Shevlin Loop Trail

So far, most of my forays into Shevlin park have been along the center--there's a road and a trail that both parallel the creek that runs through the middle.  I did skirt the western edge of the park the day I was geocaching there, but for the most part, I've stuck to the middle.  There's a loop trail that goes around the perimeter of the park (though still parallelling the creek, up and back, just further away from it) for six miles.

Totally worth it.

This trail was so pretty.  Especially for the dry side.

Oh, but first I've got to tell you how my hike/run/whatever started out.  I left the car, went through a little aspen grove, and then just before I was about to cross the creek, I saw two LITTLE kids wandering.  They were very small, probably 1 and 3.  They did not appear to have an adult with them, and they were headed toward the creek.  As they approached me, I said hi and asked if their mom or dad was around.  The older boy said that his mom was over there, and gestured upstream.  I headed that direction while still keeping the kids in my sight and didn't see anyone.  I headed further away from the creek so I could keep the kids in my sights while widening my search for the adult(s).  I saw a lady go into the restrooms, rather far away, and hollered to ask if she was with some kids, but she didn't answer.  Hmm....the kids had crossed the bridge by now, and I wasn't fully able to keep them in my sights while still looking for their grownups.  Finally, I spotted a couple of women sitting by the river, not paying a whole lot of attention to the kids.  In fact, there was a third kid, equally small, directly across the creek from them, which is apparently why the other two kids were going where they were going.

I'm all for "free-range kids," and not being a helicopter parent, but it really doesn't seem like a good idea to let kids that small wander near a small but fast-moving creek that could easily sweep them away and is full of logs they could easily get pinned under.  Right?  Well, now that the kids were all in sight of a couple of adults, I headed out on my hike.  It took me uphill, so I still had a view of the kids and parents for a while, and at one point, one of the women said she needed to go to the bathroom.  I didn't see the other one anywhere around, so I was worried she was going to head off to the restrooms without taking the kids along, but no, she dropped her pants right there in view of the trail I was on as well as the well-traveled trail RIGHT BEHIND HER.  In fact, just as she pulled her pants down, someone passed right behind her.  Probably not what THAT lady had in mind when picking a scenic place for today's exercise.

So anyway, that was interesting.  But then I focused on the trail.  And it was awesome.  Can you believe the scenery in just the first 2.5 miles of trail?

Not pictured (dim lighting, blurry photos) is the really cool canyon with a much smaller creek that you go down into then back up out of shortly before reaching the bridge above.  It's got HUGE boulders (unusual for Central Oregon, where all our rock is volcanic and usually still attached to the ground from whence it came) and a cute little log bridge over the creek.

The rest of the trail was less scenic, though there was a cool spot where you could look over the side of a hill down at the covered bridge, and in the other direction there was a man-made canyon/gully that a railroad used to go through.  But again, waning light, cell phone photos didn't come out.  Oh well.  :-)  I think in the future, I'll go up the same trail to the bridge above, then take the creek-side trail back--it's more steadily downhill (hardly any uphill at all, and the downhill is all smoothly gradual with no steep spots), and more scenic to boot.

I walked/ran about 6 miles.  Mostly walked, since quite a bit of the downhills were too steep to really run down, hence the different plan for next time.  :-)

River Trail

Originally, I was debating between riding my horse (solo--Shar was busy today) or hiking at Smith Rock.  But when Shar told me it was POURING at her house (not far from Smith Rock), and it was sunny here, I decided to stick to Bend.  I thought of going back to Shevlin--it's beautiful.  But figured if I went somewhere else, I might be able to do some geocaching (I got all the caches at Shevlin last weekend).

So I headed to Riverbend Park near the Old Mill District.  I parked near the dog park, to add a little mileage to the hike upriver.  I recalled it was about 1.5 miles from the car bridge to the footbridge, which would make a 3 mile round trip if I parked closer to the trail, and while I didn't necessarily want to duplicate last week's 7 mile hike, I waned to hike more than three miles.

