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’…

Julie was fearful that they might get reported to police so they stayed behind, but now that planted in my mind that perhaps there was a time limit for my exploration before the cops would show up…

Still, with all the mental stress from being stuck in the house and the uncertainty for how long COVID-19 was going to last in America, we were definitely getting cabin fever. Spring was usually…

Sure enough, when we got to the Bear Gulch Nature Center, given all the delays that Julie induced on the way here, it turned out that the car in front of us took the very last parking spot…

When they eventually showed up, we ultimately got started on our hike at about 10:20am. Surprisingly, our group actually consisted of about five different families, I think, with lots of kids…

Along the way, I saw quite a few more hikers going up to the falls, including one couple where one woman really looked like she struggled (making me wonder if she had brought enough water…

We even had to scramble and skirt by some slippery and eroded ledges or dropoffs (including one rope-assisted part) where Tahia got real nervous and even cried as she was starting to lose confidence..

Julie and I were hoping big time that it wouldn’t result in a really bad injury to one of them where we’d likely get blamed for bringing them to this hike in the first place should such a calamity…

..I was busy taking pictures before heading out, we noticed that Sophia slipped and fell into a shallow part of Willow Creek. Dad aggressively went into the creek after her when he, too, slipped…

Actually, the scrambling up to the top of the falls wasn’t very trivial as I had to grip some sloping hard-rock surfaces that could easily be difficult to get a grip, especially if wet…

It didn’t even matter that some of them had the forest service pass on their dashboards or hanging from their rear-view mirror. The cops also got them for parking over the traffic lines so trying…

…the kids were playing Pharoah or something like that where Joshua buried himself in the sand by camp. Clearly he was oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t going to shower for another night…

…Julie and Tahia made it back to the room as they were returning from their day out. Julie told me about a scary moment when an Uber driver ran the red light and they almost got broadsided…

Not recalling that I had to go that far up to continue the ascent, I briefly descended to where there was a familiar steep climb though it definitely lacked the vegetation that I swore was there…

She suddenly started to do things like picking her nose and smearing the byproducts onto me. Or she would be snacking on puffs and leaving crumbs everywhere…

Julie quickly handed Tahia a spare plastic bag, and roughly a few minutes later, she hurled into the bag. The foul smell of bile and other stomach acids or other nasty things definitely didn’t…

We also saw lots of cars looking for parallel parking and that parking situation looked pretty hopeless. It kind of made me wonder if we should abandon our attempts at…

When Julie finally got back to the trailhead at 12:25pm, she told me that she saw a ram! And she made sure to let me know that I should have taken the main trail back instead of the alternate one…

So given all of those factors, today’s excursion really felt like we were shaking off the cobwebs and getting back into the old MO of doing waterfall hikes opportunistically while writing about our…

There were people…rowing just outside in the harbor in plain sight from the restaurant. Then, suddenly, we heard loud booms, which rattled the windows…The waiter said that they were from cannons.