We just ended up going on a different hike, which was a little bit shorter, and had far fewer rocks to slip off of. Within two hours, we made it up and back.
Fungus was kind of...
trippy.
Back down in the parking area, one of the fathers had set up enough of a shelter to keep folks dry and had some stew going (one of the fellows who runs a restaurant had donated a pot to the cause). While the grub was heating up, a few of the boys went down to a stream and started playing on the rocks. Boy genes. That's what they do when you them loose in their element, outdoors.
The rain had more or less stopped anyway. Rocks...
not rolling.
Wifey was about to tap her inner banshee and go into screech mode when I put my hand on her shoulder and shook my head.
“He’ll be okay. If he falls in, he’ll learn. He heard you.”
Deep down,
we were both hoping
to hear a bigger splash.
Maybe next time.
Only a foot had gotten wet, so the shoe and a sock came off. The kid somehow got hold of a handkerchief and managed to fashion a Charlie Chaplin-style wrap for his foot. He hopped over to the car where the lucky tramp put on a pair of rain boots that just happened to be there.
Dang. We were hoping that he would have slowed down. Maybe we should have prayed. But to what? Anyway, he seemed to be enjoying this, figuring how to get out of the hole he'd dug himself into. Hey, it keeps him busy and lets us rest... a little.
He improvised pretty well. Took him a while to get his foot in there. Even asked for help. Yeah, right.
"It's all you."
Just a soon as he managed to stuff his foot into the boot, he was off and running. As he flew past I could have sworn he had a smug grin of confidence on his face. Only if there was some way to harness all that power for good instead of menace. Whatever he's tuned into makes that stuff the Jedi and Sith are always going on about look like... no, not going to finish that thought.
We were reaching for our attitude adjuster (see exhibit A) when one of the fathers offered to show us another trailhead. We had time since Plan B’s hike hadn’t taken so long and the kids were still revved. The hot spring could wait just a little longer.
(Exhibit A)
After tucking our 'little helper' in (don't worry M26C you'll get your chance... we promise!) we drove up a few kilometers of dirt road the rain had been trying to turn to mud. The trail started near a shrine gate, but the shrine was maybe an hour on foot in good weather. We only hiked a few hundred yards in to where things started to get very narrow and overgrown before deciding to leave it for another weekend.
Can you see the Ewok?
No?
Our big realization was that we need to do this kind of thing more often and on a regular basis. Hiking through the hills for a few hours is totally invigorating. Walking through the city has the opposite effect. Um... duh.
How about now?
Still nothing?
This explains it. The cunt person who left this...
must have scared the critter away.
I hope that critter had one more can and accidentally choked on it in some out of the way trail....end that defective gene carrier now.
ReplyDelete"Wifey was about to tap her inner banshee"
I got slightly nervous just reading that line..lol :)
Kind of crazy the level of pride that goes into the obsessive-compulsive sorting (and labeling) of garbage when so much of it gets carelessly tossed out the window. Almost like litter and nature somehow go together... naturally.
DeleteThe kids got an ass-chewing followed by a to-the-point, one sentence lecture on how you take out more than you carry in (non-compliance is now officially a tazerable offense). Credit to them that the can wasn't theirs, but someone did drop something 'by mistake', but only for a moment.