Punch Bowl Falls

Our school district is a little bit different when it comes to Spring Break.  They schedule parent-teacher conferences the two days right before Spring Break, so if you luck out, you can have a week and a half long Spring Break.  We had our last two conferences Thursday, so Friday we all piled in the car and drove to Oregon.  I had heard about a pretty hike out to a waterfall called Punch Bowl Falls from my friend Rachel, and we decided to go for it.  It's one of the longer hikes we've done, and the kids did amazingly well.  When all was said and done, the pedometer said 5.6 miles.

It was such a beautiful day for a hike.  It was probably 70 degrees, and the sun was shining.  It's been spring for so long already this year that we got to enjoy butterflies, flowers, mud, and green everywhere!

I did such a great job planning ahead (cough cough) that all pictures captured are on my phone.  I really should have brought the real camera- the scenery was amazing.

We walked under waterfalls.

 Next to steep cliffs.

 Through streams.

 Emma is not happy with me taking a picture showing Dad carrying her across.  12-year-olds are getting entirely too big for that sort of thing.  But Dad was the only one with water-proof boots, so he was the one who sloshed through the water carrying all the kids one at a time.  I got to hop and skip myself across.

We walked all the way to Punch Bowl Falls, only to discover that you can't see the falls from anywhere dry.  We had to peel off our shoes and socks and wade out into the freezing mountain spring run off.

 You have to go out further than where Ryan is now.  I thought my feet were going to freeze off.  I had to give myself a pep talk half-way there.  "Danae, you've come all this way on this hike and your feet are already frozen and you are not going to give up and you are going to finish walking out to see that stinkin' waterfall!"

So I did.  If I'd walked out further, I think I could have got a better picture, but this was as far as I could convince myself to go.

Ryan said the rocks hurt his feet, but the cold water hurt me so much that I didn't really care about the rocks.

You can't really tell, but my feet and legs were so red after my little river walk.

There was another waterfall that was pretty cool.  It was a little tricky to look at since we were at the top of it.

Then we walked what felt like straight up for a quarter mile and rested before doing the rest of the hike.  And took pictures of ourselves.  And ate crackers.

 Cram in, everyone!

Next to the bridge there was a good spot for rock throwing.

Our day wasn't over yet.  We drove over to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and Dam which was only a couple of miles away.  We admired the "fingerling" salmon, trout, and checked out the giant sturgeon named Herman.

 We drove over the dam, and looked at the fish ladder before going up to the top to admire the view.

After that, we were really and truly pooped and ready to go home.