It’s five days later, and I’m finally able to lay on my left side without uttering a stream of expletives. I’ve heard the term “black and blue” before but I’ve never fully appreciated the human body’s ability to produce those colors until now. When I relayed the short version of my antics to a huge, body building paramedic friend of mine, his eyes got wide and he declared solemnly, “You’re nuts.”
Here’s the long version….
Being a combination map buff/weather freak naturally gravitates me to the tasty online sites that can lay it all out on one page: roads, elevations, trails, precipitation, areas where the temperature is so hot, I can fry up breakfast on the hood of my truck. I do not like the heat. As a matter of fact, I hate it. I have always described myself as “like chocolate, because we both melt above 75 degrees.” I use an umbrella for the sun more than the rain. Every 4th of July, I merrily begin counting down the days until the first frost like an eight-year-old counts down to Christmas.
Having just (barely) survived a week of triple digits and 90′s by making sweet love to my air conditioner and administering frozen fruit smoothies every four hours, I had cabin fever up the wazoo. So, I went online and started scrolling around for places where the color coded temperature maps gradually descended from flaming red to throbbing orange and finally into serene yellow. Along Highway 6 on the way to the coast my eye caught something so bizarre, I actually did a double take and laughed out loud: There is an Idiotville, Oregon. And not only that, there is an Idiot Creek and an Idiot Creek Falls, too. 140 feet of falls, to be exact, and no photographic evidence of it anywhere online. Yet, you can see it from space on Google Earth. Hmm….
Twenty-four hours later, Andy and I are rumbling up several confusing forest roads with three cameras between us, multiple forms of Deet, and a cooler full of ice and victory beverages. There is a river of flying insects in front of us and a tidal wave of dust behind, both thickly evidenced on the Silverado the next day. When we pull over every so often to consult the meager maps we’ve printed out, we become increasingly aware that whatever fool predicted “low 70′s” for this area had already reached and passed that threshold hours ago. It was somewhere between “very warm” and “&$%#!” and it wasn’t even noon. Crap.
Triangulating a mysterious waterfall on circuitous, intermittently named forest roads without a GPS can be interesting. Our first attack was from the west flank on, wouldn’t you know it, Idiot Creek Road. Andy spotted our quarry with a keen eye as we whipped past a small break in the trees.
Here’s a close up on the Idiot:
Guessing our way through half a dozen unmapped forks and intersections, we arrived at this: DENIED! Those hanging branches may look spindly but they were just thick enough to threaten paint damage. I wistfully fantasized about all the landscaping implements of destruction I had in the garage that could make short work of this obstacle and turn it into next winter’s firewood. (sigh)
We backtracked all the way down to Highway 6 again and swung up the only other option, Drift Creek Road. Where Idiot Creek Road was circuitous, Drift Creek Road was positively labyrinthine. About ten guesses and one three-point turn later, we made a decision and parked in the shade. There was a hastily constructed wooden bench and a well pounded trail into the forest, so we figured we were as close as we were gonna get to the sweet spot.
We coated each others backs with 40% DEET–hands down, the best decision of the day–wrapped gaiters around our calves like armor, and cinched up our packs. At first, the trail was forgiving and self-explanatory, an old access road slightly overgrown. Slightly became very in short order. Soon, we were climbing over blow downs and doing slow motion snake dances around clusters of vine maple trunks. We had two choices, neither one palatable: shimmy over increasingly large blow downs on the top of the ridge in the full, pounding sun or risk death in the shade where the land fell away suddenly at alarming angles.
Here’s what the ridge looked like, the incline being far greater than the camera tells:
We chose Option C where we picked our way cautiously along the terminator line between the two. The wonderful surprise here was that the Sword Fern and salal rose up to our belly buttons and hid all sorts of giant gopher holes and smaller branches. Every step was a roll of the dice. Andy asks for the third time, “Can you hear the falls yet?”
I managed to make it this far with only dust, conifer needles, and twenty spider webs clinging to me. He, on the other hand, was getting his trail wounds out of the way early. This is called a Dead Branch Tattoo. It’s even more exciting when you consider that, thanks to this handy, eight-inch-long entry point, he now had a stinging cocktail of dirt, sweat, and DEET coursing through his veins.
And that wasn’t the only thing getting But But arms weren’t the only things getting scratched out there. We found some pretty good evidence of bear activity. The patterns on this log were probably due to 300 pounds of ravenous fur scraping old bark away to reveal tasty grubs and such. That, or an ursine Mani-Pedi.
There were also some weird saprophytes nestled in the undergrowth (below). I’m not sure what they were but they wouldn’t have been visible if we had been going any faster. I find that a slow pace opens up the world around a hike. I’ve spotted dozens of delights and had to shout at my friends up ahead to turn around and check them out. Luckily, Andy is just another sharp-eyed nature lover like me; between us, we didn’t miss much in that forest. We found all sorts of mysteries (What digs a colony of six-inch-wide holes in the ground?) and spooky demonstrations of nature’s power (Ever see a small snake try to eat a giant slug?).
