And indeed, there were plenty of moments where I had to make a decision on whether to make a risk-laden boulder scramble with dropoffs or wade through the poison oak. It was definitely a case of…

As I was making the steep scramble up, I had to go up some exposed tree roots before I was on a narrow rock ledge leading to a narrow section where the rock ledge was kind of aided by the way…

When we had our fill of Paradise Falls, we then headed back up at 3:45pm. And as expected, Tahia was not in much of a mood to walk. She wanted us to carry her, but we couldn’t accommodate…

Sure enough when we got onto the Trabuco Creek Road, we saw there was still water puddles filling in the potholes. Plus, the road was muddy as expected so we knew that Julie’s car was going to get…

Boy was it a good thing that we didn’t do the trip in reverse (clockwise) as originally planned, because we would’ve really been screwed with the flooding there. Plus, we would’ve really been…

So while Julie and I were having this GEICO Commercial moment (where Tarzan and Jane were arguing over directions) and Tahia was getting antsy about this hike becoming longer than she had bargained…

As we were getting ready for the hike, the sun was bearing down on us as it looked like it was going to be yet another hot day today (yet another February day in the 80s or 90s). As my headaches…

So that right off the bat kind of hinted to us that this excursion could very well be a waste of time. Even Julie was starting to entertain the thought of just aborting this hike…

While this was going on, we were letting Tahia play while Julie and I looked around to see if any of the boulders had fallen from atop the falls. Was that the reason why they re-opened the trail?…

As we pulled out of the Jeremy’s on the Hill lot at 8:05pm, we were precariously driving on the Hwy 78 as we realized that the visibility on the road was quite poor. With all the twistiness…

As we were ascending the Baldy Rd behind this long line of cars in front of us with steep switchbacks along the way, I started to notice that an indicator light was on saying “A/T Temp”. We didn’t…

Julie and I wondered if we should start registering Tahia’s thumb ratings or something as part of our waterfall writeups. That way we’d get a toddler or child’s perspective, which I’m sure was…

At the same time, we also had to be careful not to get too close to any of the cliff walls because it appeared that the bighorn sheep also inadvertently kicked down some rocks that rolled rapidly…

Eventually towards the end of the performance, they brought me up once again. But instead of a seemingly benign short dance routine like before, it seemed like they were doing something else with me..

In any case, Julie had the bright idea of having Tahia hand over the bag of potato chips to the homeless person. His reaction to Tahia’s gesture was priceless. He smiled widely, and called Tahia…

Tahia thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I knew that we were sharing one of those precious moments that I’m sure would stick in our minds for the rest of our lives. This was the kind of moment…

As we were just starting to head west on the road, we saw a cop going the other way. Just as we had passed each other, he had turned on his siren lights, which made me scared that perhaps I might…

As we were driving the road out of Monrovia Canyon Park, we had to wait for a ranger to move as his/her truck was blocking the road. It was at that time that we had noticed that they had half-closed..

..we pretty much spent the next few minutes arguing with this guy as he wouldn’t let the issue go. When we tried to explain to him that we had already done what he advocated that we do this instant…

Next, I continued onto the next hairy part of the scramble. This time, there was a bit of a longer and more involve wade through knee-deep tide pools and rocks. Again, since I was prepared to get…