1308 Back From the Falls

Monday, June 18, 2007

I'm back from my annual visit to the falls trail. This is the second year that it poured rain all day, even though several web sites had predicted only clouds. We walked anyway, and got soaked, but it was ok. The rain must have been unusual, because the water level was very low. Falls that are usually wide and thundering were dribbles.

I took very few photos, none of the falls. Previous photos are more typical, having actual water.

The Man and I were to meet at a hotel near Scranton at noon on Friday. He was a few hours late due to an unavoidable situation, and things went downhill from there. I may have gotten him banned from that hotel for life. During the course of the stay, I somehow jammed up and overflowed the toilet, overflowed the Jacuzzi, "stole" a chair from another room, rearranged the furniture, created a confusion with the "date" package (dinner, movie, wine) that came with the room, made us late for our Friday dinner reservations, and a few other things. Including forgetting to tip the houseman who was so helpful with the chair and furniture moving issues (which is embarrassing to The Man). And using up a few hundred towels.

Sigh.

When The Man arrived in the parking lot on Friday, I was standing on the room balcony, and he looked up in time to see me waving, as two men were climbing off the balcony into a cherrypicker. Explain that one!

If I ever hear from him again, I'll be impressed with his level of tolerance.

And then Saturday it rained, and we walked the trail anyway. There was some kind of tiny very annoying bug, a gnat or midge, that fell madly in love with The Man. He had bug spray, but it didn't seem to deter them. If he stood still for more than ten seconds, he was surrounded in a cloud of them. They kept trying to climb into his ears.

If I ever hear from him again, I'll be impressed with his level of tolerance.

Daughter and Hercules joined us in the trail parking lot on Saturday. Unless you plan to walk down the mountain AND up, you have to leave one car at the bottom, and then ferry everyone to the top in one car. I don't know why we decided to take The Man's car to the top, but that meant cramming all four of us into his beloved always-spotless Mitsubishi Spider. In hiking shoes that had been tromping around in the rain. I'm sure it was very painful for him, when he saw what lugged hiking boots fresh from a muddy lot can do to carpeting. Even I cringed. It was pretty bad.

If I ever hear from him again (sigh), I'll be impressed with his level of tolerance. Given the Maryland fiasco, and now this, maybe from now on he should plan our weekends.

A very strange thing happened. All the falls are named, of course, and the lowest one, where Jay's ashes are (along with those of my first daughter and some pets), is "Murray Reynolds". The Man and Daughter both noticed that every time I said "Murray Reynolds", the constant drizzle became a downpour. It was very noticeable because it was instantaneous. I even said "Murray Reynolds" a few times just to test it, until Daughter and The Man threatened me with banishment if I said it again.

Daughter and Hercules weren't with us very far. They took off on a side path shortly after the first falls to search for a geocache, and we didn't see them again until the bottom. I usually stop at Murray Renolds and ask for a few minutes alone to talk with Jay a bit, but I didn't do it this time, I guess because of that downpour thing. Like it was a message or something. I don't know. I was actually a little afraid to. The last time I was there with Daughter, something pretty incredible and more than a little scary happened, and I might have been tempted to try for it again (ok, yes, I was very tempted), and I feel like I was being warned off. Ok, I can take a hint. But now I have to wonder why I'd be told not to. What might have happened if I'd tried?

We had Saturday dinner at the little "hotel in the middle of nowhere", and Daughter and Hercules spent the night there.

Well, other than all the icky stuff, the weekend was very good. I hope he remembers the good parts.

Something amazing about him - he notices everything. Nothing gets past him. When we first arrived at the trail parking lot, we drove past a lot of cars and parked near the back. I then walked through the lot looking for a car with NJ plates that might be Daughter's or Hercules's. When I got back to him and said "No other NJ cars here", he said no, they're mostly PA, two NY, one with a Kingston NY plate frame, and then he proceeded to tell me about the various bumper stickers. He had noticed all that driving past looking for a space?

Then, after dinner that evening, he wondered why it took so long for our food to arrive. I said maybe there wasn't enough help. He said there were three waitresses, "Name 1, who was our waitress, and Name2 and Mary". There was no break in the conversation at our table (he and Hercules were playing off each other again), and yet he'd caught the names of the waitresses, including two with whom we'd had no contact?

Sometimes he's scary.
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