I went through the park, upstream and with the river on my left.  I jogged a couple stretches that were flat or downhill, but focused more on just hiking along.

Is it even fair that we have views like this in our city parks?

I picked up a geocache along the way, then motored right past the next one and didn't realize it until I was far enough past it that I didn't want to turn around and go back.  I made it to the footbridge...more beautiful scenery.

Theoretically, I should have turned an gone back downriver on the other side, but I felt like I could do more miles than that, so I tried to see if there was a way to continue upriver.  On the side I'd started on, it's surrounded by private property, and the parks department secured an easement for the trail, but it ends at the footbridge.  On the other side, there was a bit of a goat trail that headed upriver as well as UP.  It was narrow, but I figured I'd take it a short ways, until it either petered out, felt totally unsafe, or felt like it was going somewhere.

Luckily, just as I was about ready to give up and head back down, it came out on a nice wide gravel road used for accessing this pipeline.  After a minute or so on the road, I came to a sign that said "Not a Public Path," but luckily it didn't say no tresspassing, just that you had to yield to public vehicles servicing the pipeline.  I ended up seeing quite a few other people on it--mostly joggers, since it's nice and wide and smooth.

The road was high above the river, with some cool views.  I stopped for pictures a few times, knowing that I'd be trying to maintain a slightly faster pace on my way back downhill.

After a mile or so more, I came to the end of the pipeline.  I came upon this area in the opposite order of these photos, but I'm putting them into an order that makes more sense here.  There is a bar of rocks in the river--I'm not sure if they were placed there or occurred naturally, but at this point, they serve to divert some of the river.

It goes into this area, where some bars presumably serve to keep large fish out as well as logs and sticks.

Looking upstream, here's where the water goes from that last picture:

 Then finally, it heads into a very scary waterslide:

 That, of course, is the beginning of the pipeline I'd walked beside.  It goes past where I'd come upon it, then some of the water becomes an irrigation canal and the rest rushes downhill into a power plant where some electricity is generated for the city, then is returned to the river just before the park I'd started my hike in.  Here's the area where the water rejoins the river:

But that's getting ahead of things.  After taking those pictures at the top of the pipeline, I started toward a geocache in the area--it took me up a steep hill on the same road, but then it went through a gate and into a residential area, and my search for the geocache would have taken me across some boulders I didn't feel comfortable navigating, especially alone.  Too bad I didn't view the area on the satellite map before going a bit out of my way.  Oh well.

I headed back down the gravel road.  On the steep parts, I kinda sorta jogged, but was mainly trying not to slip and fall.  But then it turned into a gentle downhill slope, and I jogged and jogged.  I took a short walk break, but otherwise jogged for about 3/4 of a mile.  That's a lot for me.  :-)  Then the road went uphill a ways, so I walked.  I jogged a bit more.  Then, since I wasn't sure where the road went, I knew I needed to stay left and get back down the hill to the river trail again.  So I ended up slowing back to a walk to navigate some trails that looks like they're mostly used by mountain bikes, and went down, down, down, back to the river.  Then the trail was up and down and wound between boulders, plus my feet were starting to hurt, so I mostly walked back to the car.

The Endomondo app said 5.98 miles, but I'd paused it at the footbridge and forgot to start it back up when I started walking, so when I viewed the map and compared the gap to the return trip, it was 0.2 miles, so even if the app's a little off, it's safe to say I hiked over 6 miles today--not quite the 7 from last week, but hopefully that means I won't be quite as sore, either!

Tumalo Falls Hog ... or Jike?

