The Day I Became a Tourist Attraction

On the afternoon of the Friday after Thanksgiving I took a hike with several members of my family to Cedar Falls, the main attraction of Petit Jean State Park. The trail down the cliff was steep and, as it was raining off and on, slippery. But it was also crowded. When we got to the basin into which the falls drops, there were perhaps 30 people strolling around, several of them with dogs.

I wandered about, fighting the crowd and the awful lighting, to try to get some photos. I noticed that my nephew had crossed the creek and climbed through a tunnel in the rocks to approach the falls on the right side. I decided to follow. He stopped near the base of the cliff, but when he turned around and saw that I was nearby, he decided to go a little further. I decided to follow. He told me later he wouldn’t have gone behind the falls if I hadn’t been behind him, and I told him I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t done it first. Here he is halfway up the stepped slope that leads to the dry ledge behind the falls.

The rocks were a bit slippery on the way up, but not hazardously so. I felt a bit guilty because I thought I was probably messing up a lot of other peoples’ photographs. It was for that reason that I didn’t stay behind the falls for long. My niece saw where we were headed and tried to get to a spot where she could take our photos, but we’d moved on by the time she got there. (It was drizzling the whole time we were there, so the only dry place was directly behind the falls.) I can offer no proof that I went behind the falls except for this photo I took through the waterfall.

The way down the far side was much trickier. The ledges were steeper and slanted downward toward the water. And they were very wet. I carefully made my way down, being fully aware of the audience that was probably hoping I’d take a dive. I made it somehow. In this shot, you can see the steps I came down just above the branches of that small tree.

In the shot above and especially the one below you can get a good idea of the scale of the falls based on the size of the people next to it.

My brother-in-law sat on a rock and watched the entire adventure. (He’d normally have joined us, but he had a non-functioning hand due to a full-speed collision with a tree while playing Frisbee the day before.) He said those people in the above photo had followed us and were ready to go behind the falls when they saw how steep the steps were up to the ledge. They huddled up and discussed it, then turned around and went back the way they came. He also said that while we were behind the falls, a group of Japanese tourists had been pointing and taking pictures and talking about us like we were the most exciting thing they’d seen in years.

After hearing all that, I began to feel like I’d accomplished something. I was wishing that someone had taken my picture behind the falls. (If you know me well, you know I don’t consider that I’ve done something if I don’t have a picture or other evidence to prove it.)

We began the hike along the creek out of the canyon when we passed two of the tourists (the man in the maroon coat and the woman in the white jacket in this photo). When the guy saw my nephew walk past, he said, “You did the circle? You went all the way around?” He said, yes, it was him. The woman then looked at me and said, “I took your picture.”

So, there’s a good chance that if you Google, in Japanese, “Idiots at Petit Jean,” you might see a picture of me behind the falls after all.