Silver Falls State Park sits about ninety minutes outside Portland, Oregon, and it earns its name honestly: ten separate waterfalls strung along one 7.5-mile loop through old-growth forest. I had a long layover and nowhere better to be, so I rented a car and went to walk it.

The trail starts on a wooden footbridge into the trees, the kind of light-through-the-canopy moment that tells you immediately this hike is going to be worth carrying a camera for. It only builds from there. South Falls is the big one — a full multi-tier drop over layered basalt into a dark pool below, with the trail cutting in behind the curtain of water itself, close enough to feel the spray change direction with the wind. Smaller falls further along catch the light differently: one had the sun blasting straight through the mist at just the right angle, turning the whole waterfall into a sunburst. The trail closes out the way it opened, threading through moss and fern under shafts of light breaking through the canopy.