And so we were merrily driving up the Hwy 39 into San Gabriel Canyon en route to Crystal Lake. But we were doing this drive without much preparation as we didn’t bring Ann Marie Brown’s book…

By about 2:20pm, we only made it to Jean, which was the next town on the way to State Line. And it wouldn’t be until about 3:20pm when we finally made it to Primm. By this time, lots of people…

I eventually scrambled up to rejoin Julie and Tahia where they were snacking on broccoli chips. As we were snacking up here, we were suddenly inundated in an insect swarm. It was quite a surreal…

As I was speeding along the NP-101 on the way out, I was suddenly tailed by someone in a truck. I thought that it wanted to pass me or something, but I didn’t see a place to pull over and let him…

As we were making our way over, Mom was telling me that Joshua had gotten carsick and threw up in a plastic bag. At first, she blamed Dad’s driving…

And as I was making this apparently unnecessary crossing to get back to the original side, I made a misstep and next thing I knew, both boots were wet as well as my wool socks! So much for hiking…

Once I got connected with an agent, I was told that my reservation was cancelled because I was a “no show” for my earlier flight from LAX to Denver on Wednesday, which clearly wasn’t true…

With the time being 2:50pm, I figured that it would probably be another 40-50 minutes before we’d finally be back at the trailhead. But at least now, we knew that we’d be hiking on trail again…

That said, Tahquitz Creek and Tahquitz Falls had quite the healthy flow. In fact, its flow was so strong that the creek flowed right over the connecting trail leading to the other side of the loop…

It wasn’t long before we saw a large group of hikers gathered near the mouth of Millard Canyon and the concrete ford. There was definitely a lot of water rushing across that concrete ford though…

As Julie and I got closer to the creek amongst those palm trees, we saw some people with wet shoes. One guy told us that you’re gonna get wet on this hike, and that we would be better off giving…

It wasn’t until about 3:45pm when we finally got home, but we definitely had to be careful driving up the I-5 as there were a few moments of standing water even on the fast and car pool lanes…

For just two hours in the park, I didn’t want to spend this kind of money. But Julie was insistent on us going in to park. Our verbal disagreement made the parking attendant uncomfortable and then…

Speaking of unpleasant, the water definitely had an unpleasant smell so we knew very well that this water was polluted. But that didn’t stop Tahia from running towards the foaming plunge pool where…

Near the base of the Eaton Canyon Falls were some roses as well as another ledge where there was another bouquet of dried up flowers. I’m betting that these were to commemorate lost loved ones…

We stared and watched as one guy was squared off against another with a third guy nearby either going to join in or just watch. But one of the guys looked like he wanted to get something from the…

…we had trouble entering… the accommodation that Mom had booked on Friday night, and when she finally started getting a handle on the location of the accommodation…, that was when I realized…

So from that point on, we had a decision to make. Should we get off the next stop and take the next train back to Ueno hoping that we’d arrive in time to catch the 8am train back to Mito?…

Of course, when Mom saw the closure sign, she called out to me and wondered if it was wise to do this, which further raised some doubts as to whether my confidence in the park being…

Anyways, after climbing then going around a bend where there was that familiar view of Mono Lake, we could now see that Mono Lake was essentially one big haze with the lake hardly being able…