where the leprechauns live

Best sick day ever.

While I was having my snakebite with Arturo on Sunday, we made plans to go hiking on Thursday. It was kind of a cumulation of several of my previous 'new things.' I blazed a trail and I saw many different perspectives of this world of ours.

Before we went hiking anywhere, we checked in with the rangers station at Zig Zag. There we met Ranger Chris Doyle who was just about the coolest ranger ever. He told us all the different paths we could take and gave us several shortcuts. He told us to travel the eastern end of the Ramona Falls loop because "that's where the leprechauns live."

We hiked two different paths. The first one gave us the amazing view of Hood in the first picture. We took an unofficial path back, blazing our own trail so we could hurry down to Ramona. It was a good hike and we took our time tripping through the woods. There were several downed trees still on the path which we examined to see which way they fell and what damage they did on the way down (tree forensics!). We came across this awesome exposed rock side. At the bottom of the cliff, closer to the creek were these incredibly soft moss covered boulders. And then finally, we got to Ramona Falls which was simply indescribable. Just look at the photo.

It was already 8 pm before we left the falls. We had to hustle back which meant a lot of jogging. Even with that though, we still ended up walking the last leg of the trail back in the dark. We missed one turn and ended up going the wrong way. I got a little worried but we didn't panic. We did end up finding our way back to the car and my legs and I rejoiced.

All in all, a damn fine adventure for a sick guy!