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…

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 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…

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…

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…

According to our GPS, we only had around 5-6 miles to go, but soon the weather continued to deteriorate from hail to heavy snow flurries. Now, things were getting serious, and it eventually got…

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…