Our hike the day after Thanksgiving turned out to be a seven hour hike and we actually only hiked around four miles. Four miles...up, down, under, over, through a canyon and down the middle of the creek. We met up with a hunter coming out of the woods as we were going in and he informed us that we should wear orange to be safe. We were wrong when we thought certain parts of the forest, there was no hunting aloud. By permit, you can hunt the entire forest during hunting season. We had packed our orange ponchos because there was a good chance of rain that day, so Shell and I wore those and Chuck had his orange hat. Our hike started out with just climbing over and under a lot of fallen trees. It wasn't long before we came upon a pretty little waterfall. After having to walk down the middle of the creek several times because the walls of the canyons coming straight down to the water edge and climbing up and down lots of slopes, with a lot of slipping and sliding, we finally found the waterfalls that filled up the stone gourges that we were looking for. We decided that was the perfect place for our picnic lunch. Little did we know what was ahead of us on this hike. Chuck checked the map, along with the compass and GPS, several times. We ended up having to climb a waterfall and slide down some pretty steep hills....and find our way through the rocks of a canyon. The hardest thing was climbing up the side of a canyon that went straight " UP". Thinking we were getting close to the explorer, we still had to hike over more fallen trees and up and down hills before coming to the road. There it was...just a few feet away...." the explorer". We were never so happy to see it ever. Even though this hike was a pretty intense one and I'm not sure if I would want to do it all over again but once we were back at the explorer, I can say...I was glad we did it!!!! It sure was an adventure.
