Monday July 31, 2024
We left Salem on July 29. We have reservations at Silver Falls State Park for three nights. The park is less than 30 miles from Premier RV Resort but I anticipate it taking a while longer than a half hour to get there. The traffic through Salem is slow going and the last 10 miles to the park is on a narrow,windy, very hilly county road. Once out oF Salem proper the scenery rapidly changes to farm land and woods.
South Falls in the spring. A trail is behind the falls
Once on the uphill climb trees change from oak to pine rapidly. The park itself is only 2800 feet in elevation yet the forest is predominantly conifer.We arrive a little early (check in is a ridiculous to us 1600 hours). The traffic pattern by the entrance station has us bypass the unmanned building. This is our second state park visit this trip with neither manned by rangers or employees as they used to be. Our site #76 is deep in the woods. There are two distinct loops in the campground, the less shady full hookup loop and our loop that caters to tent campers as well as RV’ers who don’t need sewer on site.
The big draw to this park besides it’s beautiful forest are the water falls. Ten falls are all reachable by a trail that leads to all of them following Silver Creek. The largest fall is South Falls at 177′. A trail leads behind this fall. It’s the most accessible fall in the park.
South Falls Precipice
A large parking lot is close by as well as the rustic building housing a gift shop, the South Falls historic Lodge circa 1930’s and built by the CCC, a large day use area and swimming hole. Near the day use area is an open, non-fenced dog area. A ways away is the Silver Falls Lodge and Conference Center. A horse camp is near the campground as well. I’m sure I’ve left a few things out but you get the idea. This park will please almost everyone.
The Historic Lodge circa 1930’s
The town of Silverton (10,443 souls) is the nearest civilization at 13 miles. We like Roth’s Fresh Market, I will not lie, because they make the best raspberry turnovers in the whole world. I walk up to the bakery counter looking in the showcase and only see apple turnovers. An employee asks if she can help me find something. I ask for raspberry turnovers. She said that the bakery had to reconfigure due to Covid and those turnovers were eliminated as well as a few other goodies. Drats!
Downtown Silverton
We had a good time visiting South Falls, taking many walks in the large grassy areas around the falls parking lot. We even got to get lost going to Silverton. That’s pretty hard to do on a two lane county road but I did it. Should have gone right instead of left. We press Jil’s phone into action to determine how far we ventured from Silverton. The GPS on Jil’s smarty pants phone locked in but had us go in a circle, coming back to the same spot we had just departed 15 minutes before.. About that time we figured Silverton was 30 miles away and gave up, returning the 12 miles back to the campground.
So that’s about it for our stay in Silver Falls State Park. We’ll be moving on to Bonneville Fish Hatchery volunteering for the months of August and September. See you there!
Travel With Jil and Mike 