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…

After the second failed attempt at 2:30pm (in which there was some severe rocking in the plane resulting from the scary turbulence though Tahia seemed to enjoy the ride as indicated by her laughter…

Eventually, the trail started to hug some interesting cliff walls. But it was somewhere at this point that we spotted a deer carcass right next to the hiking trail. The carcass looked like it was…

While we were busy trying to figure out if we had indeed found the trailhead for Yellow Branch Falls, another vehicle pulled up into the lot. It was a lone man, and Julie was eye-ing him…

So on this Labor Day, Julie insisted that we go out to a waterfall. I thought the idea was absurd since we had such a dry year and I was almost certain there weren’t any waterfalls worth…

…to my horror, outside was raining and there were clasps of lightning and thunder! If there was a discouraging start to the day (to do Gavarnie), this would be it!…

…as we were loading up the car with our stuff, we were dismayed to see that the car charger for our GPS was missing! I swore it was in my bag when we left home, but…

I couldn’t help but think how Mom and I missed out when we tried the scramble but didn’t quite make it three years ago. Still, Julie and I relished…