Although the trailhead is only about a quarter mile from the camp ground, the road to get there is windy and cars move quickly, we drove to the trailhead. Earlier in the day we had used the swimming area and it was the typical muddy water that you find at any day use swimming area. Along the trail though the water was crystal clear. You could easily see eight inch fish swimming just by the shore. Of the 1.83 miles we hiked, at least 1.5 of them were right on the water, which was beautiful as the sun set. We knew there was a waterfall on the trail, but we weren't expecting much. The trail isn't very well marked and some places look like makeshift offshoots of the main trail, so we weren't even sure we would find the waterfall. Once we did though, we were very impressed. The waterfall is part of the spillway from the lake, so I guess it is technically man-made, but we have noticed that kids don't really care about that kind of stuff.
The kids of course were not satisfied just looking at it from the bottom, so we had to try to get to the top. This added another level to the adventure. At the top of the waterfall there was a wide stone wall that channeled the lake water to the waterfall spillway. We realized we could either turn around and backtrack the trail, or we could scale the wall and hike along he levy back to the trail. It wasn't a very tough decision. (Earlier we had seen that there was a trail across the levy and that it did connect to the main trail.)
This is definitely a hike we would do again and recommend to others. It would be great to see the waterfall after some big rains when the lake is up.
Travel time from home: 45 minutes
Today's miles: 1.83
Remaining miles: 51.27
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