My knee was hurting so bad this morning that I hardly wanted to bend it. I limped around the hotel room and limped to breakfast. I figured that I would still go to the trailhead and see if it would loosen up any. I started out very slow, but I was able to keep on moving. I’m sort of slow at that portion of Brice Creek anyway since I’m usually busy taking pictures.

On a previous trip I had run ahead and scouted a portion of the trail that begins shortly after the waterfall. It veered away from the creek at that point and went uphill. I was curious how far it would go before it got back down to creek level. I didn’t go a really long distance since I was just scouting.

Today my plan was to hike the entire eleven mile trail. To clarify, the trail isn’t eleven miles. That’s the total out and back distance. Yesterday I hiked about eight miles. I had planned to take it easy knowing that I needed to rest my knees for today, but I guess I overdid it a little bit.

Since my knee was already hurting when I woke up I figured that being able to hike any distance would be something to be thankful for. It ended up taking my almost four hours to hike the first 2.5 miles. At that point I definitely did not want to subject my knees to a return on the trail with the ups and downs. They weren’t anything out of the ordinary, but my knees don’t do well with elevation change these days. So I exercised my option to “hike” back to my car via the road. The ironic thing is that, unlike the trail, the road is actually closer to the creek almost the whole way.

My knee was doing much better by then, so I made good time. When I got back to my car I had a quick snack, changed water bottles, and hiked the western portion of the trail. This section had no creek access at all. Sometimes I could see it down below and sometimes the trail was a bit farther so I could not see or hear the creek at all. I suppose that it does more or less follow Brice Creek, so naming it the Brice Creek Trail makes sense. I would have been nice if there was closer to the creek though. Still I do have to say that I was enjoying myself very much. It was a marvelous place to be. I do need to remember to watch out for poison oak though. I remember seeing it here before, although I didn’t spot any of those pretty red leaves until the end of the trail.

I ended up hiking eight miles. I was very tempted to hike the section from Lund Park to Trestle Creek since that’s the only portion of the trail I have not yet seen. I was running a bit short of time. I’m pretty sure I could have finished that with plenty of daylight to spare. I even drove back to Lund Park to start the hike. But after thinking about it some more I decided that I would be wise to call it a day. That was probably a good decision since the rain started right when I was leaving. It reminds me of our first visit to Brice Creek when Cheryl wisely talked me out of attempting a “quick” hike to Upper Trestle Creek Falls at the end of the day while thunder was booming.

This will be the end of my stay in Eugene. I covered all of the primary destinations I had planned. There were plenty of options left over, but I always plan lots of extras. One thing I would very much like to do in the future is hike a few more sections of the McKenzie River Trail. And I do want to finish seeing all of the Brice Creek Trail even though I’m not expecting that last mile to be anything special. I’m going to be sorry to leave this nice hotel, but I’ve got other places to be.

Oh, lest I forget, I was tempted to upload a picture that wasn’t much more than a small stream scene showing the cobbles in the water. I don’t imagine that anyone would be saying, “Wow!”, but that’s one of the things I really like about Brice Creek. Well I like seeing them in the water much more than I like walking on them along the shore. Although I didn’t get many good shots today, I had a hard time choosing between two stream scenes. No matter which one I pick, I’ll know that I was tempted to chose the other.