There are lots of reasons to dislike working graveyard shifts. Trying to enjoy nature on your time off would be one of the first reasons. The other day, when I had a rare day off with Beth, we decided to make a jaunt over to Proxy Falls since neither of us had been there before. Part of the problem with our plan was that we weren't even up and ready until about 2 p.m. (yes, in the afternoon). By then we're making sure batteries are charged, lenses are in the bag, memory cards are loaded, sodas and sandwiches (and maybe a bottle of wine) are in the cooler, and that everything is ready. Then there's the sudden trip to the store to get cat food (not for us, for the cat) and a stop at the fuel station to fill up. We have about a three hour drive ahead of us (or so we think) and we're finally leaving the house at about 3 p.m. Also, we then realize that it's Friday as we start to encounter some rush hour traffic. If all goes well it's starting to look like we'll have maybe an hour of daylight by the time we find the trail and get to the falls. Yikes. About three hours of junk food, lap-surfing chihuahuas and awesomely bad early-90's pop music (thanks, Pandora) later we're at the trail and hoofing it in as quick as we can. Luckily the trail is absurdly short. We get to the upper falls first. I knew there were two, but didn't realize how they were set out on the trail and had envisioned that maybe they were just separate tiers as opposed to being two completely separate waterfalls. Either way, despite how beautiful it was in its own right, I knew that with time not on our side the waterfall we were looking at was not the waterfall we were looking for. After a short walk up the trail my ears were telling me that we were getting close. A distant thunder became louder and louder until parts of it started to become visible through gaps in the surrounding trees. And then there it was - more beautiful than even I had imagined. A towering cascade of silken water and breathtakingly green moss. Awe gives way to panic as I notice that bits of sun are poking through the trees and it's dangerously close to the western horizon. We don't have much time. We scramble. Find some compositions. Fight the immense spray that is coming down and coating our lenses. And come away with only a handful of shots for each of us. But it was all we needed. It had to be. We head back to the car and have our sandwiches in the dark where we discuss the beauty of the falls and plan our route to get a roof over our heads for the night. We have about another hour drive ahead of us as we tackle the endless amount of 20 mph corners along the McKenzie Pass in the pitch black night. We fall asleep road weary, our wine unopened, a lot of miles on the car, and our memory cards sparsely occupied by what is surely one of the most beautiful waterfalls imaginable. It couldn't have been a better trip.

Feels like I'm only going south.... Woke up with another bad headache (never went away from yesterday), got red spots all over my body, and now, coming down with a fever... Tough week for me. I'll make it through.. :) Dasani... my favorite water.