I had very high hopes for today’s hike. I was expecting the South Fork Rogue River to be very scenic. I drove southeast on Road 37. The beginning was single lane paved. Then it switched to gravel, which I actually preferred since it was wider and that lessened the chance that an oncoming vehicle would drive too fast around a blind turn and ruin my day. There were a lot of hunters out this morning. I arrived at the middle trail head and found that, just like most other clearings, it was full of campers. Luckily there was one spot left. I felt sort of like an interloper parking next to someone’s fire ring next to their camper. But in reality it’s a trailhead and not a campground.
The trail was fairly close to the river for a while. I did bushwhack down to the shoreline several times, but didn’t really see any interesting compositions. For the most part the river was shallow and mostly placid with lots of cobbles in the bed and shore. There was only one spot where I got a couple of decent shots.
A wasp stung my finger early in the morning. I’m not lightning fast, so I imagine that the only reason I was able to smash the wasp is because it was intent on pumping as much poison as possible into my finger. Luckily there weren’t any reinforcements. I was a bit surprised to get stung. I know that wasps have a bad reputation, but we usually leave each other alone.
After a while the trail kept turning away from the river and climbing. Every time I looked at my altimeter and thought, “I’m finally by the river, and my elevation is almost as low as the lower trail head” the trail would climb back up away from the river again. I kept hiking for a long time, but decided to turn around before completing the journey to the lower trail head. I just didn’t imagine that the scenery would improve, and I was tired of the elevation gain and loss (and this is heading downstream).
On my way back, I decided to take a spur to the Giant Sugar Pine. The unmarked path climbed to a road. There was a signed trail to the pine on the other side of the road. After going there, I decided to hike back on the road instead of going back on the trail. Not only was the surface better, but this way my legs wouldn’t continue brushing up against all of that vegetation that was wet from yesterday’s rain. On yes, my waterproof pants were soaked and my boots were wet.
Instead of driving back the way I came, I decided to drive on 34 towards Butte Falls. That was a stroke of luck. Almost immediately I crossed a bridge over the South Fork Rogue and looked over the side. The view was exactly what I had hoped I would see during the hike! There were spots to pull out on both sides of the bridge, so I parked and took some pictures. Now I have a dilemma. After the hike downstream I had mentally crossed off the idea of hiking in the upstream direction tomorrow. But after seeing the view from the bridge I have to wonder if the river is prettier in the upstream direction. Probably not. I think it’s part of a plot to make me drive back and spend another day being disappointed. And here’s more information about the devious plot. I got back in my car to continue my drive only to find that the paved road soon had two lanes! It gets better. There was colorful dogwood on the sides of the road. But, like many diabolical conspiracies, the perpetrators were soon done in by their evil nature. The clear cuts ruined the dastardly scheme.
Although the forecast was mostly cloudy, I had full sun all morning. That was not a problem since it wasn’t like I would have gotten good pictures anyway. The clouds came in near the end of my hike, which presented me with an opportunity to visit a few waterfalls very near Prospect.
Yesterday I got a picture that I liked a lot, but I had a few bad spots from rain on my lens. I had been attempting to shield my lens and had been checking, but I missed the droplets at that one particular spot. It was
