Deuel Creek hike

 I went on what I thought was a "girly" hike yesterday.  It turned out to be a little harder than I expected (good to push myself) and we followed the trail longer than we intended (it turned into a different trail and we didn't know).  There was supposed to be a small waterfall.  We didn't see it on the section of the loop we were on, so we kept going...and going...  Cool scenery though.  Scads of boysenberry bushes, a humongous dandelion, a lizard that stayed just a couple feet ahead of us for quite awhile, unidentified bugs, etc.

I got tired and hungry.  My friend went on ahead for 5 minutes to see if there was a big waterfall around the corner.  I stood there on a narrow trail listening to loud bug noises and decided to take a pic of myself to see just how dirty my face was.  I knew it was dirty because I'd used my shirt sleeve to wipe sweat off my forehead.  By then, I had fallen twice, crawled through slippery spots twice, and gotten a dust cloud in my face when my friend kicked dust at a snake trying to get it to leave the path. (I found the snake by falling close to it.)  I was feeling a little dehydrated and alone.

No waterfall within 5 minutes, and we knew we'd gone much farther than the predicted trail distance, so we headed back toward the swing we'd skipped because it had a few people on it.  It was really a deserted hike other than that.  This time we had the swing to ourselves!  You had to pull the swing up a slippery slope to a rock in order to climb on, and it was a bit scary to push off.

After finally stopping him at the bottom, I decided it was more important for him to catch me than record me.  It was impossible to get good enough footing to stop my momentum.  He ended up scrambling down to the bottom to stop me, after multiple failed attempts.  We had some good laughs on the swing and then headed down the south trail.  We'd hiked up the north trail, which was significantly more difficult, and the best little waterfall turned out to be on the south trail just below the swing.

Finally we could see the city again.  

Our hike took about 3.5 hours and I'm glad we went, even if it wasn't quite as girly of a hike as I expected.