A Rocky Saturday

The weekend has finally come around, after a not so great Friday shift the other day, I woke up today feeling refreshed and ready to hike! This Saturday seemed pretty nice on my way over to the meetup. I don't normally drive during the day, so wearing sunglasses felt pretty awesome. Not driving during the day is a weird feeling for me. I'm always used to driving into work by the time the sun's down, and driving home right before sunrise. I'm used to the poorly lit streets, the weird bumps I need to swerve around, and having pretty poor visibility; being consistently blinded  by people who exclusively use high beams.

Alright hike time! I met up with a few friends near their church so we can carpool to the hike. We talked for a bit, and I was introduced to some of their bible study friends. They are pretty freaking cool. I guess on paper hanging out with Christians can seem a little daunting, like what if they try to convert me, or bring up conversations I wouldn't be able to understand or relate to. But they really kept that kind of stuff to themselves, and were respectful about stuff like that. They would talk about their studies, but in a way that I could understand. Most of their bible related discussions would be about some of them actively teaching, and helping people learn to find their own way to follow god etc. I'm not religious, and good on them for helping to teach kids about stuff they are passionate about. So let's talk about that trail... First off the parking was atrocious. Imagine a main road with a dirt path. That's not the start of the trail, but a pretty terrible parking lot if you could call it that. I carpooled with a friend, he turned left into the parking lot and it was really tight. As he was easing in, a biker the was driving down starting cursing at him really loud. What the F%$^ are you doing!? He kept yelling that as he drove by and all we could really do was laugh our asses off. I've never experienced verbal road rage like that and it was hilarious. The group I was with ended up parking at two different parking lots, the one we parked in was really far from the entrance of the trail for some reason, so we had to walk to them. Once we started the trail, the signs were already there that it wasn't going to be great. The first view we see is a giant pond that formed from a nearby stream in the middle of the beginning of the trail. We had to walk around it and then we were officially on a trail that had, questionable markers. The trail itself wasn't too bad. Tons of leaves covered hundreds of rocks and stones that were easy to trip on. There was a lot of hills we needed to climb, and somehow climb back down. These hills were incredibly steep, and in general it was a more dangerous trail than it was difficult. Some of the group were a lot faster than others, so for the most part I tried to stay in-between them. But after a pretty steep decline, someone hurt themselves who was at the back. The group continued and didn't even realize they started to head back. It wasn't a serious injury, but it hurt them enough that they would rather just go home which they did. After that we all grouped up on the top of the hill which had a pretty cool giant rock you can climb and get a cool view. Even though it is spring, most of the trees haven't bloomed so the view was mainly dead trees followed by buildings and the skyline. It was awesome being up there, but it sucked that not everyone could see that view. We started to head back, and on the drive back my friend who was kind of the leader of the group, told me that he was disappointed that this hike wasn't inclusive for certain members, and that the hike was way too difficult. This was one heck of a rocky trail, but in the end I enjoyed my time with everyone and everyone else had fun. When they have similar events in the future I'm happy to tag along, and I hope that everyone can enjoy their time together. 

Rocky climbing type of trail created a rocky Saturday in general. I didn't hurt myself climbing, but it was a pretty bad trail in general. Too steep to feel comfortable climbing down, and at some points it felt like whoever set up the trail didn't really care.