After about an hour and a half of cursing, laughing, and getting ever dirtier and sweatier, we heard the holy music of the creek below us. Man, that liquid beacon had a magnetic quality. We wanted that cold water on our legs so bad we could taste it. We were like tiny space ships getting sucked into a black hole. And that probably should have been our first warning.
The thing about water sheds is, well, they shed water. Every forest overflow system from the tiniest drainage ditch to the largest gorge has the same topography: The closer you get to the actual flowing river, the more muddy, treacherous and unstable the ground beneath you becomes. And in some cases, the more vertical it becomes. We had been following manageable deer trails at a good clip but now we were lowering ourselves by roots and branches.
I saw some giant leaves eighteen inches across down near the water and exclaimed that I had never seen Vine Leaf Maple get so big. That’s because it doesn’t; Devil’s Club does. The vicious stuff was everywhere, there was nothing left to grab onto that didn’t want to jab you in the finger and make you bleed. We got down to about ten feet above the water and ran out of earth. It literally dropped away. And, suddenly, so did Andy. He skidded ten feet down to the water and did an ungraceful dismount in the middle of the creek. However, his forgiveness was swift when he realized how cool and refreshing that water was now that it was seeping into his overheated boots and socks.
He had created a sort of muddy sluice for me so I sat my butt down and descended to the creek’s edge at warp speed. I thought I would attempt a sexier dismount, so I stood up towards the end of my ride, hoping to land on my feet. The rock was slicker than snot in that creek. My legs flew out from under me so fast, I wasn’t even aware they were gone until I heard the wet cracking sound. I fell straight down just to the left of my tail bone with a force so monumental, I actually saw stars and started to black out. I felt the impact more than heard it as it traveled up my spinal column, blinking out all the lights one by one until I was on my hands and knees, half in and half out of the water, gasping for breath and staring at the muddy pebbles ten inches from my face, just trying to stay conscious.
I remember hearing Andy saying something but I couldn’t quite make it out. I actually couldn’t hear anything for a few seconds (very weird). Then, my eye sight came back like a fade in movie scene and I managed to implore him to “Give me a minute.” I moved everything gingerly and–amazingly–everything worked. No pain, nothing broken or sticking out. I laughed. Andy must have thought I was nuts but I operate on the principle that if you are ambulatory and laughing, you’re ready for more.
I stood up and said, “Let’s go look at the falls!” It wasn’t the 140-footer we had targeted but it had two tiers and the bottom one had two chutes. I declared it Little Idiot Falls, the bottom part being Two Little Idiots. Take a guess why.
There was another, shallower but broader falls just down the creek from this one. We decided to call it Ass Falls. Think about it.
The march back uphill was going to be a bitch but first we had to locate it. We were, after all, sort of trapped down in our own little paradise with steep, muddy walls all around. Where there weren’t walls, there was Devil’s Club. Allow me to wax poetic for a moment on that remarkable plant: surgically sharp frickin’ prickers! After two false starts, we made it up and over the lip of the mud by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins. That sort of made the trek back up to the truck child’s play by comparison. Unfortunately, it had gotten hotter in the interim, the kind of muggy heat that plays games with the stomach. I had never seen an athlete vomit from the heat. Now I have. Thanks, Andy, always an adventure with you.
I think we were both pretty thankful to see the truck again. Between his woofing and my ass-crunching, it was anybody’s guess which one of us was going to have to carry the other one out. Once we had access to the Igloo cooler, we immediately set about scrubbing off the dirt/sweat/DEET bisque with ice cubes. I absolutely recommend this: it feels awesome! So do fresh, clean socks and a dry T-shirt that doesn’t smell like rotten death. When I sat down on the rickety bench to change into my Tevas, I realized that I hadn’t made it out Scot-free: I had a bruise on my butt the size of a grapefruit. It was swollen, rigid, and hot to the touch. Thank god for velour bucket seat cushions.
It wasn’t a hard decision at that point to put off bagging the elusive Idiot Creek Falls until another day. I have a friend with a GPS who agreed to help me scope out the best access spot from the triangulation of our photography perch, our parking spot, and it’s actual location in the near future. EDIT: The GPS trip revealed that Andy and I had actually done a spectacular job of using our intuition to pick a starting point, we couldn’t have gotten any closer to the sweet spot. We only missed Idiot Creek Falls by one ridge.
With the truck’s nose sticking out on Highway 6, I mentioned to Andy that the ocean beaches were only half an hour away. He needed no deliberation: “Let’s go!”
We made a beeline for the coast and swung north on Highway 101 to the overlooks at the base of Neahkahnie Mountain. On the way, we got a nice view of Saddle Mountain and some kayakers from Nehalem Bay.
Neahkahnie Beach was serene near low tide.
