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Sunday, September 3, 2017

Oneunta Gorge

April 23, 2017

I'm a big fan of Peter Lik.  He's an incredible photographer and his landscape photography is just amazing.  My boss bought a picture for his home and I just love it.  I figured out where it was so I wanted to see what it was like in person.  Here's the pic...note, this was taken in 2012.
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Isn't it beauuuutiful??  Anyways, as I was researching this, as always, the websites say that this location gets really crowded and during certain times of the year (i'm assuming winter/spring) the water can get up to chest high!  It's a very short hike, maybe 1 mile roundtrip.  

Here's how I got there:
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As you can see the parking lot is very small.  This is 6:30 in the morning.  Yup. You know me, I hate crowds.  Poor Randy, I always drag his butt out of the house in the wee hours of the morning. I think people must camp around there or something because I have no idea where the people were.
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If you see this sign....TURN AROUND.  THIS IS THE WRONG WAY.  We must've walked about 20 mins before I figured it out.  Sigh...
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Look for the staircase right after the tunnel/bridge.  Sorry, the staircase is at the far right of the picture, I cut it off
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You see this when you get down the stairs.  
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Very quickly you run into this.  This log jam was pretty high.  This was the scariest part of the hike. Once you get over this you're home free.
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Randy needed to change into his surfing booties...
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Speaking of shoes, I scored!  I found these $20 wet/dry shoes at Costco a few months ago
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I also found this wet/dry bag for my camera and belongings from Amazon.  I think it was about $20.  
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The water got about thigh deep.  This is where it normally gets waist-chest high.  We were lucky although the pictures aren't as nice because at certain parts it was dry.
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When you get to the end you reach the waterfall
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Randy has a thing about swimming in crazy places.  It was 61 degrees!!!
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Ooops.  We saw this after we came back up to the bridge...
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By the time we were heading back out a whole bunch of people were trickling in.  I'm soooo happy I went early.  We left the house at 6am, and since there was no traffic we got there fast.  If I didn't go down the wrong path in the beginning we would've had the place to ourselves longer.

We worked up an appetite for breakfast so we went to eat some biscuits and gravy
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This was delicious!!  I ordered biscuits with shiitake mushroom gravy and a side of fried chicken.
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Randy ordered the classic sausage gravy but I liked mines better :)



9 comments:

Kalin's Mommy said...

Wow, that was a nice adventure!

Leslie's pics said...

Yah Michele and fairly easy too! I love it that it was so short.

Honolulu Aunty said...

You are such an adventuress in search of great photo shoots! Very nice trail, it was a good morning for the two of you!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful scenery! The water looks cold. Thanks for sharing your pics!

Izsmom

Leslie's pics said...

Aunty - Yah it was a successful morning! I think I wanna go back maybe in the spring...with more water and try again :)

Izsmom - It was suuuuper beautiful over there, my pictures do no justice! The water felt good even though it was cold, very invigorating!!

jalna said...

Success!! Great that it was a short hike and not too deep water, yah! Can't imagine lugging gear otherwise.

Leslie's pics said...

I was scared thinking that the bag wasn't gonna keep my stuff dry. Good thing I didn't have to test it!!

Anonymous said...

wow, this gorge is beautiful! I would have attempted this if I ever went. To think it's all ruined because of some irresponsible or even criminal kids!
v

Leslie's pics said...

V- I'm curious to see what the gorge looks like after all this dies down. They said the gorge is still a gorge as of now, hopefully it's only burnt trees and stuff that they will need to clean up. :(