Portland, 27-Jul
On our last full day of the trip, we drove back south a bit to hike the Trail of Ten Falls. We knew that the water flow in the summer would be low, but it still seemed worthwhile for most of the waterfalls.
Trail of Ten Falls
While we didn't leave as early as we had for some hikes on this trip, we knew we shouldn't dally too much in the morning, since this figured to be a very popular trail. When we showed up, we saw a very large parking area, but not a lot of cars. We parked about a half dozen cars from the trailhead, paid for a day-use pass, and started out.
Immediately after going past the lodge, we came upon South Falls, the tallest of the whole loop at 177 feet. You could see how the flow in the spring would make the falls a lot wider, but it still looked spectacular. This was one of the falls that you could walk behind. There is a lot of space between the trail and falls, so we stayed dry. This was the case for all of the falls we walked behind. Lower South Falls wasn't very far away and is almost as tall as South Falls.
Lower North Falls and Drake Falls aren't very tall, and they both looked like small flows over large rocks. Double Falls had even less water flowing. Middle North Falls was another tall one we could walk behind, and did have enough water to have a nice shape.
Twin Falls was another short waterfall with low flow, and our view was somewhat obstructed by trees. North Falls, however, was very showy. We could also walk behind this one, and after that, the trail led up a lot of stairs so we could get to the top. We then took a spur to take a look at Upper North Falls, where we found a nearby bench to have lunch.
When we went back, we left the Canyon Trail and made a loop by going on the Rim Trail. There was only one more waterfall, but Winter Falls is dry during the summer. Having closed the loop, we returned to the car to head back to Portland.

















Rests of the day
It took us a little while to find a parking spot, and ended up a couple of blocks away. Not too surprising, since parking is free on Sundays. After cleaning up, we walked to the store to pick up things for dinner, which we heated back in the hostel kitchen.
Driving Home, 28-Jul
Parking was free until 9 a.m. so we didn't need to wake up extremely early to have breakfast and finish packing. I moved the car to the loading zone to make it easier to load up, and we were off.
We knew that northbound I-5 would be a mess since two northbound lanes on the Ship Canal Bridge were closed. Normally, the Express Lanes would be southbound at the time we were going through Downtown, but for a couple of weeks, they are northbound all day to relieve congestion, so we took advantage of that.
When we got home, the garden was in better condition than we had feared, which was always nice to see. It will take a couple of days to get back into "staying home" mode.