The water was as calm as green glass at the rocky shore. We could see right through it to the undulating kelp beds beneath. Now would have been a good time for a pod of seals or whales to slide by. 
Andy snapped off some shots but didn’t like the glare of the late day sun.
I, on the other hand, had a ball playing with my polarizer for the first time. I just loved the quicksilver play of the waves. It looked like the whole ocean was made of liquid mercury.
We decided to explore the sea caves of Hug Point just north of there since the tide was out. Hug Point is so named because pioneers who used this beach in the late 1880s as a highway had to “hug” this particular point at low tide to get around it, even after blasting a niche in the rock. You can still see the wheel ruts.
By the time we made it to the north end of the wagon road, the waves were beginning to rise, so we took some very fast photos and started back as quickly as sandals could go over sharp barnacles.
Some of those barnacles were sizable. They blanketed almost every square inch and were hard as a rock. You minced along, half afraid to crush them, half afraid they were going to bleed you if you stumbled and fell. (Oh, wait, I already did that.)
There were holes at equal intervals in the rock wall above the wagon road, possibly for wooden poles that supported a makeshift boardwalk or railing back in the day. Each hole was now a tiny aquarium decorated with green and pink anemones, barnacles, and shiny black mussels.
While the barnacles handled the housekeeping below, the limpets took care of the walls. They ranged in size from smaller than a fingernail to larger than a thumb.
When you got up close for inspection, you were suddenly aware of thousands of light grey infant barnacles coating the rock around them.
We passed many caves, some deep and dripping, others shallow and leading nowhere like this one. 
My favorite cave of all is the creepy Gooseneck Cave. It’s my own personal label for a tight little dark fissure absolutely painted inside with eerie Gooseneck Barnacles. You have to hunch over and shuffle into what could easily be a Star Trek set, the place looks so wonderfully alien.
When the tide comes in and they are immersed they extend themselves outward on soft and leathery-feeling “necks” several inches long and open their “mouths” to send out feathery cirri that trap plankton and tiny crustaceans. 
I just love photographing them. Up close, they look like menacing monsters that could swallow a truck. On the other hand, I hear they are very tasty in a nice garlic sauce. I think I’d rather have an acre of them as pets.
My second favorite cave is Pink Cave. The light was too far gone for us to pick that hue out but at midday, you can see just how reddish pink the sandstone in there really is. It’s a big cave, the largest one at Hug Point, and you can walk all the way in and around the pink berm until you are looking over it back at the world outside. I discovered a reflective pool of water and caught Andy ogling the view.
We had to enjoy everything with a stop watch since the tide was moving in fast. Each cave was in another cove around another rocky point and they were all being squeezed shut by the encroaching surf. Below, you can see the wagon road rising at an angle and wrapping around the rock to the left. It dips down to a low point just before it rounds the bend and you can see the waves beginning to come over it. They will get many feet higher before midnight.
In between cove explorations, we admired the armadas of Brown Pelicans that flew by in formation. They flew so low on the deck that when the waves curled, they disappeared behind them. Andy has a better picture than this if you scroll down on his Flickr site.
Since we were admiring the natural features in reverse order, our last spot to survey was the waterfall at Fall Creek. There’s something exotic about waterfalls that empty right onto a beach.
We even climbed up and took some aerial shots. Fall Creek is sweet and docile and flitting with little butterflies when the sun is out. 
By now, the tide had completely cut off the route behind us so we lingered on the main beach for a while, looking for the ultimate Mole Crab. Our greatest catch was four inches long!
After all the sweat and heat of the first half of the day, playing around in the frigid surf felt pretty good.
How To Exfoliate One’s Toes Naturally:
1. Let wave rush in.
2. Allow sand to do its magic.
3. Let wave rush out. Rinse. Repeat.
Fog banks rolled in and nestled themselves against the shores to the south. Castle Rock began to grow dim in the distance.
In the descending gloom, Arch Cape took on the lovely gradients of a watercolor painting. I was mesmerized by the glassy flatness of the beach at this spot. The waves spread themselves across the sand like a wet coat of varnish….
…and braided themselves into deep blue stained glass windows.
Our last view before the light faded was of Arch Cape’s lovely jumbled rock garden.We warmed ourselves at some friendly folks’ campfire in the sand before heading back up to the truck. Then, we scooted up to Highway 26 for the quick way home but I was so tired, I don’t even remember it. However, I do remember the Garden Herb Triscuits–thanks, Andy!
Just before I crawled into bed, my curiosity got the better of me and I tugged down the waist band of my yoga pants to inspect the damage to the back of my front. I had no idea human skin could turn so dark so fast. I hit that rock so hard I actually ground a hole in the shirt tail I had been wearing outside of my hiking pants. (Another delightful post-adventure discovery along with multiple bonus scrapes and scratches.) A week later, there were rings of various colors in my flesh around ground zero that rivaled the Grand Prismatic Spring.
But not one bug bite. Woo-HOO!
