8-May 2020: Regardless, by the time we were driving on Mt Baldy Road, we were seeing on multiple occasions flashing signs saying “All Baldy Trails Closed” and “Parked Vehicles Will Be Towed Away”.

There had to have been at least four or five of them that we saw along the drive.

Still, there were cars in front of us, and we saw quite a few vehicles parked on the side of the road seemingly ignoring all these closure signs.

So even though the closure signs made us doubt whether our hike would happen, we still pressed forward just to see what we might find…

With Mother’s Day around the corner of this weekend and Julie really itching for another hike, she decided that today was going to be the day to re-visit San Antonio Falls.

She had previously confused this waterfall with Big Falls, but when I set the record straight with her for that one, it became clear that that other falls had less of a hike, a distant view, and it might have a bit of a social distancing problem.

For some reason, I thought that San Antonio Falls might be a little more reasonable to do because it had more of a very large street parking possibility so there wasn’t a gate stopping people from parking.

Not even the forest service said anything about the status of the waterfall prior to our visit, but they did say Manker Flat Campground was closed (not surprisingly) since no one was going to maintain the facilities or manage people using the grounds.

However, I did notice at breakfast today that Etiwanda Falls was open, but it was way too hot to be doing that hike on a day like today, which was expected to be in the high 80s or 90s.

I also thought about Bonita Falls, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled about doing the crossing of Lytle Creek and then going into the spraypaint assault of the entire hike.

Regardless, this brainstorming had been going on for weeks, especially since we had been getting rain since late March and into much of April, but now we were getting heat waves in the last couple of weeks.

So it was clear that the waterfalling window was winding down for the year in the Southland.

Anyways, this day started off like a typical COVID shelter-in-place day, where I was logging into work and getting ready to do some tasks.

I was also busy trying to wrap-up a very long and tedious overhaul of the World of Waterfalls website, which went on non-stop for the past 3 months for nearly 16-hour days day after day.

With all this stuff going on, the COVID time was passing by quickly though home schooling Tahia was wearing on us.

I also noticed my hair growing out since I hadn’t got it cut for the past two- almost three months.

Now we are stressing out about whether we’re going to see our money back from Icelandair since they refused to give refunds when the COVID outbreak occurred. So we rescheduled to August, but I have my doubts that we’ll be able to do it then.

Plus, we’re also hearing about the airline possibly going to be insolvent without a government bailout.

So there’s still quite a bit of anxiety as a result of the pandemic, but I guess in the worst case, we’re out a couple thousand bucks and we lose out on 80,000 points.

Nevertheless, given all these anxieties and thoughts in our heads, we were still trying to figure out what we can do for the sake of our physical and mental health.

Besides, we were now getting all these mixed signals regarding shelter-in-place while at the same time things are opening up.

And on top of that, there’s an innate need to explore and break from the monotony and routine, which is pretty much what the whole pandemic went against.

By the time breakfast was over, it was already past 10am, and it was getting too late in the day for my liking.

Eventually by about 11:05am, we finally left home and pursued San Antonio Falls for better or for worse.

We weren’t sure if it would be possible to do the hike or if there would be some kind of enforcement or infrastructure to prevent us from doing the hike.

But whatever happens, we were willing to invest the great-than-an-hour drive to find out.

So the traffic went by pretty lightly as we headed northeast along a combination of the 91, 57, and 210 freeways.

We were listening to Colin Cowherd along the way, which was kind of one little bit of normalcy on this day though hiking on a workday was already a bit unusual in and of itself (though we weren’t going to wait for the weekend).

We heard that UFC 249 was going to happen tomorrow in Florida, which also seemed to be the state where they let pro wrestling events happen during COVID.

So even nationwide, you got all these mixed signals about whether it’s ok to start opening up, or if we’re jumping the gun.

But at the very minimum, it seemed like eradication of COVID-19 is no longer possible and that ship had sailed as a result of all the mismanagement (i.e. COVID-19 was a hoax?, CDC funding cut, etc.) that went on ever since February to let it blow up like this.

