burney falls

A long journey began today. Gid and I went to the Sacramento airport to pick up a rental car for a long road trip. We had reserved a compact car, but we ended up upgrading to a Prius V. My first impressions of the car are that it accelerates really slowly and the handling is sloppy compared to the tight handling of my Subaru. It almost feels like I’m driving a boat.

We drove into Sac to pick up Ray and then began the drive to our destination for the night, McArthur-Burney Falls state park. I’ve been to my fair share of waterfalls, so even though I had read Burney falls is a pretty amazing waterfall, I wasn’t expecting to be amazed. I was wrong. It was amazing, without a doubt the most beautiful waterfall I had ever seen, even compared to the amazing Vernal falls at Yosemite.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone car camping. Nowadays I usually go backpacking, and often when backpacking I won’t even bring a stove, so the food I eat is pretty crappy. Car camping allows for much better food…

I don’t think anything beats a steak cooked over real wood flame.

Especially if it comes with grilled onions and asparagus.

For breakfast we had eggs, along with bacon and skillet potatoes. Cast iron skillets are awesome– I like how you can sit them right on top of the coals if you need to.

On longer trips like this I blog the old fashioned way. At least until I get back home to a computer…

We did a short hike to the base of the falls. On our way back from the hike we heard a crash that startled us. A deer bounded across the trail just a few yards ahead of us. That was a pretty cool experience, unfortunately none of us had a long enough zoom to get a good picture of the deer staring back at us from up the hill.

Burney Falls is pretty amazing because you can hike right up to the edge of it. Well actually, you’re not really supposed to– we had to hop a fence to get to the edge.

But honestly I would break the rules and hop the fence every single time. The view from the edge is amazing, you hear and see the roar of the water over the edge, and you can look down below into the crystal blue lagoon below. The mist that the waterfall kicks up creates a rainbow over the lagoon. It’s simply amazing, and the picture really doesn’t do the scene any justice. It really has to be seen and experienced in person.

Things I’m thankful for:

• road trips- even if it’s in a Prius– (actually the trunk space came in really handy, and I’m sure the good gas mileage will save us a lot of money by the end of the trip.)
• amazing destinations like Burney Falls
• cast iron skillets
• good road trip buddies