The day of the falls

We decided to dust off our hiking shoes and head to the state park we talked about yesterday - Silver Falls State Park, which is just east of Salem. It's the largest state park in Oregon, and it has a trail that is 8.7 miles long called the Trail of 10 falls (which, appropriately named, winds around to ten different waterfalls). It was still fairly early by the time we got there, so we decided to undertake the hike. It was a gorgeous day with perfect weather - sunny (it still hasn't rained, people!), around 80 degrees (but very pleasant in the shade), and a clear blue sky. We hiked along, passing very few people along the way, and had a chance to see some amazing waterfalls.

Pictures of some of the waterfalls along the way:





Since the past few days have been composed mostly of laying around, our feet are understandably a little tired right now.

We made another important purchase today: An air mattress. Ours died a few months ago, so we were in the market for one anyway. We have been sleeping on camping pads this whole time, and we didn't want the trouble of lugging an air mattress across the country. Apparently camping pads are not meant to be slept on for weeks at a time because we keep waking up with aches and pains in muscles we never knew existed. We are now sitting on our luxurious queen mattress composed of air and happiness. We even went so far as to carry out a meal from a restaurant, come back here, and eat food on our new bed while watching old episodes of Arrested Development. We didn't exactly plan on that, but our tent is about 10 degrees warmer than outside. The temperature seems to drop off rapidly in the evenings here..it is usually in the 80s during the day and drops down to 50 at night. Our campground got really busy tonight (I guess because it's Friday? It is Friday, right?) so there are people all around us. One family of four next to us has set up some sort of small tent city, including various tent buildings (apparently one for sleeping and one as a living room?), a huge flat screen TV, and two cars.

We're not sure what's going on tomorrow with the exception of the Saturday farmer's market. We might find some U-pick farms in the area to go get some fruit. In other news, homelessness continues.