Quick trip to Opal Creek

This has turned out to be quite a weekend ... Saturday morning we got up early and headed to Josh & Jess's house to go over to Yaquina Bay to do some crabbing. It was a busy day because the silvers are out in the ocean, but we had the bay pretty much to ourselves. We loaded pots and let them soak for a while, then started pulling them. Things started a little slow, i think because some of the bait was still frozen, but after a couple pots things picked up and we ended up with a great haul. I'm not positive on the counts, but i think we got 10 red rock crabs and 13 Dungeness. We headed back in, made the quick jaunt back to Corvallis, threw the crabs in water, then feasted like pigs.

Today we decided to work off some of the crab meat and Susie and i headed to a place we've heard of called Opal Creek. It's an old growth forest 40 or so miles east of Salem. The area has quite a few protected areas including a stand of Redwoods that are somewhere in the range of 500 to 1000 years old. We didn't quite have time to go back to see those, but we really enjoyed the short hike we were able to do and are planning to go back and camp out over night to allow for some more exploring.

This first shot is from the drive up to the trail head. The clouds were hanging pretty low and made for a cool shot.



Back in the day, Opal Creek was a mining area, first gold, that didn't last long, but they found nickel. There was also quite a bit of logging. Some of the equipment has been left behind and now serves as a marker 2.2 miles into the hike. It's interesting to see the rusted remains. This was part of a chain we saw.



The trail follows the Little North Santiam River and the water is amazingly clear. Right as we started the hike, there was a bridge over one the the many pools and even though we were quite a ways up and the pool was pretty deep, you could see the bottom. Unfortunately that picture didn't turn out, so we'll have to go back and take another. This was another bridge looking down on the river.



Of course i had to head down to the water and took this shot looking back up.



We're definitely going to have to head back and spend some more time here ...