Today we drove about an hour west to check out Jump Creek Canyon.
It was another day that far exceeded our expectations. The descriptions I had read said it was a short 0.25 walk to a waterfall and only showed pictures of the falls. I was worried that after the drive we would walk in, look at the falls and be back at the car in no time.
It turns out that the canyon itself was worth a lot of exploring. It is very narrow and tall. Lots of huge boulders have fallen down over the creek but because it is so narrow they seem to have wedged themselves to create all kinds of tunnels, caves, nooks and crannies to investigate. Altogether we spent about 2 1/2 hours here.
Almost all the way there we are crossing the very flat Snake River Basin. Finally in the distance we see a line of smooth hills with a jagged break in them.
There is a cement ramp to get you down to the bottom of the canyon, because it is so steep.
This picture is from when we left. By then it was quite busy, on a Wednesday afternoon. When we arrived there were only 4 other cars.
In we go.
There are lots of interesting shapes to stare up at.
The main path crosses the creek once. I guess it never gets really deep as all there is are some circular cement discs to supplement the stones.
Every once in a while there were short side paths to take you down to the creek under the boulders.
Lots of photospheres today.
Jennie was trying to get the rippling reflections of the water on the rock.
It really needed a movie but you can sort of see the light patterns
The photosphere.
We spent a long time exploring the various trails.
Another photosphere.
This guy surprised on one of our side trips. I had read that there are rattlesnakes here as well but we didn’t see any.
The next trail was above the tiny falls, seen in the picture above.
On towards the falls.
Through a final tree covered tunnel.
The falls are about 50 feet tall.
Our first priority was to find a nice spot for lunch.
We did lots of scrambling around to see the different views but we had to be careful because the canyon walls were very crumbly. For any climbing that we did, it was tough not to slip.
Looking up the wall behind Jennie at our lunch spot. You can just barely see two other people on the rocky outcrop over Jennie’s head.
The photosphere.
The view from the end of the canyon.
And the photosphere.
Then climbing up behind our lunch spot, to see the creek and mountains behind the falls.
The final photosphere.
This is a shot of me carefully working my way up to get that picture. I am in the middle, not the guy on the rock.
More and more people showed up. We were lucky we got there in the morning, as we mostly had the canyon to ourselves.
You could see through those rocks in the center of the picture above. Peekaboo.
It seemed that the water was pretty cold.
By now we were hot and tired from all the climbing so we headed back to the car.
Back in the city it was 30C so the AC in the RV was working hard.
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