Ultimately, we would go on the familiar winding road up to Monrovia Canyon Park. We were worried about the parking situation here given the past troubles the last time we were here. At first…

So we kept forward hoping perhaps to find a plaza or fast-food restaurant to stop at to see what was going on. But moments later, Tahia started puking. And it seemed like she was heaving quite…

…there was a bit of unusual circumstances on our way out as we heard a loud circling chopper hovering right above the canyon. It was kind of ironic that we saw some memorial dedicated to “Arturo”…

Then, we turned left at the familiar signposted junction for Paradise Falls. Tahia was doing quite well during the hike, and we were still proceeding with Julie in front and Tahia trying to play…

But already, I was feeling a bit uneasy when I saw wet rocks and muddy spots on the descent. A slip and fall here could potentially be fatal. Even with the ropes tied to trees here…

…I attemped to cross above the rope. All it took was the first step and the slip of that step (without me losing my balance fortunately) to make me realize that the initial approach was too risky…

After walking through the rain to the Auberge from the car park on the quai, I was finally in our room at 3:55pm. It turned out that our room was big and charming, and it was easily the best…

During the 80 minutes of driving to this point, I was talking with Julie about the prospect of going all the way out to Acadia National Park and not being able to visit thanks to the shutdown…

Then, as we were climbing the last few switchbacks, it started raining at 12:20pm. This was definitely not a good sign. When we encountered another pair guy hikers who were coming back down…

Once we got all settled on the plane, it turned out that I was sitting next to this rather tall, but older Italian guy who got the unfortunate window seat. It was unfortunate because the seat…

However, when we got to the machine, we found out that both the 8:30 and 9:15 trains were sold out! Damn! I knew we should have bought the tickets last night!…

We could see that we were surrounded by some mean-looking squalls as we went down. And after getting our car with the permit in hand (that the receptionist gave us), we then finally parked next…

Adella said, ‘Odio!’ as she wanted to make sure we were having a very good meal. I had a feeling it was something that Roberto told us about on the drive here, and now I saw what he meant about…

…there seemed to be at least a half-dozen or more wasps or bees swarming about me. Apparently, my orange shirt might have attracted them as if I was a flower to them…

Anyways, like our Napa experience, there was quite a bit of traffic in the Napa Region when we visited last Summer, and in Nampa, there were certainly a lot of cars here. And that was made worse…

The long flat stretch of hiking that Julie and I typically took for granted on all of our previous hikes now didn’t seem to straightforward as I was carrying an extra 30 pounds on my back…

We followed this road until the pavement eventually looped into a little cul-de-sac with a picnic area, but then the road turned back up and there was no apparent trail to keep going…

…I was sort of lukewarm to Horsetail Falls. Then, Julie showed me her photo on her iPhone. I took just one glance at it and I knew immediately that I had been in the wrong spot all this time!…

I was a little disappointed that he didn’t mention our website, and the thought did occur to me whether I should tell him. But I wanted to ensure we stayed anonymous so I didn’t say anything about…

We did spot a couple of guys going the other way. However, their pants looked muddy and wet, and it made us wonder if we were in for something harder than we had thought going into this excursion…