Hiking on Sundays: Multnomah Falls

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Multnomah Falls

Over Memorial Day weekend, Eric had two Taiwanese friends from Las Vegas visiting (one was a friend from high school) and since this was their first time to see Oregon and Portland, we decided to take them to Multnomah Falls. For those not native to Portland, especially first-time visitors, Multnomah Falls is THE outdoor place of choice for waterfall viewing and hiking. And while the weather forecast was entirely gray, the clouds didn’t last and by the early afternoon, there was plenty of blue sky. The only water droplets we felt were from Multnomah Falls, which sent up a lot of spray.

Multnomah Falls is very popular and busy on weekends, partly because of the different viewing areas. A one-minute walk and you can have your picture taken in front of the cement bridge and waterfall. Walk 0.2 miles further, and you can stand on that bridge and look down at the people milling around below. The trail all the way to the bridge is even wheelchair-accessible, which means you’ll see a lot of strollers. The trail to the top of the falls is approximately one mile, and is comprised of 11 switchbacks with signs so you can count them down. Jaeden ran most of the way up, and Stella ran most of the way down, but it was a short enough hike that neither of them had to be piggy-backed, thankfully. At the top of the uphill climb, there are two choices: you can head left towards the Larch Mountain hiking trail (which we didn’t do this time, but I highly recommend it…less busy and absolutely breathtaking hiking along the river), or continue to your right to a viewing area that overlooks the top of the falls. The circular platform perches just to one side of the rushing water, and if you hold your camera way out, you can capture part of the bridge below, and further down, Multnomah Lodge and the people way at the bottom where you started. For those wary of heights, it is probably not very fun. But for others, it’s a great spot to take yet another picture!

My apologies to those of you who noticed that I "missed" this past week--I was hoping to write more, but we've already completed this week's hike, so this will have to do as I move on to the new! Also I will have to post pictures later, as we are out of town and I don't have access to my pictures from here. But there will be more to come, and soon, I promise!

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About this blog

For a while two things have been brewing in me: the need for an impetus to write more (yes, motivation is often lacking in me), and the desire to spend Sunday mornings outside exploring with my kids. I’ve started this blog to fulfill both.

I majored in creative writing in college, which made for an extremely enjoyable three and a half years and a somewhat less enjoyable final semester, where in Senior Seminar I was suddenly faced with the cold reality of what being a “writer” in the real world really meant. It meant something I really didn’t want: being prepared to work on one thing (short story, poem, novel) really hard, and then sending it in to thirty to fifty publishers and probably receiving rejections from them all. Until finally I would freak out to find out my poem has been accepted by a tiny literary magazine in Alabama, with a readership of seventy-five. It didn’t interest me. I’d wanted to be a “writer” since I was young…I remember sitting in our living room on our brown tweed sofa, sunlight filtering in through the big window, and my dad saying to me, “Rebekah, when you grow up, be a writer. You can choose your own hours, no one is breathing down your neck telling you what to do, you can just do whatever you want.” It stuck with me. Unfortunately my dad didn’t actually know any writers, so of course his version of the profession was a bit…unrealistic. For my parents, having their children go to college was the dream. Just getting there was enough. I will recommend my children enjoy college but choose a career instead of just a major…hopefully this will help with the job search after graduation. Hopefully.

My children are still pretty young. We don’t go to church, but I like the idea of doing something special together as a family during that time. If I plan it, my husband, Eric will come along. It’s good for us to do things the four of us, because for a long time it’s kind of been me-and-the-kids. I’m a stay-at-home mom now and Eric likes his job and spends a lot of time with it. It works for us, mostly. But we need to be a family of four, not three. I’ve long thought it would be a good thing to hike outside on Sunday mornings, treating a commune with nature as our own version of church.

My goal is not too lofty, I hope: every Sunday (preferably in the morning), we will hike in a different place. And then I will write about it afterwards. We live in Oregon, which means for several months of the year this will be pretty easy to manage. The rainy winter and spring months will make for more of a challenge, but one I know will be worth braving.