park that is as busy as some of the most popular national parks.


Silver Falls Park Nature Store, built by the CCC

We headed up there and on the way saw the North Falls from a wayside, so that made two waterfalls out of ten. At the trailheads, we took a short walk into the towering woods, which were not too crowded at all, although there were some other people around. Then we headed out of the park and toward Salem, by way of Silverton, the “city of falls.” It was a nice little town that reminded me a bit of Vevay, Indiana.


North Falls

Then we stopped for dinner in Salem at one of the best Mexican restaurants I’ve ever eaten at; it’s been a favorite of my niece and nephew-in-law since they moved to Salem some years ago. It’s called La Vida Caterina, and we both had seafood with a Mexican flair. Mike ordered fish tacos and I had crab-and-shrimp-stuffed enchiladas. Delicious. One funny thing, we saw our waitress head out the back door and walk over to the Chinese restaurant across the street. She came back with several Styrofoam containers—apparently the kitchen staff was having Chinese for dinner that evening.

On to the Kerby household in south Salem, where we had a delicious dessert, marionberry cobbler, that they had bought at the Willamette Pie Company, which we had passed on the road from Silverton to Salem. The cobbler, with Umpqua vanilla ice cream, was delicious. Marionberries are a cultivar of two kinds of blackberries that was developed in Marion County, Oregon, which is where Salem is. There are blackberries everywhere in Oregon and Washington this time of year, but marionberries are indeed the cream of the crop.


Plump, juicy Oregon marionberries are ripening now

The next morning, we headed back to the coast with the idea of stopping over in Depoe Bay and then maybe heading south to see some of Cape Perpetua. Still taking a break from house projects while Amanda and Cy went camping at a reservoir near Sweet Home, which is in the Willamette River Valley and so warm. However, they called us that evening to tell us some loud people with too much battery- and gas-powered equipment had swarmed into the campground, so they decided to pack up and head home, too. They got back around 9:00 pm; we watched a movie and then went to bed.

The interlude was a bit shorter than we had expected, but it was a nice break and we were ready to get back to projects. Mike and I did go out to dinner the next evening, though. I had made a reservation for us at Local Ocean, a restaurant on the lovely Yaquina Bay down in old Newport, which is popular so we couldn’t change the reservation to four people. A nice place, delicious food, and a beautiful view of both the bay and the coastal mountains beyond. Then, just to extend our interlude a little longer, the following evening we all went out for dinner right in Depoe Bay. We had a great meal at Bay View Thai. Mike’s dinner came served in a coconut, so it was quite dramatic, but everything we had was delicious. And we had a lovely view of the world’s smallest harbor while we ate.


Curry in a coconut

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