Saturday, August 26, 2017

Aug 26–Black River Waterfalls

Unless you are waterfall fanatics like us, this is going to start to be getting too much.

Today was supposed to be a write off weatherwise. When we got up we saw that the rain was not supposed to start until noon so we quickly got ready and headed off to another nearby collection of waterfalls.

The mouth of the Black River is just a bit west of the Presque Isle River from yesterday. Again it was about a 1/2 hour drive from the campground. Here there are 5 large waterfalls and each has its own parking area and short access trail.

 Back RIver Harbour map

Even though the access trails were short, I think we worked harder and were more tired than yesterday. Talk about stairs. At each place, soon after you left the parking area you were heading down long flights of stairs. At Gorge Falls we went down 82 and then a bunch more at each viewpoint. At Sandstone it was down 135. At Rainbow it was down 176. Altogether we think went down at least 500 steps and what goes down must come up.

They spent a LOT of money here on stairs, boardwalks and viewpoint platforms.

We started at Gorge Falls.

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The photosphere.

And since we have a good internet connection.

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There was no hopping the railing here to get closer. The gorge walls went straight down.

There was a short trail over to Potawatomi Falls. On the way we went down to next viewpoint but it was so overgrown that you couldn’t really see anything. This is my biggest pet peeve with places like this. They probably spent 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars on all the boardwalks, removing who knows how many trees yet they refuse to clean up the trees around the lookouts to make them useful.

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The next one was rather overgrown but at least it gave us a fairly clear long view of the falls.

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You can see how overgrown the view was from the photosphere.

And then down to the viewpoint just over the falls. Here was the view from the platform. Again there was no way to get closer.

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One tree! All they had to do was remove one small tree to get a clear view.

I held my phone far out over the railing to try and get a clear photosphere.

Using the LCD screen on my camera to guide me, I held my SLR camera over my head to get this somewhat clearer view.

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Sorry for the ranting here but we really did like the falls.

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We loved all the separate streams on this half.

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Next up was Sandstone Falls.

Down we go. I find this huge steps (135 of them) are hard on the legs, as it it hard to get a rhythm going.

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An interesting plant beside the stairs.

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We went a little crazy with the pictures here. No fences or lookouts here. You could get up close and personal.

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Her love of waterfalls overcame her fear of heights.

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She likes the closeup shots. A photosphere from here.

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I did a lot of scrambling around.

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The photosphere from here.

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And another photosphere from here, a bit father downstream.

Jennie thought this rock looked like an anteater from this angle.

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And a turtle from this one.

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This tiny flower was growing on the rock.

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The rock around here is either the jumble called conglomerate or the layered sedimentary rock. This cliff had both.

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Then we did a bit of climbing above the falls.

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And the required photosphere.

Upwards we go.

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Another interesting plant.

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Back down the 176 steps at Rainbow Falls.

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It was again a lot of work to produce a less than perfect view.

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The falls actually faced at an angle away from us. These are the two best shots we could get from the platform.

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Looking downstream, we thought that this reflection looked like a giant fish.

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We saw people on the other side, who looked like they would have a face on view. On looking at the map, you can cross the river down at the harbour and take a 3/4 of a mile trail back up.

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To make the best of it , we hopped the fence once again and climbed around the rocky peninsula beside us that blocked our view upstream.

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I took this from on top of the rock above Jennie’s head.

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The photosphere from here.

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We still can’t see the falls.

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And then a photosphere from near where she was standing.

Jennie was trying to get a reflection shot but it didn’t work.

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Then back up to the car for a quick visit to the harbour at the mouth of the river.

If the weather had been nicer we would have taken the far side trail back to Rainbow Falls but as we were leaving there we felt a few drops and as we got to the harbour it got a bit harder. Right on time as per the forecast. It was right around noon.

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The bridge across to the trail.

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Since the rain was not too bad and we had our rain coats we decided to do a quick trip into Conglomerate Falls. The tall trees protected us on the way in.

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Some plants we saw on the way.

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The sign said that it was 3/4 of a mile but the trail was not too bad as it had a gentle slope with only a few stairs at the end.

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It was another viewpoint that would have been 100% better if they had just cut down two small trees.

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You could easily get one or the other side in a picture.

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With camera high over my head I got the 3 shot panorama.

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This couple had decided to wade into the river to get out to a rock in the middle.

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It looked like they were building a trail to take you around to the side.

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I then climbed down to the bottom of the falls on the right.

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And the photosphere.

Looking back up at the point with the official viewpoint.

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It was time to head home as the rain was getting harder. It became quite steady on the drive home and has kept up, with some downpours, for the rest of the day.

This area must be known for its waterfalls because the local Dairy Queen has pictures of them all over its walls. Don’t ask me how I know that.

It would have been great to see these falls in the sun but I think we made the best of a bad situation.

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