Union Creek and the Rogue River

Sunday morning (Aug 19) we bid farewell to the Hartshorn's and thanked them so much for letting us stay with them.  We headed north and finally made it to Oregon!  Here are pictures for proof:

Yes we are definitely tourists!  We continued north to Union Creek and the Rogue River where we stayed in this awesome rustic cabin in the woods for a night.  It was so cozy and even had a kitchen where we could cook dinner.

After checking in and dropping off all of our stuff, we headed to the nearby sites along the Rogue River.  Our first stop was the Natural Bridge:

The Natural Bridge was cool because this huge river rushed down the mountain and they plunges in to an ancient lava tube and whole river completely goes underground.  While the river is underground water sprays out of little blow holes on top of the natural bridge.  A few yards later, the river comes back out of the underground lava tube and continues downstream.  I was really awesome to see this river disappear and then reappear from underground.

While we were walking on the trail to the Natural Bridge, we found this huge tree stump and had to take a picture.  I think it is so cool that the kids look so small sitting on this stump.

After seeing the Natural Bridge, we drove down the river a little ways to see the Mill Creek Falls and the Barr Creek Falls.  This trail was a little longer than we thought so we didn't make it to the Barr Creek Falls because the kids were tired of walking and we were tired of carrying them.  The trail to the Mill Creek Falls had two directions.  One direction lead to the falls and the other way led to the boulders.  We went to the boulders first:

As you can see in the middle picture of me and the kids, the river was rushing so fast. The boulders kind of blocked the river and created a beach-like area and a little pool to play in.  We spent some time here collecting rocks and throwing them in the river.  A little way down river was this little waterfall in the boulders.  We continued down the trail to the actual falls and found this:

The Mill Creek Falls were really cool.  The falls cascaded 173 ft into the Rogue River Canyon.  It is amazing that the water looks like it just falls out of the trees!

Like I said before, we were tired after this hike so we headed back to our cabin to relax a bit and have dinner.  After dinner we walked across the street to the ice cream parlor for some much wanted ice cream cones!  That night we chilled in the cabin and played Old Maid and Go Fish.  It was nice to relax.