Hiking the Deschutes and Fall River Trails

We stayed in La Pine State Park, south of Bend, Oregon, for several days just after Memorial Day 2017 - mainly to visit relatives.  We had lots of fun catching up with Dave's sister Leslie and her husband Mike, and their daughter, son-in-law and grandkids.  On Friday, June 2, we took a day to hike.  La Pine State Park offers miles of scenic hiking along the Deschutes River, the Little Deschutes River and Fall River, and we plotted a route to get some beautiful river views.

The first half of our hike was on the Deschutes Trail, following the Deschutes River (more below), but the feature of our hike was along the Fall River Trail:

Here is a view of the Deschutes River as we set off on our 7.5 mile hike:

At one scenic viewpoint on an oxbow curve of the Deschutes River, we could clearly see the geologic layers that make up this region, with a distinctive white layer of tuff, or rhyolite, from eruptions of volcanic mountains in the region:

La Pine is aptly named because of its extensive growth of Ponderosa and other pine.  In fact, "Big Red," the largest Ponderosa pine in the world, is resident in this park.

This has been a warm spring, after heavier-than-average rainfall, and our entire trip up the east side of the Sierra and Cascades has been accompanied by immense clouds of tree pollen.  Now that we've arrived in La Pine, the pine trees are contributing their share.  In the photo below, Kathy just touched the cones on a pine tree along the trail and was grace with a large, bright yellow cloud of pollen:

The park lies on land that had previously been homesteaded, and we saw the ruins of several cabins along our trail:

The Fall River, which is fed by springs higher up in the mountains, drains into the Deschutes River.  Its water runs clear, and at this horseshoe bend in the Fall River, where the stream had dug down through later-deposited sands and soil, we could see where red volcanic rock abutted white rhyolite from volcanic ash-fall:

Fall River looks like heaven for trout - and thus next-to-heaven for fly fishermen.  We spotted a beautiful riffle leading into a pool ---

-- and, sure enough, as we turned up the bank toward the riffle, we found a fisherman trying his luck.

Perhaps a half mile further upstream, we finally found our quarry:  the Fall River Fell, or waterfall!  Here, the clear mountain waters tumble 14 feet down over volcanic basalt into a deep pool of blue-green:

We sat for a while, munching our lunch and admiring the waterfall, before continuing on our way and hiking back through the forest to our campground.  We felt this hike helped us understand the geology and ecology of this Central Oregon region just south of Bend.