Silver Falls State Park

The Pyryt Family invited us along on their day trip to hike in Silver Falls State Park. I've always heard about Silver Falls, even as a kid, so I was excited when they asked us along. I'm sure that many of you have been there but it was my first time. We left here at 11am, started hiking at 1pm and got home at 8pm. It was a long day of hiking but we loved it and all of the kids did a great job! Oliver really surprised me, we didn't see all ten falls, but the shorter hike we did take was still about 5 miles long with some decent elevation change, and he kept on trucking along. He needed a little encouraging at times but not once did any of us have to carry the boy. We took our time on the trail and stopped often to enjoy and view the seven waterfalls. At the end of the hike the kids jumped into the swimming hole near the entrance of the park to cool off a bit. It was another hot day and I thought that we all did a good job of drinking lots of water. However, after talking to Steph this morning, I think we were all a bit dehydrated last night. We all drank A LOT of water. I noticed, going through all of the pictures, that we got very few pictures of Noah. Joel quickly reminded me that Noah and Ty were usually up ahead of the pack and not back where the pictures were being taken.

Starting off and the scenery was already beautiful.
These trees were huge and covered in moss.

See? Huge trees!
These weren't the biggest ones out there.
We followed both the North Fork Silver Creek and the South Fork Silver Creek on our hike. This is part of the North Fork.

We had already seen, the somewhat disappointing, Winter Falls which wasn't very Falls-ish in the summer (it is truly a winter falls), so when we came up on Middle North Falls it was even more exciting.

The hiking path took you behind three of the falls, this is from behind Middle North Falls.

Still behind Middle North, the trail leads around to that little cave. You can click on the picture and see that Joel got us exploring the cave.

I am sure that I was lagging behind taking pictures but was glad it happened when I got this shot of my boys on the bridge.

Oliver lifted the log and held it for us all as we walked under. (wink wink) He can be such a gentleman at times.

Look closer, do you see the staircase that we had to climb?

Joel helping Oliver reach out and feel the water from Lower South Falls. Hard to tell because of the water, but that is Tori to the right.

Took a picture from the same spot as the above picture just zoomed back out. You can still see them standing behind the water.

I finally got behind the falls.

South Falls was the final falls on our hike. By this time John & Joel along with the kids, were way ahead of Steph and I. We were taking our time getting back and enjoying the scenery.

Scenery like this moss squirrel! Steph spotted it and pointed it out to me. It was even more squirrel like in person.

Finally at the swimming hole.