I few weeks ago I noticed a photo on Facebook of a waterfall and I had to know where it was. I found out Rocky Brook Falls was just north of Brinnon past Dosewallips State Park. That was an easy drive and not too far away from home. I asked mom if she was interested in going but we had to find a good day to go that isn't rainy. She said why not this weekend? I said sure, we could go on Sunday. I found the address and made sure I put it in the Nuvi before we went.
I had mom meet me up at my house and we would drive her Expedition to the falls and then wherever else we wanted to do afterwards. She drove up around noon and then made me drive. We drove out to Hwy 101/Hwy 8 interchange and continued up through Shelton. The weather was decent but it did rain a little bit as we got closer to the Hood Canal area. It was warm outside so I really didn't care. I knew it was going to go away according to the radar on my weather app.
Along the way we talked about a bunch of things, work, God Damn Covid and the stuff surrounding it, trying to plan more day trips and the places we wanted to go this summer and wishing we could go somewhere besides local stuff. We drove through Hoodsport and Mom mentioned that we needed to go do Staircase at Lake Cushman eventually this year. It's been on our do to list for a couple years now.
We drove past Lilliwaup and Hamma Hamma. There wasn't that much traffic on this road which is nice. It sucks to get stuck behind someone going really slow throughout these windy roads. We were making pretty good time. Once we got to Brinnon, I made sure to pay attention to which road we have to turn down. We followed Nuvi's directions and made our way to the spot. We weren't sure how popular this place was going to be either. We went around the last corner and we saw the vehicles parked near the wide spot in the road. We found a place to park, grabbed the camera and walked down the short trail to the falls.
Along the way we took pictures of the Rocky Brook River. Everything was so green! There were about a dozen people near the falls when we got there and a couple groups of people leaving to go back to the parking lot.
You could hear the falls as you got closer. Once it was in view I was in awe. This waterfall was so close! Mom and I spent some time taking pictures and just enjoying the view. I wish I would have brought my water shoes so I could climb my way to the other side of the bank for an even better view. I did slip a few times and my tennis shoes got a little wet.
I had to help mom up on the rocks for some of the views. We also had to take pictures around some girls who looked like they were in high school. They were trying to take selfies of ever single angle. We thought they would move and leave but they stayed there...in the way...of everyone trying to take pictures. They were oblivious.
We stayed for about a half hour and then I asked mom if she wanted to go to Dosewallips State Park for a while and she said sure. We drove to the water side of the state park first because I knew there was a restroom to use. Afterwards, I spent some time looking for It's the Water (GC3F1K6) but found out the fence it was on had been removed. I logged a DNF and told the cache owner in my log that it was missing due to the fence being gone and needed maintenance. Bummer.
We then drove across Hwy 101 and entered the other side of the state park. I've not been to this section of the park before. We find a place to park and had to walk to the trail head to the Steam Donkey Trail. It was a 1.5 loop but we only did part of it...basically up to the cache and back. It was a very nicely maintained dirt trail. The maps and signage were visible and concise.
We had no trouble getting to where we needed to be. I had my sights set on an oldie, DonkeyPond Falls (GCD7A1) which was placed in January of 2003 and has been found almost 650 times since then.
We walked back down and took a small side trail with a bridge over a creek. It was a fun little spot to explore.
We decided it was time to head back towards home. Mom had to do some Costco shopping for work. We drove into Tumwater and hit up that Costco. I am not sure how we fit everything into the back of the Expedition but we did. All those years playing Tetris on the Gameboy has paid off, multiple times over the years. We stopped at Walmart to get a few things and then we drove over to the cemetery to visit with Grammie for a while.
Mom was hungry and wanted some food so I suggested we get some DQ from the drive thru and take it to Pioneer Park and eat it since it was a nice day. She said sure. We drive to the Dairy Queen, grab our chicken strip meals to go and then found a nice picnic spot at the park. They had opened up the parks about a week ago so we were able to drive in and park. We opened our boxes and found out they forgot to put the ketchup in! Aghh! This wasn't the first time we've asked for ketchup and they forgot to put it in. Then we remembered that Mom bought some ketchup from the store so we pulled that out and used it. We finished off our food with our ice cream that came with our meals. It was delicious.
We called Erika to see if she was home so we could drop off some stuff at her apartment. She was so Mom stopped and let me run it up to her since along the way she got a phone call from one of her coworkers. She sat in the parking lot and chatted. I told Erika what we did today and handed her the buy one get one free popcorn that Mom got for her. I grabbed some of her cans for recycling that she saved for me and then let them resume with their day.
Mom dropped me off at home and I put my stuff I bought away. I showered, ate popcorn since we had a late lunch and then started The Last Dance series on ESPN about the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan played. It was a quite an eventful weekend and I hope we have a bunch more weekends like that. I am tired of not being able to go anywhere.
Next Adventure: Bonney Lake for the Weekend
No comments:
Post a Comment