Horton Hears a...what was that!?

Luke and I decided to go on a little hike...which turned into a CRAZY adventure!  Our goal for the day was to find a series of caches themed around Horton Hears a Who.  There were 40 in total all about .10 miles apart from each other, not so bad right...

The start of our beautiful hike

View from above

About to find our 9th cache for the day

We found a travel bug!

This plant is growing through a leaf!  I found it fascinating

Back side blurry view...the last picture I took before
a leisurely hike took a turn!

By the time we saw this plant/leaf our GPS was taking us way off trail.  We were hiking/trail blazing down a mountain into a densely wooded forest.  We ended up on a tiny horse trail looking for a cache, which ended up not being near the logged coordinates.

We found the cache and headed on to the next one, expect now we have no idea where we are because we hiked so far away from our original trail.  It's getting a little late but we head on.  A while later I hear a very deep, thudding noise that is progressing in speed...needless to say I get a little scared but it doesn't phase Luke one bit.  At this point I'm wondering what the plan is.

...a while later, fatigue setting in, fear setting in...

We are NO where near where we started, it's getting dark, and I've already accepted the fact that I could be mauled by a mountain lion at any moment.  Luke, no fear.  It's really dark and we keep walking through open fields, which makes us open targets!  Finally, after climbing up a hill to try and find a cache and realizing that it has taken us four hours to get to this point, we decide to head back.

Hiking back, it's cold, dark and we are somewhat lost. *luckily we had jackets, and plenty of food and water*    As we hike back, feeling a little defeated by our 24 cache find, we hear something very large walking just off the trail from us.  Luke tells me to start talking loud so that whatever it is will hopefully leave us alone knowing our presence.

So, we are walking through the forest, dead tired and talking very loudly about anything that comes to mind. I am just waiting for the mountain lion to attack, I know it's coming and I've accepted it.  Then, we smell fire!      We've found a camp site!  We ask the campers which way the trail is and they were absolutely no help.  If a mountain lion wasn't going to murder us, they would have been my next guess.  We find our trail, and then we see a very bright light moving through the trails, someone is riding their bike through the mountains at 11:00 at night...tell me that's not a little strange.  But from watching him we can see our destination, finally we get back to our car...6 HOURS!  By 11:00 p.m. we are in our car a driving to get some food!

As we sit in an empty parking lot, eat and celebrate our lives Luke realizes his lights are on.  And do you know what that means...dead car battery.  We jump started the car by popping the clutch, went home and crashed.  Saturday report: neither of us are moving quite too fast.