Willamette National Forest - 3 Pools

While planning out this weekend last week I ran across an article and some pictures on a place called Three Pools. I was intrigued as to where this place was because the pictures looked so stunning. After doing some research I found that Three Pools is located in the Willamette National Forest approximately 90 minutes from our home. It is part of the Willamette River and is full of small water falls and deep pools of water - hence the name Three Pools. The river glides along at a lazy pace until it hits one of these small water falls and then usually cascades down into the rocks below forming little pools of water that in some placed were 12+ feet deep. The water had an aqua color to it and was crystal clear. You could see all of the things below you even in the deepest parts of the Three Pools area. Another cool thing about the river was that the depth changed constantly. One minute you would be standing in water that was just inches deep and then you would take one step forward, left, right, or back and the depth would be different. It was this way throughout the entire river system.

As we go to these different locations we learn some tricks here and there to make our adventures a bit more fun. One of the things that we quickly learned is that we need to always bring rafts/floats with us. The water here is so cold (weather it is the ocean, river, lake, etc..) that it really isn't good for swimming, but it is tolerable if you have a raft to float on. Sometimes we cannot use our rafts - like in the ocean, but it is nice to have them just in case. Today we not only were able to use our floats, but we needed to. Elizabeth and Bob were the only ones brave enough to put their heads under the water and that was only once or twice each when they jumped into the pools from the rocks above.

We had so much fun today. It was a really good day. This place was so cool I think we just may come back again...

The river is down a trail behind that little cabin. The pine trees are so tall here as you can tell (I hope) by this picture.

Making our way down to the river. 

One of the pools. 

The water below this driftwood was about 5 feet deep. I wasn't brave enough to see if it would hold my weight. 

In the midst of all of this fun it is easy to forget that you are in the mountains. 

The water was deep in parts of this section. The area to the right were very deep. 

Me and the kiddos bunched up together. 

It was so cool because the river doesn't look very deep here, and in some parts it isn't deeper than a few inches, but 1 foot over from the shallows would be a spot in the river that was 3 feet. 

People (and Elizabeth) were jumping from the rocks into the water below.

Going home.