Regardless, by the time we were driving on Mt Baldy Road, we were seeing on multiple occasions flashing signs saying “All Baldy Trails Closed” and “Parked Vehicles Will Be Towed Away”.

There had to have been at least four or five of them that we saw along the drive.

Still, there were cars in front of us, and we saw quite a few vehicles parked on the side of the road seemingly ignoring all these closure signs.

So even though the closure signs made us doubt whether our hike would happen, we still pressed forward just to see what we might find.

Eventually at about 12:15pm, we made it to the parking area near the Manker Flat divided road, and we saw at least two dozen cars parked here while half the road was closed for tree work.

There was one truck blocking the returning two lanes of traffic, and we wondered if he was turning people away from walking the San Antonio Falls Road.

However, we also saw some people coming abck from the road as if they had just finished hiking to the falls.

Thus, we took some time to get ready as Tahia was protesting because it was hot already.

Of course, Julie and I knew that since the schools had shut down, she’s trying to play games or YouTube, or chats in much the same way as adult junkies was would try to get their hit or fix.

Once we finally geared up, brought our waters, and I was carrying Julie’s pack, we were out and about and right onto the familiar San Antonio Falls Road.

Given that we had been a bit out-of-shape since we hadn’t done much hiking or any real working out over these past two months, I definitely felt the altitude while doing this walk.

But pretty soon we were in our stride as we walked uphill to the familiar bend that then led us towards the waterfall overlook.

We saw quite a few people heading back down the road in the other direction, but hardly anyone was wearing masks, which I thought was interesting. We seemed to be the exception to the rule in terms of doing that.

At the bend in the paved road, we saw that San Antonio Falls was actually running quite well.

We even noticed some upper tier that we hadn’t really noticed in the past because there was always some snow in the area that might have concealed it.

Pretty soon, we got to the familiar lookout for the San Antonio Falls though there were some graffiti on the wooden fencing.

I guess you’re always gonna have idiots that keep defacing places like this.

We then continued past the fence and followed the familiar trail going to the base of the waterfall.

The eroded part looked a little more eroded than we remembered (even a little dicier than before), but we eventually managed though Julie had quite a bit of apprehension on that part.

There were easily at least a dozen or so people chilling out at the base of the San Antonio Falls, which we got to at around 1pm.

Julie and Tahia took their shoes off and dipped their feet into the stream. Julie didn’t like how icy it felt, but Tahia was busy crossing the stream and building a “bridge” which was even more like a dam.

Meanwhile, I was busy documenting the experience and paying attention to that intriguing waterwheel at the base of San Antonio Falls.

So we spent a good half-hour or so enjoying the experience and really soaking in the outdoors again. It felt forbidden, but you wouldn’t know it by how many people were coming in and out of this place.

Even Tahia was finally not negative and sour on the whole hike, and now she doesn’t want to leave! I don’t know how to drive this negativity out of her because this “no first” mentality sure is annoying. How do we get her to keep focused on the positive?

And she accuses me of being negative!?!

Regardless, by about 1:35pm, we finally started to leave. That was just as a group of adolescents showed up where one guy brought an annoying boom box playing hard core rap music.

Again, I have to say that this was an example of what Aussies would say is “dickhead” behavior. But what are you gonna do? At least we’re leaving when they showed up.

By about 2pm, we made it back to the car. We passed by quite a few more families going towards San Antonio Falls without masks (almost looking at us as if we were weird with our masks on).

Anyways, we turned up the AC and made our way back down the Mt Baldy Road and eventually to Padua Ave and finally to Base Line Rd and the 210 West.

By about 2:55pm, we made it to the Urban Plates in Fullerton so we could eat a take out lunner. It was too rushed for Tahia’s daily Chinese online lesson with my Mom, but we were gonna give it a pass for Mother’s Day Weekend.

By 3:50pm, we finally made it back home after doing some more errands along the way.

And so ended this day, where we were glad that Julie pushed forward even with the uncertainty of outcome.

It definitely felt good to have some semblance of normalcy again, but I wondered at what point will the rest of society push forward or still be in prevent defense?