Burney Falls - A good weekend with family

It was the week ending on 12th June, 2009. For some reason my sis and I were both on a travel spree in that week and it was as if "life is a failure" if stay home for that weekend. On Thursday (being almost the deadline if we need to book some place), she was almost behaving like a travel agent who gives you numerous options to chose from and makes sure that you commit to one thing.

Unfortunately, I was caught up with ten different things at office and had little time to surf about places. Every 10 minutes, Yahoo messenger window kept popping up with a URL - some nice hike links or some hotel links. Exactly in the middle of all that, all of us received an email(quite a uncommon phenomenon) from Rakesh about some trip one of his colleague made and that is where we saw the name "Burney Falls" and found it really exciting..Till then we knew nothing about it..

That was the trigger and our sweet travel agent now got some direction rather than surfing aimlessly and finally she booked a cabin in Burney Falls State park. On Thursday, we went home early did all shopping and marinads and got ready to leave early next day to cut the traffic.

My sis and bro-in-law stayed home and took care of getting the SUV from Hertz and all necessary loadings. Rakesh and I headed home around 330 and we started exactly at 4pm..It was a 290 miles North on Fremont on I-5 North and then 299 and finally on Ca-89.The road was scenic, surrounded by lush green fields. we reached around 10pm and managed to find our cabin in the woods.

It was a cute looking log house without electricity- kind of fun. The 129-foot Falls was just a 5 min walk from the cabin..We ended our day with a few pita breads/hummus and little tabouli..

Next day we look a hike around the falls (which was about 30 mins) and then headed to McCloud river for our next falls hike. From Burney to McCloud was a 35 miles drive through a series of Doglas firs and up-down turns.. We started our hike on the Lower Falls and climbed up to Middle and Upper Falls. This is one of the most scenic hikes I have seen (in my short span of hiking experience)..The McClod river followed us all the way and we took breaks in between to see and relish the beauties of the fall..

Headed back to our cabin with all of us feeling terrible need of caffeine and was disappointed not to find a single coffee shop in the Burney town..Ended up buying a Okay-ish coffee from a gas station and satiated ourselves.

It was a quick and unplanned vacation - we all were rejuvinated and relaxed for many days!!