Monday night, I went for a hike/jog at Tumalo Falls.  I knew I'd be cutting it close, so I changed at work, left right at 5:00 and high-tailed it to the falls.  There's some road construction on the way there, and a stoplight where they've narrowed the road to one lane (even though you can totally see the other end of the one-lane section so why can't they just put a stop sign and let drivers work it out amongst themselves, at least at night when the crew isn't actively working?).  So it actually took me an hour to get there--I got out of the car right at 6:00, set up my phone to record my trek and play me music, and hit the trail.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Central Oregon, I live at ~3,500 feet.  For a lot of my exercise ventures, my lungs give out before my muscles do (at about two minutes in).  I recently joined a running program (officially training for a 5k, which I may or may not show up for--I joined to lose weight, not to run races), and my ventures in uphill "running" (pronounced PLOD-ding) have resulted in much gasping and wheezing.  I have, however, learned, that running a nice gentle downgrade isn't so bad, though.

Anyway, so yeah, high elevation--the trailhead was over 4,000 feet, and it went up from there.  And to get to Tumalo Falls, you drive to the end of a long road, first paved then gravel, and then you have to hike a little ways (maybe 1/4 mile?) up a rather steep hill to get to the viewpoint for the falls.  It's UP.  A LOT.  The other times I've gone there, it's taken me quite a while to make it up the hill, and a lot of resting along the way.

This time, though, I powered up it.  I was about halfway up when I realized I hadn't stopped yet.  And didn't really need to, though my thighs were burning.  Yep, my legs were giving out BEFORE my lungs for once.  I think all this "running" is actually helping!

I got to the viewpoint and just kept on going.  The trail levels out quite a bit at that point, but there are still steep spots interspersed with the flatter spots and even a few downhill spots.  I jogged the downhills and a few of the flats where I was feeling less worn out, but walked most of the way.  I kept going, without stopping for a break, for 1.27 miles!

Tumalo Falls.  This photo is from my return trip.  Sorry it's blurry, it was getting dark by that point.

So, I took a quick break at 1.27 miles, then two more as I came to two more nice waterfalls.  Each break was less than a minute, I'm pretty sure.

I knew I needed to get back to the car by 7-ish, when it would start getting dark, and I knew that the return trip would be faster than the uphill leg.  I figured I'd turn around at 6:40 or 1.5 miles, whichever came sooner.  1.5 miles came a little after 6:30, so I went to 1.55 so that even if the way down was slightly shorter due to not stopping to take photos, that I'd still hit three miles.  

I turned around, put 'er in second gear (ha!  definitely not in overdrive--I'm not even CLOSE to seeing that gear!), and started jogging.  And other than a couple of rocky patches, I "ran" the whole way down from the 1.55 mile mark almost back to the main falls.  A few times, I really felt like I was in the groove.  Though on the steeper downhill portions (especially the ones with drop-offs to the creek on one side!), my jog was about the speed of a walk, because I wanted to be very careful yet still keep the gait of a jog going.  When I got close to the falls, I slowed to a walk to catch my breath, then stopped for a bit just to soak in the view and snap a couple pictures.  Which came out blurry because it was well into dusk and getting close to dim.

I headed down from the falls back to my car, down that last stretch of steep trail, and it took FOREVER.  I honestly think I was slower going down than I had been going up, between just wanting to be careful and not slip (especially once I could see the parking lot which only contained one car at this point--guess who?!), but also because my legs were completely turned to jello.  By the time I got back to my car, it was getting pretty dark.  (By the time I got back to town another 30 minutes later, it was pitch black.)

I got to the car, sat for a minute to stop the tracker, switch from music back to my podcast I'd been listening to in the car, etc., and realized my whole lower body (lower back through to the tips of my toes) was BUZZING.  Not tingling like it fell asleep.  Definitely tired and sore, yes, but on top of that, it felt like my muscles were all vibrating at a really high frequency.  So weird.  It continued about halfway through the meal I ate in town, so for at least an hour.

I was definitely sore the next day.  Not horseback-riding-sore, but probably more sore than I've been after either a "run" or a hike in a long time.  But I liked the combination of hiking and "running."  I didn't pressure myself to run uphill at all, and really felt in the groove on the downhill portions, and it clearly was a good bit of exercise.  But I think most of all, it was nice to have tangible proof that I'm in better shape than I was a while ago, since I could hike all that way without resting. 

Woo!