Quick Hike at Twin Falls State Park

We did a quick hike this past Saturday to Twin Falls State Park, right off exit #34 on I-90. We started at 10am and had did our there-and-back by 1pm. It’s a pretty busy hike – not too crowded, but by the time we got back to the Subaru, the cars that came after us stretched onwards for about three blocks.

This map track from my Garmin shows our hike (to the East) and then some: http://maps.live.com/?v=2&encType=1&cid=E02E2868380A574B!599.

Map image

The “then some” comes from me leaving the Garmin on and it picking up our misadventure after the hike to go to Gordy’s BBQ right south of exit #32 (no longer there), and then through downtown North Bend (no more Mar-T diner from Twin Peaks, but its replacement is there [with a mural of a slice of cherry pie and some damn fine coffee]) and then to the Safeway to regroup and determine a lunch spot.

I learned something about the Garmin Rhino: once it has a lock on the satellites, it does okay under the tree canopy, so get a lock while you’re in the parking lot before you head into the trees. We hiked for over 20 minutes before it got a satellite lock, so that part of the trip was lost.

Afterwards, I uploaded some pictures to flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri). Before I did that, I did some tagging in Windows Live Photo Gallery (of course) and used the new Pro Photo Tools to load up the GPX track and geo-tag the photos. On flickr, you can go to the photos and see where it was taken, according to the matching GPS at the time. I’ve found that the street maps of the area are pretty off, but if you add the satellite / overhead picture, it looks right.

Go here to see photos I’ve tagged, location wise: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri/map/ – iterate through them using the left / right arrows to load up new sets of photos.

I had my hiking monopod with me (well, maybe it’s a 2.5-pod – it has three little legs you can fold-out for some support). The lighting wasn’t great: probably a wonderful sunset spot for pictures. I ran into a photographer with the same sort of tripod gear I’m thinking about getting: Gitzo tripod with a Manfrotto ball-head. Anyway, a couple of snaps from flickr:

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Yeah, waterfalls are great for that silky-flow result.

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